Joscha Bach on IIT (Integrated Information Theory of consciousness)

THANK YOU TO: Ryan Hunter, who donated his time to voluntarily clip this.

[mattsigl]

“Every matter contains color”?!? IIT claims color is a property of certain integrated informational structures. In particular, a sub-shape in an overall architecture of qualia, and indeed a sub-shape that first requires a “base” of spatial architecture in which color can exist. There is no color “out there” necessarily in IIT; indeed, IIT is totally non-committal about what physical things ARE, other than the fact that they have to be logically structured to be able to give rise to consciousness. If anything, IIT would probably say that the only thing we can know or speculate confidently about in regards to what the physical world IS, is that it’s something like circuitry. Beyond that, the physical world we perceive in consciousness and measure with the instruments of scientific inquiry is us just playing with our interface, not the thing itself.