Integrated Information Theory: From Consciousness to the Brain (2)

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) demands a physical explanation of consciousness. This rules out, for example, entirely functional explanations; as well as unwarranted correlations between consciousness and the physical. Indeed if consciousness is identical to the physical (not merely correlated with it or caused by it), then clearly the physical (as information, etc.) is paramount in the IIT picture.

All this is given a quasi-logical explanation in terms of axioms and postulates. That is, there must be identity claims between IIT's "axioms of consciousness" and postulates about the physical. Moreover, the axioms fulfill the role of premises. These premises lead to the physical postulates.

So what is the nature of that relation between these axioms and their postulates? How do we connect, for example, a conscious state with a neuroscientific explanation of that conscious state? How is the ontological/explanatory gap crossed?

As hinted at earlier, the identity of consciousness and the physical isn't a question of the latter causing or bringing about the former. Thus, if x and y are identical, then x can't cause y and y can't cause x. These identities stretch even as far as phenomenology in that the phenomenology of conscious state x at time t is identical with the physical properties described by the postulates at time t.

More technically, Giulio Tononi (2008) identifies conscious states with integrated information. Moreover, when information is integrated (by whichever physical system – not only the brain) in a complicated enough manner (even if minimally complicated), that will be both necessary and sufficient to constitute (not cause or create) a conscious state or experience.

Explaining IIT's identity-claims (between the axioms of consciousness and the physical postulates) can also be done by stating what Tononi does not believe about consciousness. Tononi doesn't believe that

i) the brain's physical features (described by the postulates) cause or bring about consciousness.

ii) the brain's physical features (described by the postulates) are both necessary and sufficient for consciousness.

Causality

Where we have the physical, we must also have the causal. And indeed IIT stresses causality. If consciousness exists (as the first axiom states), then it must be causal in nature. It must “make a causal difference”. Thus epiphenomenalism, for one, is ruled out.

Again, consciousness itself must have causal power. Therefore this isn't a picture of the physical brain causing consciousness (or even subserving consciousness). It is said, in IIT, that “consciousness exists from its own perspective”. This means that a conscious state qua conscious state (or experience qua experience) must have causal power both on itself and on its exterior. Indeed the first axiom (of existence) and its postulate require that a conscious state has what's called a “cause-effect power”. It must be capable of having an affect on behaviour or actions (such a picking something up) as well as a “power over itself”. (Such as resulting in a modification of a belief caused by that conscious state?) This, as started earlier, clearly rules out any form of epiphenomenalism.

Now does this mean that a belief (as such) has causal powers? Does this mean that the experience of yellow has – or could have – causal powers? Perhaps because beliefs aren't entirely phenomenological, and spend most of their time in the “belief box” (according to non-eliminative accounts), then they aren't a good candidate for having causal powers in this phenomenological sense. However, the experience of yellow is a casual power if it can cause a subject to pick up, say, a lemon (qua lemon).

From Consciousness to Brain Again

Even if IIT starts with consciousness, it's very hard, intuitively, to see how it would be at all possible to move to the postulated physical aspects (not bases or causes) of a conscious state. How would that work? How, even in principle, can we move from consciousness (or phenomenology) to the physical aspects of that consciousness state? If there's a ontological/explanatory gap between the physical and the mental; then there may be/is an ontological gap/explanatory gap between consciousness and the physical. (There'll also be epistemological gaps.) So how does this IIT inversion solve any of these problems?

The trick is supposed to be pulled off by an analysis the phenomenology of a conscious state (or experience) and then accounting for that with the parallel state of the physical system which is the physical aspect of that conscious state. (Think here of Spinoza and Donald Davidson's "anomalous monism" – or substance monism/conceptual dualism - is which a single substance has two "modes".) But what does that mean? The ontological/explanatory gap, sure enough, shows its face here just as much as it does anywhere else in the philosophy of consciousness. Isn't this a case of comparing oranges with apples – only a whole lot more extreme?

