Anil Seth: Consciousness ≠ Integrated Information

Integrated information theorists postulate a literal identity between consciousness and integrated information. The British neuroscientist Anil Seth rejects this identity.

The British neuroscientist Anil Seth puts the integrated information theory (IIT) position at its most simple when he tells us that

“on IIT information — *integrated* information, Φ — actually *is* consciousness”.

According to the neuroscientist Giulio Tononi, the mathematical measure of that integrated information (in a system) is symbolised by φ (phi).

It can be presumed that many people (at least the ones who think about this issue) would claim that consciousness (to use a metaphor) contains information. That is, a conscious state has (or it instantiates) informational content. However, is consciousness itself information?…

An integrated information theorist may now simply ask:

What is this consciousness which contains information?

Alternatively:

If you take the informational content of consciousness away, then what are you left with?

As just stated, IIT is an identity theory that postulates a literal identity between consciousness and integrated information…

But not so quick!

Giulio Tononi actually believes that consciousness doesn’t equal just any kind of information. However, any kind of information (embodied in a system) may be conscious — at least to some degree.

Of course, we need to know what information actually is…

But, for now, we still can’t simply say that

consciousness = information

Instead, we must say:

consciousness = integrated information

Anil Seth himself makes it clear that integrated information theorists are identity theorists when it comes to consciousness and integrated information.

For example, Seth claims that such theorists treat consciousness “like temperature”, which is “mean molecular kinetic energy”. Thus:

temperature = mean molecular kinetic energy

is syntactically similar to

consciousness = integrated information

Seth doesn’t accept the second identity above. However, he does see the theoretical and experimental importance of information and integration in consciousness studies. He simply doesn’t see their joint instantiation as being equal to, or identical with, consciousness.

Anil Seth as an (Old-Style) Identity Theorist?

Anil Seth also refers to the (old?) identity theory in the philosophy of mind. Or at least he does so tangentially and in passing.

Seth does so when discussing his “preferred philosophical position”, which is “physicalism”. Seth writes:

“This is the idea that the universe is made of physical stuff, and that conscious states are either identical to, or somehow emerge from, particular arrangements of this physical stuff.”

So, according to Seth, physicalists can be identity theorists, or they can embrace emergence (i.e., and still be physicalists).

In detail.

In a video debate with Donald Hoffman (see here), Seth also stresses his newfound interest in emergence and top-down causation. This hints at the fact that he actually opts for the “emerge from” (i.e., rather than the “identical to”) option when it comes to the relation between consciousness and physical stuff. (Can emergent features themselves be identical with physical stuff?)

So Seth not only discusses the literal identity of consciousness and integrated information (which he doesn’t accept), he also hints at his own identity between “conscious experiences” and “neural mechanisms”. He writes:

“They key move made by Tononi and Edelman was to propose that if every conscious experience is both informative and unified at the level of phenomenology, *then the neural mechanisms underlying conscious experience should also exhibit both these properties*.”

More explicitly:

“That it is in virtue of expressing both of these properties that neural mechanisms do not merely correlate with, but actually account for, core phenomenological features of every conscious experience.”

What are readers to make of Seth’s claim that “neural mechanisms do not merely correlate with, but actually account for, core phenomenological features of every conscious experience”?

Arguably, this isn’t an explicit expression of an identity relation between conscious experiences and neural mechanisms. After all, Seth does use the words “account for”. Thus, those who stress the neural mechanisms which “correlate” with the “phenomenological features of every conscious experience” also say that the former account for the latter.

So is Seth also arguing that these neural mechanisms actually are the phenomenological features of every conscious experience? In other words, are the latter identical to the former?

That said, there are various grammatical phrases which Seth uses which point to the fact that he believes that his own position is not an identity theory… of any kind.

For example, take Seth’s words “neural basis” (i.e., as found in the clause “they made claims about the neural basis of every conscious experience”). Thus, if x is the basis of y, then x and y can’t be one and the same thing. (Seth’s words “underlying mechanisms” may also rule out an explicit identity.)

