Giulio Tononi - What's the Essence of Consciousness?

Consciousness is what mental activity feels like, the private inner experience of sensation, thought and emotion. Watching a dramatic movie. Imagining your family’s future. Attending the funeral of a loved one. Consciousness is like nothing else. But what is consciousness, the essence of consciousness, at its most fundamental level?

Giulio Tononi is a neuroscientist and psychiatrist who holds the David P. White Chair in Sleep Medicine, as well as a Distinguished Chair in Consciousness Science, at the University of Wisconsin.

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[ExoBell]

Consciousness requires an information state but for its existence, information requires a conscious state (awareness). A tautology.

[jimliu]

So basically, Consciousness is an emergent property of the brain/intelligence….

[rosiekrupp]

So there's consciousness in the heaven and hell too God send Adam &Eve to this Earth in the same ceiling glass.

[zenzen]

I usually understand most of these discussions but this one has me stumped !

[infinitygame]

The essence of consciousness is I AND YOU, IF I AND YOU DONT EXIST, THERE IS NO OBSERVATION AND NO CREATION OF MEMORIES, AND WITHOUT THE SCANNING PROCESS OF CONCIOUSNESS AND MIND THERE IS NO REALITY, I AND YOU IS NOT THE PHYSICAL IDENTITY, AGAIN ITS THE TWO ENDS OF CONCIOUSNESS TO EXIST IN REALITY,
ENOUGH GOLDY ENHF 🙏 ALL OF THEM ARE SMART ENOUGH IN CUT COPY AND PASTE FUNCTION, WHICH CONSCIOUSNESS IGNORE TO ENTERTAIN

[edwardprokopchuk]

This guy looks like the original Batman 😅

[noelwass]

This is an exciting and frontier theory proposed by Giulio Tononi known as Integrated Information Theory. It sounds exciting and holds promise as a measure of conscious experience. It seems to be the goal here to describe a system that is more than the sum of its parts in terms of information. The goal is to constrain the past and the future more than the parts of a system. What that means exactly I do not understand but no doubt this has been formulated precisely. Constraining the past and the future in terms of making a cut of the system into completely independent parts (no interaction) and if the undivided system makes no difference in terms of constraining the past and future more, then the whole is no more than the sum of its parts. If such a cut cannot be made in other words every cut made into independent parts will typically constrain the past and the future much less than before then the whole is more than the sum of its parts. It sounds an intriguing theory and well thought out. Unfortunately, I do not know the theory.

[echo-off]

Interesting talk. Do I get it right? You just need a system with proper i.e. irreducible system bounds plus rules such that the system state can be propagated in time backwards and forwards and you have a conscious state?

In principle this argument holds for every machinery with states. For instance a steam engine. Is such a system consequently conscious?

[DanielBro]

he looks exactly like the guy to talk about the essence of Consciousness as a vilian in a sci-fi movie

[yyssjjsjsjs]

In simplest terms: We are systems lets say brains, and we experience situations. But it is up to our system ( brain ) to make sense or consciousness.

[holgerjrgensen]

Rainbow picture our Eternal Over-Consciousness,
Colors our Under-Consciousness =
Day-Consciousness and Night-Consciousness.
Instinct, Gravity, Feeling, Intelligence, Intuition, memory.
Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo.
Our Basic-Developing-Circuit.
We are Gravity-Beings, at night, We move our Day-Consciousness
to the Night-Bodies, Deep-Sleep, via our Coupling-Body, REM.
So, our Day-Consciousness Never sleep, it just goes in Circuits,
Day/Night, is a Body-circuit, our physical body is a Organ-Circuit.
Our Eternal Abilities have Life-side and Stuff-side, three first,
is the Stuff-bearing Basic-Abilities. Instinct keep Gravity/Heat
and Feeling/Freeze in a balanced Tension.
Feeling/sensing is our Window to Reality, Contrast-Princip
and Perspective-Princip, make Feeling into sensing,
all experiences is Feeling-Experience, first hand.

The Life-Desire is Motor of Life, Hunger- and Satisfaction-Principles
is Compass.
In direct extension of Life-Desire, We have Will, Life-side,
and Gravity, Stuff-side.
So, this is short and sharp, The Eternal World Picture.

