User:Wmayner/Integrated Information Theory

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

1 quantity of consciousness = phi

2 quality of consciousness = informational relationships / Q-space

The theory is founded on several basic assumptions: first, that a conscious entity can be viewed as a system composed of discrete elements that are connected via causal interactions (such as a brain consisting of neurons and synaptic connections). At any given time, the system is in a certain state.

Consider for example a photo-diode (a simple device composed of a sensor that measures the amount of light and a detector that turns on when enough light is reported by the sensor).

INTUITION

The theory is grounded on phenomenology and two thought experiments, involving a photo-diode and a digital camera. PHOTO-DIODE THOUGHT EXPERIMENT Imagine that you are asked to report when a screen is on or off. A photo-diode is placed next to you pointed toward the screen. You and the photo-diode are performing exactly the same task, but you are conscious and the photo-diode is obviously not. What is the key difference between you and the photo-diode? One crucial difference is that the photo-diode is in one of two possible states; either it detects enough light to turn on, or it does not. But when you are reporting that the screen is on, you are not only distinguishing this state of affairs from the screen being off, but also from the screen being blue, or red, or showing any frame of any movie, and so on -- you're distinguishing this one experience from any other you may have. For the photo-diode, the world is either one way or another, but for you, the world is one way out of an almost countless number of ways. So consciousness seems to require a large repertoire of states.

This can be understood in terms of information in the classical sense of a reduction in uncertainty. The photo-diode is a device consisting of a light-sensor and a detector which turns on when the light is above a certain threshold. So, when the detector is on at one point in time, we know that the sensor must have been on in the previous state.

Thus the photo-diode generates exactly one bit of information when it

The theory holds that the quantity of consciousness corresponds directly to "integrated information", denoted phi, which can be intuitively described as the information generated by a system above and beyond that generated by its parts.

Phi is a measure of the quantity of consciousness, or