Giulio Tononi on Integrated Information

We can cite Giulio Tononi again as an example of someone who believes that consciousness (or experience) simply is integrated information. Or, perhaps more accurately, he believes that consciousness is information as it’s processed and integrated by brains and, perhaps, non-biological systems.

Thus, if that’s a statement of identity, then can we invert it and say this? -

information = consciousness

As stated earlier, Tononi actually believes that consciousness doesn’t equal just any kind of information. However, any kind of information (embodied in a system) may be conscious — at least to some degree.

Technically, not only are systems more than their combined parts: those systems have varying degrees of “informational integration”. Thus, the higher the informational integration, the more likely that system will be conscious.

Mere Correlations!

Anil Seth is certainly unsatisfied by (as the popular phrase has it) “mere correlations”. Or, at the very least, he wants to offer his readers more than that. He writes:

“The deeper problem is that *correlations* are not *explanations*. We all know that mere correlation does not establish causation, but it is also true that correlation falls short of explanation.”

Instead, Seth wants something that will close the “explanatory gap between the physical and the phenomenal”.

But does all that mean that Seth is — again — offering us identities?

Seth continues:

“But if we instead move beyond establishing correlations to discover explanations that connect properties of neural mechanisms to properties of subjective experience…, then this gap will narrow and might even disappear entirely.”

The philosopher David Chalmers tackled this issue many years ago (i.e., in 1995). Indeed, he even christened it with a new technical name: “structural coherence”. Chalmers himself wrote:

“This is a principle of coherence between the *structure of consciousness* and the *structure of awareness*.”

Yet, later, Chalmers also notes the problems here:

“This principle reflects the central fact even though cognitive processes do not conceptually entail facts about conscious experience [and] not all properties of experience are structural properties.”

It also needs to be stressed that Chalmers was noting structural coherences between conscious states and what he calls the “structure of awareness”, not between Seth’s “subjective experience” and “neural mechanisms”.

Despite those differences, we can say that if x is coherent with y, then x and y still can’t be one and the same thing. Thus, again, we don’t have any literal identities here.

Rudolf Carnap: Truth Is Relative to Convention

 “The conditions of the truth of sentences in a system need not be found outside the system [or convention], but must be provided within it.” — Rudolf Carnap

To put the following essay in context, let’s firstly quote two passages from Rudolf Carnap’s ‘Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology’, which was published in 1950:

“If someone wishes to speak in his language about a new kind of entities, he must introduce a system of new ways of speaking, subject to new rules; we shall call this procedure the construction of a linguistic framework for the new entities in question.”

“To accept the thing world means nothing more than to accept a certain form of language, in other words, to accept rules for formulating statements and for testing, accepting, or rejecting them.”

The German philosopher (a logical positivist) Rudolf Carnap argued that truth is an “internal question”. That is, truth is internal to specific “conventions”.

The following is a broad definition of conventionalism:

“Conventionalism is the philosophical attitude that fundamental principles of a certain kind are grounded on (explicit or implicit) agreements in society, rather than on external reality. [] Although this attitude is commonly held with respect to the rules of grammar, its application to the propositions of ethics, law, science, biology, mathematics, and logic is more controversial.”

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So why is any given convention chosen in the first place?

More specifically, why did Rudolf Carnap himself adopt the “framework” of what he called the “thing world”? Why not one based on abstract objects or the pronouncements of goblins?

It can be argued that truth-exterior-to-convention (at least in some form) was always lurking in Carnap’s background — i.e., despite his protestations against “external questions” on the outside of all (or any) conventions.

Again, surely there is some (form of) truth that’s antecedent to the adoption of a Carnapian convention.

What’s more, is it true that Carnap’s adopted convention “works”, “provides results”, “solves problems”, “handles experience”, etc?

