The Problem with Phi: A Critique of Integrated Information Theory

First-person experience cannot rescue causal structure theories from the unfolding argument

The scientific study of consciousness is currently undergoing a critical transition in the form of a rapidly evolving scientific debate regarding whether or not currently proposed theories can be assessed for their scientific validity. At the forefront of this debate is Integrated Information Theory (IIT), widely regarded as the preeminent theory of consciousness because it quantified subjective experience in a scalar mathematical measure called that is in principle measurable. Epistemological issues in the form of the “unfolding argument” have provided a concrete refutation of IIT by demonstrating how it permits functionally identical systems to have differences in their predicted consciousness. The implication is that IIT and any other proposed theory based on a physical system’s causal structure may already be falsified even in the absence of experimental refutation. However, so far many of these arguments surrounding the epistemological foundations of falsification arguments, such as the unfolding argument, are too abstract to determine the full scope of their implications. Here, we make these abstract arguments concrete, by providing a simple example of functionally equivalent machines realizable with table-top electronics that take the form of isomorphic digital circuits with and without feedback. This allows us to explicitly demonstrate the different levels of abstraction at which a theory of consciousness can be assessed. Within this computational hierarchy, we show how IIT is simultaneously falsified at the finite-state automaton level and unfalsifiable at the combinatorial-state automaton level. We use this example to illustrate a more general set of falsification criteria for theories of consciousness: to avoid being already falsified, or conversely unfalsifiable, scientific theories of consciousness must be invariant with respect to changes that leave the inference procedure fixed at a particular level in a computational hierarchy.

I suggest a heuristic for calculating the spatial boundaries and phenomenal capacity of conscious resonating structures in General Resonance Theory (GRT), a theory developed by Hunt and Schooler over the last decade. GRT suggests that consciousness is a product of various resonating frequencies at different physical scales. All physical structures vibrate and should be considered processes rather than static things. Resonance assists in achieving phase transitions to higher levels of complex consciousness. When vibrating structures resonate in proximity to each other they will under certain circumstances “sync up” in a shared resonance frequency. GRT suggests that a shared resonance is the key requirement for the combination of micro-conscious entities into a larger-scale macro-consciousness. This approach is, thus, a solution to the “combination problem” of consciousness. The proposed mathematical heuristic allows for a practical approach for identifying potential conscious structures and the spatial boundaries of such structures as they change over time, and for calculating the capacity for phenomenal consciousness present within the putative conscious resonating structure. The slowest-frequency shared resonance is the limiting factor for the size of any macro-consciousness. I describe some limitations of the proposed framework, and how it compares to Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory. IIT’s constellation-qualia characterization framework may be compatible with GRT and may be a useful tool to use in conjunction with GRT’s quantification framework.1. IntroductionThis paper builds upon the mathematical framework described in Hunt 2011, which suggested a method for calculating the phenomenal capacity of any conscious entity, by providing a new method for calculating the spatial boundaries of any conscious entity in each moment. This methodology is grounded in a panpsychist framework (Hunt 2011, Schooler, Hunt, and Schooler 2011, Hunt and Schooler 2019; Goff 2017) that assumes that all matter is associated with at least some capacity for phenomenal consciousness, albeit extremely rudimentary in the vast majority of matter. Accordingly, the General Resonance Theory (GRT) developed further in the present paper is applicable to all physical systems, rather than being limited to neurobiological or biological systems.The notion of resonance (synchrony, coherence, shared vibrations) has a long history in neuroscience. Crick and Koch featured this concept in their neurobiological theory of consciousness (Crick and Koch 1990, Koch 2004). Fries has made the concept of “communication through coherence” (neuronal synchrony/resonance) even more widely known (Fries 2005, 2015). Dehaene 2014 highlights the role of long-range synchrony between cortical areas a key “signature of consciousness,” (as does Koch 2004). Bandyopadhyay has made the concept central to his Fractal Information Theory of consciousness (Bandyopadhyay 2019).The resonance theory of consciousness developed in Hunt and Schooler 2019, Hunt 2011, and the present paper, also makes resonance the key mechanism by which rudimentary consciousness combines – through shared resonance in proximity – into more complex consciousness. This is the case because resonance allows for phase transitions in information flows to occur at various organizational levels, allowing previously chaotic systems to self-organize and thus become coherent.The primary insight offered in the present paper is that consciousness is a product of resonance chains (Fn 1) of various information/energy (Fn 2) pathways, and that the spatial and temporal boundaries of any particular conscious entity is established by the slowest frequency shared resonance within that conscious entity, for each particular information/energy pathway. Resonance frequencies and resonance chains are constantly changing in most entities; thus, the spatial boundaries of conscious entities will be constantly changing at least a little. Most combinations of consciousness, in which less complex entities combine into more complex entities, will be comprised of a nested hierarchy of conscious entities, with one dominant conscious entity in each moment, without extinction of the nested entities’ consciousness, distinguishing this approach from Integrated Information Theory and other theories that assume the extinction of nested conscious entities, leaving only one macro-conscious entity left (this is IIT’s “exclusion principle”).

