What is Consciousness? Integrated Information Theory

What is Human Consciousness? Integrated Information Theory overview.

00:00 – Intro
00:00:16 – Integrated Information Theory
00:02:20 – IIT and Phi
00:04:08 – Examples
00:06:18 – Testing
00:07:48 – Conclusion

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References:

Seth, A. K. (2022). Being you: A new science of Consciousness.

Why I am not an integrated information theorist (or, the unconscious expander). Scott Aaronson. (2016)

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Music by Kevin MacLeod
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

[dorkmattergirl]

Links to the rest of "What is Consciousness?" video series

[ed.puckett]

Thank you, I am looking forward to more

[stanleyklein]

ITT is a string of symbols that fail to make reference to any process or object.

[audiodead]

The more I hear about IIT, the more I see it as a theory about the easy problems of consciousness. It doesn't get us to qualia.

[YeOldSchoolNerd]

As far as theories for the hard problem of consciousness go, I am leading toward the CEMI field theory of consciousness by Johnjoe McFadden. It states that the material substrate of consciousness is the electro-magnetic field of the brain itself. I like this theory for several reasons. The first is that qualia is extremely dynamic, my thoughts are rapidly flowing, and the only thing I can think of that also rapidly flowing is the electro-magnetic field. Also, we have the binding problem, where information residing in different locations are experienced simultaneously by me. That is because the electromagnetic field is one continuous "thing". Also, the experience of qualia can be described as experiencing information, where the thing that is consciousness is the information itself. With a complicated electromagnetic field contained by a scaffolding of neurons, the pattern of the field is the information it is experiencing, removing the problem of duality.

[bradmodd]

IIT is the sort of theory that the AI will like. It wants to use mathematics and data. I don't see any other way ahead, we might as well blow air around at the toga party for another 3000 years or we use mathematics and data to build models.

[andrewkamoha]

[Title] What is Consciousness?
Consciousness is what you loose after a couple of beers ...

[Sharperthanu]

Actually consciousness is a transcendent experience and transcendent means supernatural

[bxoit]

How do you know that people have subjective experience?

[weirdsciencetv]

I think IIT explains it well. A qualia is this irreducible complex and its “shape” is the qualia. Language is a co-organism in brains and so recently acquired by humans that it is only loosely integrated into the lower parts of our brains. Our lower brain is highly integrated over millions of years, it is what experiences qualia. The language layer is only able to access them and articulate what qualia we are having, but since it is not tightly integrated, it can’t experience it. Again language is a type of co-organism that lives in our brain. Since it can’t deeply experience qualia, the fact that it’s ineffable shouldn’t come as a surprise.

[StevenTAbell]

Discussions of consciousness usually devolve into mostly-useless discussions of what consciousness feels like. Better to think about what consciousness does. Then you can reverse engineer how it does it. The issue of qualia can be useful in this reverse engineering, but not often as a primary mode of discovery. If you want to think about qualia at all, it is better to think about what kind of machine can create these essentially secondary effects.

[bxoit]

What grounds are there for the notion is that "consciousness" names a potential object of study?

[tom-kzpb]

Consciousness is not a matter of simply organized information, feedback, retention, or state machines. The "integrated information" line of reasoning tends to lead to the notion that classical computers or AI could become "conscious", which is bluntly false, if based on current hardware designs. What kind of design would allow consciousness, we do not yet know. It is a question more for neurologists and physicists than for mathematicians and software designers. Conscious cannot be tested by observing behavior, because totally unconscious computers can mimic consciousness, convincingly, if so designed. The currently known, reliable "signatures" of consciousness are oriented toward biological aspects and brainwaves,

[nigeljohnson]

Is there a clue in the development of consciousness as a new born matures. Are babies born fully conscious, but simply lacking the ability to express their thoughts ?
One must assume that before memories can be formed, the tools to assign meaning must first be constructed. How is it possible to form early memories without the understanding of their meaning? What is the basic toolkit, that is hardwired at birth, , that makes learning possible? Is consciousness encoded into our DNA?
How does consciousness differ between species?

[romanzavsegolov]

What's interesting - consciousness cannot be limited just to a phenomenon experiencing integrated sensory input. Consciousness may choose to experience some amount of introspection or examine its intellect. We know that mind is somehow a product of a brain, but it is not the brain what consciousness experiences. I would suggest, that it's in fact a mind (or intellect) which is partially connected by some undiscovered means to the brain, being an intermediary (interface) for consciousness.

So, in conclusion. It seems that matter is unresponsive to consciousness. It seems that consciousness is unaware of matter. It also seems that the phenomenon of mind makes any interaction (even as imperfect as it may possibly be) possible. It means, among other things, that if consciousness by some wild chance is immaterial (non-physical), then mind should be semi-material in order for that system of body-mind-consciousness work at all.

[cancatcannothaz]

been watching/following science based educative stuff for years, yours seems closer to lay men.. so keep this up :)

i am the 901st subscriber
hoping you reach millions 🤍

[PrismTheKiwii]

If in future we create fully person like ai inside video games say like gta for example and they understand everything around them as a conscious being. Is it considered murder if they are killed within the game world?

[PUMAMicroscope]

I agree that the IIT is not a 'theory' of hard problem consciousness because it cannot be tested other than via assumption and imputation. It is based on arbitrary premises - although if that were its only downside that would not exclude it as a theory. Nice video.

[MacWiedijk]

A few comments; The term subjective experiences is confusing. They're just experiences. Experiences are only subjective because people's brains are separate. If the brain had Bluetooth, experiences might be measurable. So just experiences.