The integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness claims that, at the fundamental level, consciousness is integrated information, and that its quality is given by the informational relationships generated by a complex of elements (Tononi, 2004).
This theory, that is in the background of the Tegmark paper, allows for different qualities of consciousness. The informational relationships in your computer are vastly simpler than those in your brain … so the quality of consciousness would be correspondingly poor.
I was digging in the references because I thought ‘consciousness’ meant ‘self-awareness’ and I was confused about the direction of the discussion. Now I know that consciousness is about experience (e.g., the experience of seeing a color, or hearing a sound, etc) and the quality of that experience.
Roughly guessing from the Tononi paper, which is beyond my ken, the “the informational relationships generated by a complex of elements” can be so complex, new mathematics or physics is required to characterize the complexity and topology of these relationships.
This is a thought experiment about a photodiode and a digital camera that is helpful in explaining the difference in complexity in information integration:
This theory, that is in the background of the Tegmark paper, allows for different qualities of consciousness. The informational relationships in your computer are vastly simpler than those in your brain … so the quality of consciousness would be correspondingly poor.
I was digging in the references because I thought ‘consciousness’ meant ‘self-awareness’ and I was confused about the direction of the discussion. Now I know that consciousness is about experience (e.g., the experience of seeing a color, or hearing a sound, etc) and the quality of that experience.
Roughly guessing from the Tononi paper, which is beyond my ken, the “the informational relationships generated by a complex of elements” can be so complex, new mathematics or physics is required to characterize the complexity and topology of these relationships.
This is a thought experiment about a photodiode and a digital camera that is helpful in explaining the difference in complexity in information integration:
Skip down to the section Information: the photodiode thought experiment.