The purpose of this article is to provide an overall critical appraisal of Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness. We explore how it has evolved and what problems are involved in the theory. IIT is a hypothesis that explains the consciousness in terms of integrated information. It argues that the fundamental properties of experience can be properly analyzed and explained by physical systems’ informational properties. Throughout the last decade, there have been many advances in IIT’s theoretical structure and mathematical model. Also, like all hypotheses in the field of science of consciousness, IIT has given rise to several controversies and issues. In this context, IIT needs a critical survey. To this end, we first introduce fundamental concepts of IIT and related issues. After that, we discuss major transitions IIT has been through and point out related intra-model issues. Finally, in the last section, some theoretical, extra-model issues involved in IIT’s principles are presented. The article concludes by suggesting that, for the sake of future development, IIT should take metacognitive accessibility to experience more seriously.

The study of consciousness is gaining importance in both neuroscience and the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). We show here that an advanced White Matter (WM) tractography method, termed gridography, can explore the potential integration of two prominent theories of consciousness: Global Workspace Theory (GWT) and Integrated Information Theory (IIT). Using gridography on high-resolution diffusion MRI data from the Human Connectome Project, we demonstrate that gridography obtains WM connections between the anterior brain regions associated with GWT and posterior regions linked to IIT in a form which agrees with the Epiontic Consciousness Theory (ECT), which is an intermediary theory between GWT and IIT. We evaluate how experimental gridography data aligns with the physiological structures implicated in consciousness by analyzing: (i) Information characteristics of consciousness theories; (ii) Improvement of diffusion MRI tractography by use of gridography; (iii) Expected gridography results based on consciousness theory. Our findings suggest that these connections, particularly those of the Superior Longitudinal Fasciculus (SLF), support a ECT unified model of consciousness integrating aspects of both the primarily epistemic GWT and the primarily ontic IIT. This study proposes a novel framework that could reconcile existing theoretical divisions between GWT and IIT through the use of the ECT approach.

Integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness proposes an identity between its causal structure and phenomenology. Through this assertion, IIT aims to explain consciousness by prioritizing first-person experience. However, despite its phenomenology-first stance, developments in IIT have overlooked temporality. As such, we argue that at present IIT’s phenomenological analysis is incomplete. In this critique, we show how IIT takes a non-identical illusionist stance towards the experiences of continuity, flow, and extent of our experiences. Moreover, in isolating temporal grains of experience to a single timescale, IIT misses out on capturing the multi-scale nested nature of temporal phenomena. Hence, we contend that IIT needs an axiom for time, through which its causal structure can be refined to account for temporal experiences. Here, we propose an axiom to address these concerns. We conclude by discussing how IIT may need to be revised if our concerns hold true.

Consciousness is a central issue in neuroscience, however, we still lack a formal framework that can address the nature of the relationship between consciousness and its physical substrates. In this review, we provide a novel mathematical framework of category theory (CT), in which we can define and study the sameness between different domains of phenomena such as consciousness and its neural substrates. CT was designed and developed to deal with the relationships between various domains of phenomena. We introduce three concepts of CT which include (i) category; (ii) inclusion functor and expansion functor; and, most importantly, (iii) natural transformation between the functors. Each of these mathematical concepts is related to specific features in the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC). In this novel framework, we will examine two of the major theories of consciousness, integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness and temporospatial theory of consciousness (TTC). We conclude that CT, especially the application of the notion of natural transformation, highlights that we need to go beyond NCC and unravels questions that need to be addressed by any future neuroscientific theory of consciousness.

The Equations for Consciousness: A Reply to “Tracking the Travels,” a Review of <i>Journey of the Mind</i>

In this paper, we examine the causal framework within which integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness makes it claims. We argue that, in its current formulation, IIT is threatened by the causal exclusion problem. Some proponents of IIT have attempted to thwart the causal exclusion problem by arguing that IIT has the resources to demonstrate genuine causal emergence at macro scales. In contrast, we argue that their proposed solution to the problem is damagingly circular as a result of inter-defining information and causation. As a solution, we propose that IIT should adopt the specific interventionist causal framework that we offer and show how IIT can harness this interventionist framework to avoid the causal exclusion problem. We demonstrate how our argument remains fully compatible with the methodology, empirical data, and conceptual aims of the theory.