We can recognize the Same Eternal Abilities, in technical composition,
in This Device,
Automatic, Power, Sensors, Logic/Order, (*), Harddisc.
*Intuition need more text to explain.
So, this is about the Essence of our Eternal Consciousness,
I just picked out the most basic, but it is a very extensive study
the many analysis and details, about the Basic-Energies and
Creator-Principles.
The Masculine Princip and the Feminine Princip, is the most
basic in our Organism-Structure.

[rossw]

why would any experience be constrained by prior experience?

if anything, the experience of consciousness is random thoughts and events can and do happen

eg, events are shaped by perceptions which can be and are random

and thoughts come in to my mind for no obvious reason and with no obvious connection to prior thoughts

[dhammaboy]

This is a methodolgical approach - not an explanatory theory.
And Tim Bayne has a paper that is a pretty impressive counter argument to IIT showing the axioms of the theory are trivial.

[Dantianblue]

Consciousness, by definition, is not an object. Hence it cannot be described, studied or understood. It is the subject.

[branimirsalevic]

I need funding, please?

I want to dedicate my life to try and see what hardware configuration, what connections is my phone making, that result in this video making no sense at all.

When I find out why my phone makes no sense, then at the same time I will discover how to arrange the chip, earphone plug, screen etc, so that this video finally makes sense.

[jamesruscheinski]

perception of causation in cerebellum and back of brain provides subjective experience?

[mikel]

Giulio is not aware yet that what he describes is a kind of controlled pseudo "conscious" process.
Real conscious process is not controllable. If it is controllable it is only a pseudo one.
Real consciousness is a precise manifestation of the real "sensing" structure, medium ( local entropic reality ) and continuous circular energetic exchanges.
If one is missing, consciousness cannot form itself and evolve.
All of these together form two real natural "energetic" loops, one closed, one open.
That's "consciousness".
Not the so-called "integrated information" nonsense and many other BS theories.

[Pablo-rc]

For anyone trying to undertand consciousness, it makes more sense to explore its own than to seek to figure out it's inner workings. Experience is within reach, but the finer mechanisms behind consciousness seem well beyond observation, perhaps hidden in other dimensions or inextricable interactions which we won't be able to decipher at any level of technology.. (pretty much like women, in fact..!) 😜

[julioguardado]

One of the features of consciousness is recurrence. You know that you know that you know...

[michelangelope]

Imagina que estás ahora mismo en el corredor de la muerte y has sido condenado justa o injustamente de asesinato y en una hora serás ejecutado. ¿Podrías ganar este juego psicológico? Estas jugando una aventura de rol contra  reloj. Tienes que pensar rápido para evitar la ejecución y salvar tu vida. Para interrumpir la ejecución la guerra tiene que acabar. Para que se acabe la guerra se tiene que descubrir Dios existe. Si Dios existe lo más inteligente, cauto y racional es cuidar la creación de Dios. Lógicamente es imposible la existencia de la creación o finitud sin el creador o infinitud. No tengo tiempo ahora para explicarte al filósofo racional Spinoza. Antes de morir te recomiendo que lees a Spinoza, que te ayudará a enterder la realidad. Si Dios existe la abolición de la pena de muerte es posible. ¿Quién ha creado este mundo? ¿Quién se queja de la pena de muerte? Matar vida es matar literalmente Dios. Estoy hablando de psicología y conocimiento. Te puedes salvar si entiendes la falacia lógica atea y haces lo que es bueno para tí. Mi verdad es el ateísmo es una falacia lógica que asume Dios es la idea religiosa del creador de la creación y concluye erróneamente que el creador no existe porque una idea particular de Dios no existe. Sé que tengo razón y tú estás equivocado. El ateísmo y la religión son malentendidos de la realidad dañinos a Dios, lo ùnico que existe. Si existe es Dios. Necesito descansar y cuidarme. Guarda este poema por si lo necesitas más tarde. El tiempo corre. ¿Qué haces? La próxima vez que tires los dados puede ser la última. Con la vida no se juega. Con la idea de Dios no se juega. Es urgente que acabe el debate. Dios es necesario porque lógicamente de la nada o de lo que no existe no puede ser creado algo. Algo eterno decidió crear la vida. ¿Para qué? Tu eliges si entender o no. ¿Es posible creer que es imposible estar equivocado creyendo? Gracias.