Pragmatists and/or instrumentalists must face these antecedent questions - even if they’ve already adopted various conventions.

All this also parallels the late-19th-century stance of the American pragmatists.

For example, is it true that belief P is (as William James put it) “better for us to believe”?

Is it true that pragmatism itself is better for us to believe?

Thus, can we apply the pragmatist test of truth to pragmatism itself without begging the question?

Surely there must be some kind of truth which is, in this case, external to pragmatism.

We can then ask a Carnapian similar questions.

What comes first: “the world” or the convention?

Metaphysical realists would answer, The world.

Carnap would (or might) have answered, Conventions…

Or would he?

C = Convention

What would have made Carnap (or anyone else) adopt C¹ in the first place?

Carnap couldn’t have adopted C¹ from within C¹. It follows that his reasons for adopting C¹ weren’t internal to C¹. Therefore, when he adopted C¹, he must have been outside of C¹.

So where did these external reasons come from?

Didn’t truths, facts, reasons, evidence, data, etc. external to C¹ determine the choice of C¹?

Again, surely such reasons for a Carnapian rejecting his current convention couldn’t have come from C¹ itself. Thus he must have had good reasons for adopting C¹ which weren’t actually part of C¹.

So were they part of, say, C²?

Or are there many concurrent conventions which the Carnapian is internal to?

We may indeed require conventions, language games, conceptual schemes, etc. However, are we internal to just one of them?

More particularly, if conventions determine what we think and what we say, then conventions must determine our adoption of other conventions.

However, there’s something strange about this conclusion because conventions (or conceptual schemes) are often supposed to be “self-contained” (i.e., “closed universes”). At least many people have believed that. Yet this can’t be true if, for example, we can move from C¹ to C².

Thus, in the contemporary literature, why are conventions (or conceptual schemes) deemed to be so powerful, restricting and important?

We may indeed need conventions in the Carnapian sense. However, we can still jump from one convention to another. Conventions aren’t, therefore, anything like the Kant’s categories which a priori determine how we must perceive, experience or talk about the world. (Relevantly, the French philosopher Michel Foucault believed in what he called the “historical a priori”.)

Conventions are thoroughly contingent and adaptable.

On another point.

Was Carnap’s “adopted framework” a posit itself (i.e., a posit within which he posited other things)? Wouldn’t Carnap’s adopted framework itself (as an abstract object) need to have been posited via another adopted framework?…

And so on.

If this isn’t a real regress, then how do things get started?

If it’s not possible to posit anything without an adopted framework (or a convention), then perhaps it isn’t possible to posit an adopted framework unless that too belongs to another adopted framework. Contrary to this, if it’s possible to posit a convention which isn’t itself posited by another convention, then perhaps we can posit “medium-sized dry goods” without an adopted framework or convention.

So a thing from Carnap’s thing-language may be as autonomous as the adopted framework itself.

To generalise and repeat.

If conventions are necessary for the postulation of objects, events, facts, etc., then conventions themselves (as abstract objects) may need to be posited by other conventions… ad infinitum.

In detail.

What convention does a new convention belong to?

It can’t be an unmoved mover or cause of itself.

So does a convention need another convention to legitimise it as a genuine abstract object ?

If things, truths, facts, evidence, etc. are “relative to” conventions, then what are conventions themselves relative to? Are they relative to themselves? Have they come into being ex nihilo? Or are they relative to meta- (or second-order) conventions?

In that case, what are these meta-conventions relative to?

The same kind of problem can be seen at a smaller scale.

A convention (C¹) may offer the following statement:

Statement S is assertible according to C¹.

The assertibility of S is fine. However, what about the entire meta-statement directly above? What is the meta-statement assertible according to? The following? -

The meta-statement is assertible according to C¹, in which S is assertible according to C¹.

This is a more refined regress than the earlier regress. Or we could have the following:

The following is assertible in C¹: “‘…’ is assertible in C¹”.