We provide an overview of the theory of cognitive consciousness (TCC), and of [Formula: see text]; the latter provides a means of measuring the amount of cognitive consciousness present in a given cognizer, whether natural or artificial, at a given time, along a number of different dimensions. TCC and [Formula: see text] stand in stark contrast to Tononi’s Integrated information Theory (IIT) and [Formula: see text]. We believe, for reasons we present, that the former pair is superior to the latter. TCC includes a formal axiomatic theory, [Formula: see text], the 12 axioms of which we present and briefly comment upon herein; no such formal theory accompanies IIT/[Formula: see text]. TCC/[Formula: see text] and IIT/[Formula: see text] each offer radically different verdicts as to whether and to what degree AIs of yesterday, today, and tomorrow were/are/will be conscious. Another noteworthy difference between TCC/[Formula: see text] and IIT/[Formula: see text] is that the former enables the measurement of cognitive consciousness in those who have passed on, and in fictional characters; no such enablement is remotely possible for IIT/[Formula: see text]. For instance, we apply [Formula: see text] to measure the cognitive consciousness of: Descartes; and the first fictional detective to be described on Earth (by Edgar Allen Poe), Auguste Dupin. We also apply [Formula: see text] to compute the cognitive consciousness of an artificial agent able to make ethical decisions using the Doctrine of Double Effect.

The Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is a leading scientific theory of consciousness, which implies a kind of panpsychism. In this paper, I consider whether IIT is compatible with a particular kind of panpsychism, known as Russellian panpsychism, which purports to avoid the main problems of both physicalism and dualism. I will first show that if IIT were compatible with Russellian panpsychism, it would contribute to solving Russellian panpsychism’s combination problem, which threatens to show that the view does not avoid the main problems of physicalism and dualism after all. I then show that the theories are not compatible as they currently stand, in view of what I call the coarse-graining problem. After I explain the coarse-graining problem, I will offer two possible solutions, each involving a small modification of IIT. Given either of these modifications, IIT and Russellian panpsychism may be fully compatible after all, and jointly enable significant progress on the mind–body problem.

Integrated information theory (IIT) identifies consciousness with having a maximum amount of integrated information. But a thing's having the maximum amount of anything cannot be intrinsic to it, for that depends on how that thing compares to certain other things. IIT's consciousness, then, is not intrinsic. A mereological argument elaborates this consequence: IIT implies that one physical system can be conscious while a physical duplicate of it is not conscious. Thus, by a common and reasonable conception of intrinsicality, IIT's consciousness is not intrinsic. It is then argued that to avoid the implication that consciousness is not intrinsic, IIT must abandon its exclusion postulate, which prohibits overlapping conscious systems. Indeed, theories of consciousness that attribute consciousness to physical systems should embrace the view that some conscious systems overlap. A discussion of the admittedly counterintuitive nature of this solution, along with some medical and neuroscientific realities that would seem to support it, is included.

Mental causation is vitally important to the integrated information theory (IIT), which says consciousness exists since it is causally efficacious. While it might not be directly apparent, metaphysical commitments have consequential entailments concerning the causal efficacy of consciousness. Commitments regarding the ontology of consciousness and the nature of causation determine which problem(s) a view of consciousness faces with respect to mental causation. Analysis of mental causation in contemporary philosophy of mind has brought several problems to the fore: the alleged lack of psychophysical laws, the causal exclusion problem, and the causal pairing problem. This article surveys the threat each problem poses to IIT based on the different metaphysical commitments IIT theorists might make. Distinctions are made between what I call reductive IIT, non-reductive IIT, and non-physicalist IIT, each of which make differing metaphysical commitments regarding the ontology of consciousness and nature of causation. Subsequently, each problem pertaining to mental causation is presented and its threat, or lack thereof, to each version of IIT is considered. While the lack of psychophysical laws appears unthreatening for all versions, reductive IIT and non-reductive IIT are seriously threatened by the exclusion problem, and it is difficult to see how they could overcome it while maintaining a commitment to the causal closure principle. Yet, non-physicalist IIT denies the principle but is therefore threatened by the pairing problem, to which I have elsewhere provided a response that is briefly outlined here. This problem also threatens non-reductive IIT, but unlike non-physicalist IIT it lacks an evident response. The ultimate aim of this survey is to provide a roadmap for IIT theorists through the maze of mental causation, by clarifying which commitments lead to which problems, and how they might or might not be overcome. Such a survey can aid IIT theorists as they further develop and hone the metaphysical commitments of IIT.

Integrated information theory does not make plant consciousness more convincing

Assessing the scientific status of theories of consciousness is often a difficult task. In this paper, I explore the dialectic between the Integrated Information Theory (Oizumi et al. PLoS Comput Biol, 10(5), e1003588, 2014; Tononi et al. Nat Rev Neurosci, 17(7), 450-61 , 2016) and a recently proposed criticism of that theory: the ‘unfolding argument’ (Doerig et al. Consciousness and Cognition, 72, 49-59 , 2019). I show that the phenomenology-first approach in consciousness research can lead to valid scientific theories of consciousness. I do this by highlighting the two reasons why the unfolding argument fails: first, phenomenology-first theories are grounded, not circular. Second, falsificationism does not provide an adequate demarcation criterion in philosophy of science. I conclude that this specific debate has significance for how, in general, consciousness researchers test and criticize theories of consciousness, and how dismissing the phenomenology-first methodology in favour of a third person-based methodology means endorsing a position in philosophy of mind that has already been challenged.