Scientific American article on IIT

Stephen,

Here is a good (but skeptical) article about IIT by Scott Aaronson:

https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799

It is partly mathematical, but the maths seems more precise than in other places, and I'd judge it might be doable, except that having read his conclusions I wouldn't have much motivation to make the effort!

Part of his objection seems to be that he can construct examples of systems with high phi but it is implausible that they are conscious, but his philosophical points are interesting too:

Read the non-mathematical parts, and then maybe discuss the subject.

I understand your feelings, and like yourself and others I do not agree with his analysis and conclusions.  My point is the science work - independent of the analysis - is significant work.

I can give my opinion on ITT, simply.  I don't think that his Phi value is directly measuring consciousness, but IT IS measuring how information is integrated by mind!  These measures of informational structure are headed in the right direction.  As to Scott A.'s thoughts:

 
Faced with this point, many scientifically-minded people start yelling and throwing things. They say that “zombies” and so forth are empty metaphysics, and that our only hope of learning about consciousness is to engage with actual facts about the brain.

I have read a couple of articles by Aaronson, with disdain.  In the above quote, he strikes me as out of hope.  The way mind interacts with reality is not found in the brain's electro-chemical states.  It is found in measuring the changing probabilities that are the structuring of reality by mental activity.

Before I jump to another review of ITT - let me say the section of the updated version of ITT cited above - defines a Truth Table.  I am not spouting "truth" - I am pointing to objective logical structure that will command and control mental outcomes.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/anil-seth...-20210930/

 This puzzle — the mystery of how inanimate matter arranges itself into living beings with self-aware minds and a rich inner life — is what the philosopher David Chalmers called the “hard problem” of consciousness. But the way Seth sees it, Chalmers was overly pessimistic. Yes, it’s a challenge — but we’ve been chipping away at it steadily over the years.

“I always get a little annoyed when I read people saying things like, ‘Chalmers proposed the hard problem 25 years ago’ … and then saying, 25 years later, that ‘we’ve learned nothing about this; we’re still completely in the dark, we’ve made no progress,’” said Seth. “All this is nonsense. We’ve made a huge amount of progress.  .... 

Well, I find some bits of IIT promising, but not others. The promising bit comes from what Gerald Edelman and Tononi together observed, in the late ’90s, which is that conscious experiences are highly “informative” and always “integrated.” " Seth Anil

Please note, I just read this article last night, after I had pointed out that integration of information is what is important in ITT.  It is not I'm smart, only that I have followed this for years and have a grasp of the roots that affect these thinkers.  My position is that: "What is Life" by Erwin Schrodinger and I. Prigogine with "dissipative structures" started the right track of thinking and progress continues as we  more deeply understand the nature of life.

I acknowledge Mystery, and there are states of Life that vastly overshadow my poor mind.  However, it is our right to know and experience all the objects in our many environments.  Objects like ponds and algorithms, alike, are both open to flow to our inner being.r

Going back to Tononi and Koch's summation of their theory please consider what a truth table is.  I didn't know that Ludiwg is credited with it's creation until now.

A truth table is a mathematical table used in logic—specifically in connection with Boolean algebra, boolean functions, and propositional calculus—which sets out the functional values of logical expressions on each of their functional arguments, that is, for each combination of values taken by their logical variables.[1] In particular, truth tables can be used to show whether a propositional expression is true for all legitimate input values, that is, logically valid.

A truth table has one column for each input variable (for example, P and Q), and one final column showing all of the possible results of the logical operation that the table represents (for example, P XOR Q). Each row of the truth table contains one possible configuration of the input variables (for instance, P=true Q=false), and the result of the operation for those values. See the examples below for further clarification. Ludwig Wittgenstein is generally credited with inventing and popularizing the truth table in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which was completed in 1918 and published in 1921.[2] Such a system was also independently proposed in 1921 by Emil Leon Post.[3] An even earlier iteration of the truth table has also been found in unpublished manuscripts by Charles Sanders Peirce from 1893, antedating both publications by nearly 30 years.[4] - Wiki

Before I jump to another review of ITT - let me say the section of the updated version of ITT cited above - defines a Truth Table.  I am not spouting "truth" - I am pointing to objective logical structure that will command and control mental outcomes.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/anil-seth...-20210930/

I'm a bit lost regarding the importance of the Truth Table?