An additional problem is to explain how the physical modes/aspects of a conscious state must be “constrained” by the properties of that conscious state (or vice versa?). Again, what does that actually mean? In theory it would be easy to find some kind of structural physical correlates of a conscious state. The problem would be to make sense of - and justify - those correlations. For example, I could correlate my wearing black shoes with Bradford City winning away. Clearly, in this instance “correlation doesn't imply causation”. However, if IIT doesn't accept that the physical causes conscious states, but that they are conscious states (or a mode therefore), then, on this example, my black shoes may actually be Bradford City winning at home (rather than the shoes causing that win)... Of course shoes and football victories aren't modes/aspects of the same thing. Thus the comparison doesn't work.

It doesn't immediately help, either, when IIT employs (quasi?)-logical terms to explain and account for these different aspects/modes of the same thing. Can we legitimately move from the axioms of a conscious experience to the essential properties (named “postulates”) of the physical modes/aspects of that conscious experience?

Here we're meant to be dealing with the "intrinsic" properties of experience which are then tied to the (intrinsic?) properties of the physical aspects/modes of that experience. Moreover, every single experience is meant to have its own axiom/s.

Nonetheless, if an axiomatic premise alone doesn't deductively entail (or even imply) its postulate, then why call it an “axiom” at all?

Tononi (2015) explains this is terms of "inference to the best explanation" (otherwise called abduction). Here, instead of a strict logical deduction from a phenomenological axiom to a physical postulate, the postulates have (merely) statistical inductive support. Tononi believes that such an abduction shows us that conscious systems have “cause-effect power over themselves”. Clearly, behavioural and neuroscientific evidence may/will show this to be the case.

Conclusion

Sceptically it may be said that the "ontological gap" (or the "hard problem") appears to have been bridged (or even solved) by mere phraseology. What I mean by this is that IIT identifies a conscious state with physical things in the brain. (Namely, the physical elements and dynamics of the brain.) These things are measurable. Thus, if that's the case, then a conscious state is measurable in that the dynamical and physical reality of the brain (at a given time) is measurable. Indeed in IIT it's even said that something called the “phi metric” can “quantify consciousness”.

Is the hard problem of consciousness solved merely through this process of identification?

The IIT theorist may reply: What more do you want?! However, then we can reply: 

Correlations between conscious states and brain states (or even the brain's causal necessitation of a conscious state) aren't themselves explanations of consciousness. 

Indeed isn't the identification of conscious states with the physical and dynamical elements of the brain what philosophers have done for decades? Do IIT's new technical/scientific terms (as well as references to “information”) give us anything fundamentally new in this long-running debate on the nature of consciousness?

*) Next: 'Integrated Information Theory: Structure (3)'

References

Tononi, Giulio Tononi (2008) 'Consciousness as Integrated Information: a Provisional Manifesto'.

- (2015) 'Consciousness: here, there and everywhere?'.

Integrated Information Theory: the Cartesian Foundation (1)

At a prima facie level, integrated information theory (IIT) is utterly Cartesian. Sure, it's Cartesianism in a contemporary scientific guise; though Cartesian nonetheless. This isn't to say that IIT simply reasserts, for example, the Cogito or Descartes' seemingly deductive style of reasoning. Though, despite that, the Cogito etc. can also be said to be resurrected (in contemporary terms) in IIT. However, Descartes moved from (his) mind and journeyed to his body and then to the external world. IIT moves from consciousness to the brain. At least as viewed from one angle. ¹

On one hand, IIT inverts many 20th century (Anglo-American) ways of dealing with consciousness in that it's said that it moves from consciousness to arrive at the physical; rather than starting with the physical in order to attempt to arrive at consciousness. It can also be that IIT moves to the physical only after it's got its Cartesian house in order. 

The Cogito, of course, was the starting point of Descartes' enterprise.

On the other hand, what is certainly not Cartesian is that it's also said (or implied) that IIT begins with neuroscience/the brain and then journeys to consciousness. This, of course, directly contradicts what was said in the last paragraph.

In which case, if IIT also sees conscious states (or experiences) as “immediate and direct”, then how can neuroscience come first? This may depend on what's meant by the idea that neuroscience must (or does) come first. Even if a given neuroscientific basis (or reality) were necessary and sufficient for consciousness, that still wouldn't mean (philosophically) that such a reality must come first. Thus coming first or second may not matter. As long as consciousness (its immediacy, directness and phenomenology) and the neuroscience are both seen as being part of the same problem or reality; talk of the primary and the secondary can't be that important.

To get back to Descartes.

