Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

  Post 115.  March 9, 2021

   Can Integrated Information Theory Explain            Consciousness?   

   The Problem with Panpsychism

In his Scientific American magazine article, science writer John Horgan questions an “ambitious” new theory to explain how human Consciousness evolved from dumb matter, like atoms, to smart stuff, like brains. Or as he put it, “how does stuff become conscious?” His first introduction to the theory made him skeptical. And part of his doubt was due to the implicit Panpsychism1 (all is mind) of the theory. That sounds more like a religious or mystical notion than a scientific hypo-thesis. Ironically, as scientists delve deeper into the post-Shannon Information phenomenon, the more they tend to resort to ancient philosophical concepts to explain the ubiquity and power of the non-stuff that used to be imagined as the content of Minds & Souls. Horgan jumped to the conclusion that “This ancient doctrine holds that consciousness is a property not just of brains but of all matter, like my table and coffee mug”. He probably imagined little atoms chatting among themselves about the latest gossip2.

The New Age notion of “ubiquitous minds” is not a necessary inference from the theory though. As theoretical Neuroscientist, Romain Brette expressed the problem :  “IIT is more restricted than naïve panpsychism, but it suffers from the same problem: how do you define a ‘system?’ Wouldn't a subsystem of a conscious system also be conscious, according to the theory?” So, he thinks the theory is wrong, as a solution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness. And yet, he quotes another scientist “Almost all competing theories of consciousness, it seems to me, have been so vague, fluffy, and malleable that they can only aspire to wrongness.” So, he concludes that IIT is a step in the right direction. That’s why I refer to it (IIT) positively in this blog. However, as a side note to post 114, I added :  “But in my own thesis, I reserve the term “Consciousness” for only self-aware beings, such as humans”.

Unfortunately, that puts the burden on me to explain why I exclude molecules & atoms from the community of conscious-ness. And the key to that explanation is Evolutionary Emer-gence3, which is gradual change over time, via an upward step-by-step mechanism of organization & complexification, creating new whole systems from earlier sub-systems (holons). I have used the well-known, but not fully understood, phenomenon of Phase Transitions4 as an example of what I call “En-formation”. New patterns of interaction (i.e. integrated systems) emerge from earlier systems, and display novel properties not observed in the original form. That’s also a description of Holism, now known in science as Systems Theory.

The main limitation of IIT is that it is an attempt to quantify Consciousness (“C”) in terms of phi values5. That’s good to know, but it doesn’t really explain what “C” is essentially, or by what “mechanism” it emerged from the interactions of Energy & Matter in the process of evolution. Yet, that’s exactly the intent of the Enformationism thesis. So, although IIT is a useful theory for understanding “C” for scientific purposes, it doesn’t really answer the “hard” philosophical questions, such as “how and why do we experience subjective qualia?” Which may be why Horgan admitted that it “bolstered my bias toward mysterianism6 .”
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4. Phase Transitions :
   A natural process by which a physical system absorbs or loses energy, and subsequently changes its structure and form, which has new physical properties, as when water turns into ice.
http://bothandblog3.enformationism.info/page23.html

5. What is IIT a theory of?
   I don’t have a clear grasp on what the theory is a theory of. If you look at how IIT is formulated, . . . .it is a theory of the *amount* of consciousness in an arbitrary system.
http://www.newdualism.org/papers/A.Pautz/Pautz-PAUWII.1.pdf

6. Mysterianism :
    New mysterianism—or commonly just mysterian-ism—is a philosophical position proposing that the hard problem of conscious-ness cannot be resolved by humans. The unresolvable problem is how to explain the existence of qualia (individual instances of subjective, conscious experience).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_mysterianism

1. Modern Panpsychism :
    About the integrated information theory of consciousness.
http://romainbrette.fr/modern-panpsychism-about-the-integrated-information-theory-of-consciousness/

2. The role of IIT and Panpsychism in the Enformationism Thesis :
    “Tononi views the ancient notion of Panpsychism to be plausible. But in my own thesis, I reserve the term “Consciousness” for only self-aware beings, such as humans.”.
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page83.html

3. Emergent Evolution :
    “ . . . the hypothesis that, in the course of evolution, some entirely new prop-erties, such as mind and consciousness, appear at certain critical points, usual-ly because of an unpredict-able rearrangement of the already existing entities.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_evolution

Can IIT explain Consciousness?

Scientific American

Magazine

John Horgan
Science Writer

“Going to the workshop bolstered my bias toward mysterianism. . . I predict that the theory’s meta-physical baggage —  pan-psychism and all the rest—will limit its popularity..”

Integrated Information Symbol

ENFORMATIONISM