Also in the interview Seth says we are chipping away at the Hard Problem...what serious developments have there been? I cannot think of any.

I'm a bit lost regarding the importance of the Truth Table?

Also in the interview Seth says we are chipping away at the Hard Problem...what serious developments have there been? I cannot think of any.

I can't speak for Anil Seth, but he does point to ITT and its premises that explore informational processes.  I can say, the following quote and its meme are important in my own worldview.

  
So at the level of experience, at the level of phenomenology, consciousness has these two properties that coexist. Well, if that’s the case, then what Tononi and Edelman argued was that the mechanisms that underlie conscious experiences in the brain or in the body should also co-express these properties of information and integration.

ibid, bolding mine

I would replace the term "properties" with the more well-defined terms: dispositions and propensities.  And while Anil Seth is expressing a physicalist world view - the focus on information and integration (understanding) reveals that science is getting good data from this approach.

When he says that brain and mind observations co-express, he implies they co-exist.  This confirms my methodological argument for mapping two pathways (or more) of transformational activity.  I would point to the progress in biology, when bio-informatics started generating data from DNA.

I can't speak for Anil Seth, but he does point to ITT and its premises that explore informational processes.  I can say, the following quote and its meme are important in my own worldview.

ibid, bolding mine

I would replace the term "properties" with the more well-defined terms: dispositions and propensities.  And while Anil Seth is expressing a physicalist world view - the focus on information and integration (understanding) reveals that science is getting good data from this approach.

When he says that brain and mind observations co-express, he implies they co-exist.  This confirms my methodological argument for mapping two pathways (or more) of transformational activity.  I would point to the progress in biology, when bio-informatics started generating data from DNA.

I think these are interesting measurements, but they don't seem to "chip away" at the question of how you get Something (Consciousness) from Nothing (Physicalist reality starting w/ no Consciousness)?

I can't speak for Anil Seth, but he does point to ITT and its premises that explore informational processes.  I can say, the following quote and its meme are important in my own worldview.

ibid, bolding mine

I would replace the term "properties" with the more well-defined terms: dispositions and propensities.  And while Anil Seth is expressing a physicalist world view - the focus on information and integration (understanding) reveals that science is getting good data from this approach.

When he says that brain and mind observations co-express, he implies they co-exist.  This confirms my methodological argument for mapping two pathways (or more) of transformational activity.  I would point to the progress in biology, when bio-informatics started generating data from DNA.

Honestly Stephen, with the best will in the world, I don't think that terms like "informational processes" have any well defined meaning within science - certainly not a meaning that could not be better expressed without such language.

As for DNA, a lot of information has been extracted from that amazing substance, but it is all rather down to earth information - specifying the sequence of amino acid residues required to form each type of protein, and other information that controls under what conditions a particular gene gets expressed.

Nothing in that lot explains consciousness, although it will, of course, specify the sequences of many proteins that are important for the brain.

This is the essence of the Hard Problem. It is possible to grind out an immense amount of detailed information about biology, but nowhere does that get anywhere close to explaining how any living thing experiences anything.

This is why many have turned to what you might call 'mysterion' solutions in which consciousness is not stored in the brain. There is a lot of evidence for that concept - think of the phenomenon of NDE's.

David

This is the essence of the Hard Problem. It is possible to grind out an immense amount of detailed information about biology, but nowhere does that get anywhere close to explaining how any living thing experiences anything.

This is why many have turned to what you might call 'mysterion' solutions in which consciousness is not stored in the brain. There is a lot of evidence for that concept - think of the phenomenon of NDE's.

David

NDE's are real phenomena.  It is not a physical phenomenon, by definition.  So, if you want to scientifically measure and document cause and effect relationships related to NDE's you better start to learn what information science has to say about them.  Like, how ITT uses a Truth Tables to sort logical processes.  Logical processes and computer science are both members of the set of academic Information Science fields of study.

