Concerning Giulio Tononi"s use of Φ derived from his integrated information theory to measure consciousness, Scott Aaronson makes the point that to be useful it had better correspond with our intuitive understanding of what is conscious and what is not, for example a person should have a high value, a dog a lower value, and a rock a zero or at least a very low value. However when you do the calculations it turns out that a chip for a Reed-Solomon code has an enormous Φ, much larger than any human has. Every cd player has a Reed-Solomon chip, but does anybody really believe that a cd player is more conscious than a person? After blasting Tononi's idea in a fairly long article I like the way Aaronson ended it:
"But let me end on a positive note. In my opinion, the fact that Integrated Information Theory is wrong—demonstrably wrong, for reasons that go to its core—puts it in something like the top 2% of all mathematical theories of consciousness ever proposed. Almost all competing theories of consciousness, it seems to me, have been so vague, fluffy, and malleable that they can only aspire to wrongness."
Hi John. I think IIT is a very interesting theory that is still in a very preliminary form. My impression is that Phi measures something, but that something is not consciousness in the sense of what-is-likeness, subjective experiences and qualia. It seems to me that what Phi measures is, as I say in the OP, irreducible existence and causal power (what it means to stand out as an individual whole in the fabric of reality and make a difference). Like the killer whale that jumps out of the water in the cover picture.
Tononi is rumored to be working on a new book titled "On Being," but there's no more information at this moment:
Concerning Giulio Tononi"s use of Φ derived from his integrated information theory to measure consciousness, Scott Aaronson makes the point that to be useful it had better correspond with our intuitive understanding of what is conscious and what is not, for example a person should have a high value, a dog a lower value, and a rock a zero or at least a very low value. However when you do the calculations it turns out that a chip for a Reed-Solomon code has an enormous Φ, much larger than any human has. Every cd player has a Reed-Solomon chip, but does anybody really believe that a cd player is more conscious than a person? After blasting Tononi's idea in a fairly long article I like the way Aaronson ended it:
"But let me end on a positive note. In my opinion, the fact that Integrated Information Theory is wrong—demonstrably wrong, for reasons that go to its core—puts it in something like the top 2% of all mathematical theories of consciousness ever proposed. Almost all competing theories of consciousness, it seems to me, have been so vague, fluffy, and malleable that they can only aspire to wrongness."
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=1799
John K Clark
Hi John. I think IIT is a very interesting theory that is still in a very preliminary form. My impression is that Phi measures something, but that something is not consciousness in the sense of what-is-likeness, subjective experiences and qualia. It seems to me that what Phi measures is, as I say in the OP, irreducible existence and causal power (what it means to stand out as an individual whole in the fabric of reality and make a difference). Like the killer whale that jumps out of the water in the cover picture.
Tononi is rumored to be working on a new book titled "On Being," but there's no more information at this moment:
https://twitter.com/giulioprisco/status/1619200320751702017