Again, here we have an example of self-reference, which was earlier applicable to the convention itself.

External Truth Again

The possibility that there may be a tacit (or implicit) commitment to external truth (i.e., in relation to Carnapian conventions) was hinted at earlier. Yet Carnap himself had his own position on truth being entirely(?) internal to conventions.

Carnap wrote the following in his Introduction to Semantics:

“The semantic ‘definition’ [of truth] is not a definition of truth, but a criterion of the adequacy (accord with our intentions) of a predicate for the concept of truth within a given system. ‘True’ thus becomes a predicate applicable by the rules of a system to sentences of the system. [] In pure semantics the conditions of the truth of sentences in a system need not be found outside the system but must be provided within it.”

In Carnap’s scheme, then, just as the truth of the thing-language is an internal question, so too is the question of truth itself before it’s applied to a thing-language… or to anything else for that matter.

Carnap also referred to the “adequacy” of the “truth predicate”, rather than simply saying it “works”, “provides results”, “solves problems”, “handles experience”, etc. Yet now all the previous arguments about the adoption — and status — of a Carnapian convention are now applicable to Carnap’s internalist account of truth itself.

Carlo Rovelli vs Panpsychism: “Each atom must be a proto-cyclist.”

 “It is like saying that since a bicycle is made of atoms, then each atom must be a proto-cyclist.” 

— Carlo Rovelli

The Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli wrote the following passage in his book Helgoland:

“I do not find such arguments and such pan-psychism persuasive in the slightest. It is like saying that since a bicycle is made of atoms, then each atom must be a proto-cyclist.”

At first sight at least, Carlo Rovelli’s argument seems both simple and convincing.

Basically, Rovelli is arguing against the panpsychist contention that it’s highly unlikely that consciousness (or experience) could ever have arisen from that which is entirely non-conscious.

[This is sometimes called the Continuity Argument for Panpsychism. See my ‘Panpsychism in 1970: Keith Campbell on the Continuity Argument for Panpsychism’.]

However, the comparison (or analogy) that Rovelli cites above may not work. In other words, is there really a parallel between the atoms which make up a bike and the bike itself, and the parts which make up a brain, and consciousness itself?

In other words, is Rovelli’s general argument true of all systems and their elements (or parts)?

Systems and Their Elements

At one level at least, Rovelli’s analogy is correct.

Firstly, take this passage from the American philosopher John Searle:

“Suppose that we have a system, S [i.e., a bicycle], made up of elements a, b, c… [i.e., atoms and other elements]. [] In general, there will be features of S that are not, or not necessarily, features of a, b, c…”

In countless systems which are made up of elements or parts, the system itself will have characteristics which its parts — on their own — won’t have…

Not many people would disagree with that.

However, in the case of panpsychism, is it the brain which is the system, or consciousness itself?

In the bicycle case, it is literally identical to the sum of its elements or parts. However, surely we can’t say that consciousness itself is the sum of its elements or parts.

Does this mean, then, that Rovelli’s analogy doesn’t work because consciousness is simply left out of his picture?

So instead of a bike’s elements, let’s take four matchsticks.

We can combine four matchsticks to create a square shape. The square shape is nothing more than its four elements — i.e., it’s the sum of four matchsticks. Yet it can still be said that the square shape does indeed emerge from the four matchsticks. However, it doesn’t strongly emerge from them.

Philip Goff

The panpsychist Philip Goff provides his own example here. He writes:

“Take the case of seven Lego cubes placed on top of each other to make a rectangular tower. The mere existence of those bricks, each having a specific shape and location, necessitates the existence of the tower having the shape and location it has.”

More technically:

“The existence of a group of spatial objects, O¹….Oⁿ, with certain shapes and locations, can necessitate the existence of a spatial object with a shape and location different to the shape and location of each of O¹… Oⁿ.”

Goff puts this position without mentioning consciousness or anything else directed related to it. He also argues that

“the defining characteristic of constitution being that constituted states of affairs are nothing over and above the states of affairs which constitute them”.

