What does 'information' mean in Integrated Information Theory?

OLIMPIA LOMBARDI; CRISTIAN LÓPEZ

ENTROPY

MOLECULAR DIVERSITY PRESERVATION INTERNATIONAL-MDPI

Lugar: Basel; Año: 2018 vol. 20 p. 894 - 912

1099-4300

IntegratedInformation Theory (IIT) intends to provide a principled theoretical approach able to characterize consciousness both quantitativelyand qualitatively. By starting off by identifying the fundamental properties ofexperience itself, IIT develops a formal framework that relates thoseproperties to the physical substratum of consciousness. One of the centralfeatures of ITT is the role that information plays in the theory. On the onehand, one of the self-evident truths about consciousness is that it is informative. On the other hand,mechanisms and systems of mechanics can contribute to consciousness only ifthey specify systems´ intrinsicinformation. In this paper, we will conceptually analyze the notion ofinformation underlying ITT. Following previous work on the matter, we willparticularly argue that information within ITT should be understood in thelight of a causal-manipulationist view of information (López and Lombardi2018), conforming to which information is an entity that must be involved incausal links in order to be precisely defined. Those causal links are broughtto light by means of interventionist procedures following Woodward?s andPearl´s version of manipulability theories of causation.