We will continue to strongly disagree about the progress of Information Science.  Since current times have been called the information age, I think you are out of touch.  

 As well as a standard Boolean Expression, the input and output information of any Logic Gate or circuit can be plotted into a standard table to give a visual representation of the switching function of the system.

The table used to represent the boolean expression of a logic gate function is commonly called a Truth Table. A logic gate truth table shows each possible input combination to the gate or circuit with the resultant output depending upon the combination of these input(s).

I am not the - "look under the streetlight for the missing keys in dark" -  kinda guy.  As soon as I hear "consciousness stored in the brain", my rational mind turns off.  There is a lot of science and engineering that goes into creating memory and being able to physically store bits.  There is nothing other that metaphysical imagination in the storage of mind/spirit/consciousness in a material substrate, where an engram is attached to standardized units of measure.

On the other hand, living things understand their ecological lives, innately and naturally.  Understanding, defined as specified and integrated thinking, is definable and measurable.  That is the path forward for bio-informatics.  And (IMHO) the one that is being explored by Tononi and Seth is to map how information is structured into causal information objects.





Out of curiosity, what is your stance on NDE'S?

Out of curiosity, what is your stance on NDE'S?

My opinion is that NDE's - particularly those with an explicitly paranormal component (e.g. observing things in other rooms of the hospital) - more or less nail the fact that the brain does not create consciousness, but just modulates or focuses it. If you accept that, then a lot of other phenomena make sense, such as death bed visions, contact with the dead, and reincarnations.

If an NDE was a rather vague experience slowly fading as the person gets closer to irrevocable death, then I might feel differently, however NDE's seem to evolve in complexity as they progress - so I don't think the brain constructs them.

David

I think these are interesting measurements, but they don't seem to "chip away" at the question of how you get Something (Consciousness) from Nothing (Physicalist reality starting w/ no Consciousness)?

Starting with just physical reality, as it transforms with a forward arrow of time, the physical activity generates patterned information.  Information structured by what is physical and its past causal pathway, is objective.  In a separate space, a probabilistic space, different kinds of patterns are being shaped, reacting to sequence parameters that are not exactly synchronous with physical durations and not located exactly where a physical event will occur.  What is probable from the past and future, as well as what is manifesting.

Add the "experience" program life uses as mind.  It can do Turing like things, such as copy and append - and a new class of structures called unconscious thoughts start causal chains.  These yield to being traced as mutual information, from environmental  stimuli to organism and back again.  These thoughts can be measured as to logical appropriateness, how they structure important information and how they are corresponding to physical changes.

An example.  A bridge is built.  But before a physical bridge came to be in modern times, there was an information object of a probable bridge (plan).  It connected to reality with its bill of materials, where certain concrete and steel objects' probability for restructuring took place.  They were not at the build site yet.  But entropy has changed.  Things can come together based on the plan.

Then - as the future evolves - the probable bridge may materialize, corresponding to the information object forged by thought.

Starting with just physical reality, as it transforms with a forward arrow of time, the physical activity generates patterned information.  Information structured by what is physical and its past causal pathway, is objective.  In a separate space, a probabilistic space, different kinds of patterns are being shaped, reacting to sequence parameters that are not exactly synchronous with physical durations and not located exactly where a physical event will occur.  What is probable from the past and future, as well as what is manifesting.

Add the "experience" program life uses as mind.  It can do Turing like things, such as copy and append - and a new class of structures called unconscious thoughts start causal chains.  These yield to being traced as mutual information, from environmental  stimuli to organism and back again.  These thoughts can be measured as to logical appropriateness, how they structure important information and how they are corresponding to physical changes.

An example.  A bridge is built.  But before a physical bridge came to be in modern times, there was an information object of a probable bridge (plan).  It connected to reality with its bill of materials, where certain concrete and steel objects' probability for restructuring took place.  They were not at the build site yet.  But entropy has changed.  Things can come together based on the plan.

Then - as the future evolves - the probable bridge may materialize, corresponding to the information object forged by thought.

So the Mind is irreducible, but what can be explained is how this irreducible mind affects the Physical?