Let's take the use of the words “axiom” and “postulate” in IIT to begin with.

This implies a kind of Cartesian deductivism; though, in IIT's case, I find the words a little strained in that the moves from the axioms of consciousness to the postulates of its physical mode (or is it a substrate?) are never, strictly speaking, logical.

IIT's first Cartesian axiom is “the axiom of existence”. This is seen as being “self-evident”. Giulio Tononi describes the first axiom:

“Consciousness is real and undeniable; moreover, a subject’s consciousness has this reality intrinsically; it exists from its own perspective.” [2015]

The only non-Cartesian aspect of the above (as it seems to me) is the claim that consciousness “exists from its own perspective”. Indeed it's hard to work out exactly what that means; at least as it's expressed in this bare form.

In any case, it's clear that the nature of IIT is, again, explicitly Cartesian. Tononi, for example, also says that

“consciousness exists: each experience is actual—indeed, that my experience here and now exists (it is real) is the only fact I can be sure of immediately and absolutely.” [2015]

Isn't this the Cogito written in a more contemporary manner? In other words, that which many 20th century scientists and philosophers have out-rightly denied (or seen as "unscientific") is here at the very beginning of the philosophical enterprise.

Tononi then takes the Cogito in directions not explicitly taken (or written about) by Descartes himself. That is, Tononi says that his

“experience exists from its own intrinsic perspective, independent of external observers (it is intrinsically real or actual)”. [2015]

In this internalist/individualist manner, Tononi speaks of consciousness as being “independent of external observers”.

Functionalism

If you take this Cartesian approach to consciousness, then one automatically rules out certain alternative theories of mind which have been alive and well in the history of the philosophy of mind (at least in the late 20th century).

For example, IIT rules out functionalism.

Functionalism (or at least functionalism at its most pure) has a notion of mental functions and behaviour which effectively rules out experience; or, at the least, it rules out (or ignores) the phenomenological reality of consciousness.

The major and perhaps most obvious problem with functionalism (at least vis-a-vis consciousness and phenomenology) was best expressed by Christof Koch in 2012. He claimed that much work in the philosophy of mind utilised “models that describe the mind as a number of functional boxes”. That's fair enough as it stands; except for the fact that these boxes are “magically endowed with phenomenal awareness”. Sure, the functional boxes may exist, and they may have much explanatory power (in the philosophy of mind); yet what about such things as Koch's “phenomenal awareness” and the controversial qualia?

One functionalist problem with an entirely Cartesian position on mind (or consciousness) is that it's indeed the case the consciousness seems to be direct and immediate. However, to some functionalists, this is only a “seeming”. (Daniel Dennett would probably call it an illusion.) In other words, simply because a conscious experience (or state) appears to us to be direct and immediate, that doesn't automatically mean that it is direct and immediate.

According to some functionalisms, even this immediate and direct phenomenology doesn't need to go beyond functionality (or mental functions). In other words, it's still all (or primarily) about functions. More clearly, this sense of immediacy and directness is itself a question of mental functions. In this case, the mental function which is our belief - and our disposition to believe - that consciousness is immediate and direct!

That belief also needs to be accounted for in functionalist terms. (In the way that the immediacy and directness of an experience itself may require a functionalist explanation.) That is, why is it the case the an experience seems direct and immediate to us? What function does that belief (or experience of an experience) serve?

A conscious state (or experience) may seem to be direct and immediate simply because we believe that it's direct and immediate. Moreover, we also have a long-running disposition to believe that it's direct and immediate. Or, again, the sense that an experience (or a mental state) is direct and immediate (or the experience that an experience is direct and immediate) doesn't automatically mean that it is. 

Doesn't this position leave out the phenomenological factors (or reality) of an experience (or conscious state) which are above and beyond their being direct and immediate? On the one had, there's the phenomenological reality of an experience. And, on the other hand, there's its apparent (or real) directness and immediacy. The two aren't the same even if they always occur together.

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Note

1 It can be said, in retrospect, that it would have been more accurate for Descartes to have said that he started with consciousness rather than with the “existence of the self” (or the “I think”). After all, the self/I is much more of a postulation than brute consciousness.

References

Koch, Christoph (2012). Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist, MIT Press.

Tononi, Giulio (2015), Scholarpedia.