That, again, is a statement of weak emergence.

So is consciousness (i.e., rather than the brain) a system made up of elements (or parts) in the first place? That is, can we even say that when it comes to consciousness, it is made up of neurons, synapses, the body, etc?

In theory (or at least according to various zombie scenarios), we can even have the sum of all the brain’s parts (along with the body as a whole), and still not have consciousness. Of course, the identity theorist would say that, of natural necessity, if we have the same brain, then we must also have the same consciousness. And that’s because the brain both constitutes and instantiates consciousness (i.e., even if consciousness is only experienced “from the inside”).

Alternatively, we can say that the brain and its elements cause (or bring about) consciousness.

Emergence or Identity?

Perhaps Carlo Rovelli himself does vaguely — or tangentially — broach this issue of (either) emergence and/or causation when he says that

“[o]ur mental life needs the existence of neurons, sensory organs, a body, the complex elaboration of information that occurs in it”.

Yet it’s very hard to unpack what Rovelli means by the words “[o]ur mental life needs”.

Sure, most people (though not idealists and dualists) would accept that without “neurons, sensory organs, a body” we would have no mental life (or consciousness) at all. However, is an individual’s mental life (or consciousness) one and the same thing as the sum of his/her neurons, sensory organs, and body?

Alternatively, do neurons, sensory organs, and a body cause (or bring about) a mental life (or consciousness)?

In this latter case, if x causes y, then x and y can’t be one and the same thing. Yet, in Rovelli’s example, a bike is literally the sum of its parts. This means that the sum of a bike’s parts don’t cause the bike: they’re identical to the bike.

Sure, a bike isn’t the same thing as any single part of it. It isn’t even the same thing as any subsection of its parts. It’s also the case that the relations, etc. between the bike’s parts need to be factored into this story. Still, when we have all the parts, and all the relations of all the parts, then we also have the bike itself. (Ironically put, most people are identity theorists when it comes to bikes and their parts.)

Again, does this way of putting things also apply to the brain, its parts, the relations of its parts, and consciousness?

Physical Entailment

In theory at least, if a person knew all about the parts of a bike, then that person could posit that a bike would (or simply could) result if all its parts were put together. Yet this can’t be done with the parts of the brain, etc. and their relation to consciousness.

Let’s go into detail.

The Australian philosopher Frank Jackson may be helpful at this point. He wrote the following words:

“But it is quite another question whether they must hold that θ [the set of all relevant physical elements] a priori entails everything about our psychology, including its phenomenal side, and so quite another question whether they must hold that it is in principle possible to deduce from the full physical story alone what it is like to see red or smell a rose — the key assumption in the knowledge argument that materialism leaves out qualia.”

Here we have a clash (or simply a difference) between entailment and deduction. More clearly, the physical may well entail (to put it grandly) everything in the sense that without the physical (as well as everything about the physical) there would be no consciousness. However, from our current — and perhaps future — knowledge of the physical, we still can’t (a priori) know everything about consciousness. [See note 1 on entailment and logical consequence.]

In terms of Rovelli’s bike (system S) and its elements (E), we can state the following:

E necessitates S.

Yet E doesn’t cause — or bring about — S. That’s because “necessitates” isn’t a causal term — at least not in this instance.

In the material conditional:

P ⊃ Q

We can say that P can’t hold without necessitating Q. It is ontologically necessary that P necessitates (or entails) Q.

Thus, we can say that the physical is necessary for consciousness, without our being able to posit consciousness from the physical. However, we could (in principle) do so in the bike-and-its-atoms case.

To sum up.

Carlo Rovelli’s analogy (or simple comparison) can only work if one is an identity theorist of some kind. So it doesn’t seem to work if one accepts strong emergence or non-reductive physicalism. In simple terms, then, saying that “since a bicycle is made of atoms, then each atom must be a proto-cyclist” is not like saying that in order for there to be consciousness, each element of the brain must instantiate… well, proto-psychism.

