Will Mayner

In case you missed it, the infamous “IIT is pseudoscience” letter has been published in
@natureneuro.bsky.social (rdcu.be/ecZIL), along with our reply (rdcu.be/ec7QV) and an excellent nonpartisan commentary from Àlex Gómez-Marín and @anilseth.bsky.social (rdcu.be/ec7XF)

Why does time feel the way it does? Towards a principled account of temporal experience Time flows, or at least the time of our experience does. Can we provide an objective account of why experience, confined to the short window of the conscious present, encompasses a succession of momen...

Why does time feel the way it does? Towards a principled account of temporal experience arxiv.org/abs/2412.13198, from @renzocom.bsky.social & @matteograsso.bsky.social

Dissociating Artificial Intelligence from Artificial Consciousness Developments in machine learning and computing power suggest that artificial general intelligence is within reach. This raises the question of artificial consciousness: if a computer were to be functi...

Dissociating Artificial Intelligence from Artificial Consciousness arxiv.org/abs/2412.04571

Thanks to all the folks in the lab who contributed in countless discussions :)

I also want to call out two other recent preprints from our lab:

Matching measures the degree to which the environment triggers rich & varied experiences in the substrate. Matching should be high in a system that has adapted to that environment (if it can support consciousness to begin with).

– We introduce a measure of what we call the 'matching' between a substrate of consciousness and an environment

– We elaborate the implications on IIT for concepts of meaning, reference, and representation, and the connection between these concepts and evolution, development, and learning

What Caused What? A Quantitative Account of Actual Causation Using Dynamical Causal Networks Actual causation is concerned with the question: “What caused what?” Consider a transition between two states within a system of interacting elements, such as an artificial neural network, or a biolog...

… i.e., nothing external to the substrate directly figures into the explanation. This uses our framework for 'actual causation' (www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/21...).

What Caused What? A Quantitative Account of Actual Causation Using Dynamical Causal Networks Actual causation is concerned with the question: “What caused what?” Consider a transition between two states within a system of interacting elements, such as an artificial neural network, or a biolog...

In the paper:

– We develop a measure of the extent to which external stimuli trigger conscious percepts. This is important for IIT, because IIT accounts for phenomenal consciousness as determined by the intrinsic cause-effect powers of the substrate …

– How does all of this connect to evolution, development, & learning?

– How does our account contrast with those that invoke the language of information processing / encoding to characterize perception?

– What is the relationship between phenomenal experiences and stimuli that trigger them, i.e., how does perception fit in to IIT?

– What does IIT have to say about meaning, and what does this imply for the concepts of reference & representation in IIT?

Intrinsic meaning, perception, and matching Integrated information theory (IIT) argues that the substrate of consciousness is a maximally irreducible complex of units. Together, subsets of the complex specify a cause-effect structure, composed ...

New preprint out with @algarwegian.bsky.social and Giulio Tononi arxiv.org/abs/2412.21111

Some questions we address 👇 🧵

@joannaszczotka.bsky.social @renzocom.bsky.social @ksks.bsky.social @anilseth.bsky.social @davidchalmers.bsky.social @romainbrette.bsky.social

IIT criticisms and replies (a non-exhaustive list) In light of recent events, I have thought quite a bit about constructive ways to address some of the concerns raised about Integrated Information Theory (IIT). At least for the time being, I refer to ...

Excellent post from Larissa Albantakis on some criticisms of IIT and replies to them: www.consciousnessrealist.com/IIT-criticis...