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Note:

(1) It may be questioned whether there can be such a thing as physical entailment for the simple reason that “logical consequence”— if not entailment when taken more broadly and physically — is a logical term used exclusively about statements, propositions or symbols.

In 1931, the Philosopher G.F. Stout Hinted at Panpsychism

 

George Frederick Stout (1860–1944) was an English philosopher and psychologist.

The Australian philosopher John Passmore expressed Stout’s main concern in this way:

“That matter could never produce anything so different from itself as mind.”

Stout’s position (of 1931) on the mind-body problem wasn’t Cartesian. In fact it’s fairly contemporary in its general tone.

Stout argued that the mind is “embodied mind”, not the “pure spirit” of mind-body dualism. As one other commentator put it:

“Stout [] held that mind and body are always implicated with one another in two basic ways. First of all, minds are embodied; they are never to be found on their own.”

In terms of panpsychism, Stout himself argued that

“every material object [] must be infused by mind, even though it is not itself a mind”.

Clearly Stout didn’t believe that all material objects can think. Indeed, the infusing of objects with mind may still mean that certain objects have no cognitive properties (or abilities) whatsoever. However, such objects may still instantiate phenomenal properties (or protophenomenal properties), which is a very different claim.

Stout also believed that there’s only one substance. In most cases, that substance isn’t complex enough to cause (or bring about) any forms of cognition. However, when complex enough (as in animal brains) it does have the ability to bring about cognition.

Stout argued that the prime reason for his monist stance is that only with this position can

“the distinctness of mind and matter be reconciled with their continuity”.

So we have two very different aspects of the mind-matter relation: their (obvious) distinctness, as well as their (less obvious) continuity. Indeed, their distinctness can also be explained by their ontological continuity, and not by, for example, the mental’s strong emergence.

The notion of emergence itself is, Stout argued, miraculous, and it doesn’t explain anything about the matter-mind relation. And Cartesian dualism, on the other hand, can’t explain the interaction of the mind and the brain/body (among other things).

In 1970, the Australian philosopher Keith Campbell also stressed continuity.

Keith Campbell

Even though Keith Campbell didn’t begin with the word “panpsychism”, the following passage expresses the broad gist of what’s been called the “Continuity-Argument for Panpsychism”. Campbell wrote:

“If minds are spirits they must have arrived as quite novel objects in the universe, some time between then and now [man and his remote descendants]. But when? We see only a smooth development in the fossil record. Any choice of time as the moment at which spirit first emerged seems hopelessly arbitrary.”

[See note 2 for the source. Interestingly, idealists can also adopt a version of this argument.]

The passage above seems like an argument that a panpsychist would be happy with.

Of course, it’s usually stated that consciousness didn’t just “arrive[]”. It slowly occurred during a very gradual process — a result of many evolutionary changes, as well as the increased complexity of brains and central nervous systems (among many other things). [See my ‘Panpsychism in 1970: Keith Campbell on the Continuity Argument for Panpsychism’ for more on Campbell’s position.]

Finally, philosophers to this very day are still grappling with the mind-body problem. They overwhelmingly reject Cartesian dualism. Many other philosophers also reject the various kinds of emergence theory (at least in the philosophy of mind). The latter positions are sometimes seen as being little better (i.e., in terms of their explanatory power) than Cartesian dualism.

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Notes

(1) Most of the work that G.F. Stout did on this issue can be found in his book Mind & Matter, which was published in 1931.

(2) This passage is from Keith Campbell’s chapter ‘Dualisms’, from his 1970 book, Body and Mind. This chapter includes a (relatively) early reference to panpsychism by an analytic philosopher. In other words, it occurred some time before the recent (renewed?) interest in panpsychism, dating back to the mid-1990s/early 2000s. [See my ‘The Recent Rise of Analytic Panpsychism: 1996 to 2022’.]