The Biggest Blunders of Theories Such as Integrated Information Theory

In an earlier post "Integrated Information Theory's Tangled Metaphysics Does Nothing to Explain Consciousness," I gave a critique of a paper describing Version 3.0 of something called Integrated Information Theory, which the press has repeatedly touted as a "theory of consciousness" or a "scientific theory of consciousness." I gave some criticisms of the abstruse tangled metaphysics of a paper presenting that  theory, a paper entitled "From the Phenomenology to the Mechanisms of Consciousness: Integrated Information Theory 3.0." It is very dubious indeed to be making a claim of a scientific theory when the theory is presented in a paper filled with dense metaphysical jargon. That type of theory is more properly referred to as a metaphysical theory. I pointed out that a key claim of the paper was factually incorrect.  Contrary to the claims of that paper, it is not at all true that when you cut the tissue connecting  the two hemispheres of the brain, you are left with two minds. Instead you still have a single unified mind, as I discuss in my post here.  The flagrant misrepresentations of materialist thinkers about split-brain patients is one of the most egregious examples of misleading speech in literature discussing the cause of minds or the philosophy of mind.  A 2020 paper states this about split-brain patients: " Apart from a number of anecdotal incidents in the subacute phase following the surgery, these patients seem to behave in a socially ordinary manner and they report feeling unchanged after the operation (Bogen, Fisher, & Vogel, 1965; Pinto et al., 2017a; R. W. Sperry, 1968; R. Sperry, 1984)." 

Recently a new version of the Integrated Information Theory appeared, one called Version 4.0 of that theory, in a paper entitled "Integrated information theory (IIT) 4.0: Formulating the properties of phenomenal existence in physical terms." I seem to find no example of the bogus previous claim that split-brain patients have two minds or two units of consciousness. Hopefully the authors realized how spurious and inaccurate such a claim was when it was made in the previous paper. We have a theory presented in a paper of more than 50 pages, but the authors say this about their theory: "the entire framework of IIT is based on just a few axioms and postulates." Oops, wouldn't it be much better to have a theory based on facts and observations, rather than "axioms and postulates," which sounds very metaphysical? 

Without diving very deeply into the very dense reasoning presented in the paper, I can discuss the two largest errors of papers such as these: (1) trying to present a mere "theory of consciousness" rather than a theory of the mind that can account for the main aspects of the mind; (2) wrongly presuming at the onset that there is such a thing as a "substrate of consciousness."   

The problem of human mentality is the problem of credibly explaining the thirty or forty most interesting types of human mental experiences, human mental characteristics and human mental capabilities. These include things such as these:

• imagination
• self-hood
• abstract idea creation
• appreciation
• memory formation
• moral thinking and moral behavior
• instantaneous memory recall
• instantaneous creation of permanent new memories
• memory persistence for as long as 50 years or more
• emotions
• speaking in a language
• understanding spoken language
• creativity
• insight
• beliefs
• pleasure
• pain
• reading ability
• writing ability
• ordinary awareness of surroundings
• visual perception
• recognition
• auditory perception
• attention
• fascination and interest
• the correct recall of large bodies of sequential information (such as when someone playing Hamlet recalls all his lines correctly)
• eyes-closed visualization
• extrasensory perception (ESP)
• dreaming
• volition
• out-of-body experiences
• apparition sightings 

Reductionist theorists love it when people do not raise the big problem of explaining human mentality but instead raise a much tinier problem of the problem of consciousness. Then such theorists can attempt to offer some little neural explanation and then say, “You see, the brain can explain consciousness.” Whenever such theorists attempt to do that, we should always point out that the problem of explaining human mentality is very many times larger and harder than a mere problem of consciousness.

The paper entitled "Integrated information theory (IIT) 4.0: Formulating the properties of phenomenal existence in physical terms" commits the blunder of "looking through a straw hole" by trying to present a mere "theory of consciousness."  Since the human mind and its experiences are almost infinitely more complicated than mere "consciousness," this is a huge mistake. The person trying to explain a human mind with a mere "theory of consciousness" is like a person trying to explain planet Earth (a planet with such a diversity of life forms and minds) by presenting a mere "theory of roundness." 

The title of the paper should alert us that the authors have gone way wrong. They refer in their title to "formulating the properties of phenomenal existence." Human mental experiences are things of the utmost complexity and richness. It is folly to think that such things can be explained by referring to "properties." A property is a simple characteristic of something, typically one that you can measure with a single number. Examples of properties are things such as width, depth, height, length and weight. Human mental experiences are not properties, and the vast majority of them cannot be measured with numbers. 

You can do some word counts on the "Integrated information theory (IIT) 4.0" paper to show just how badly it has failed to pay attention to what it should have paid attention to. The paper uses the term "consciousness" 87 times and "substrate" 144 times, but never once uses any of these terms:

• memory
• memories
• insight
• imagination
• appreciation
• recall
• recognition
• perception
• perceiving
• emotion
• belief
• idea
• ideas
• believing
• love
• thinking
• think

The term "thought" is used three times, but never in a meaningful reference to the human ability to think. It should be rather clear from the failure to use any of the words listed above that the authors have not done anything to credibly explain the human mind. We are thinking, recalling, remembering, imagining, perceiving, recognizing, appreciating and loving beings who have emotions, ideas and beliefs. Such minds are not explained by papers that fail to use any such words. You can never get to first base in explaining a mind if your search is limited to looking for "properties." 

It is a fool's errand to try to develop a "theory of consciousness" that considers consciousness in isolation while paying little or no attention to most of the main aspects and experiences and capabilities of human minds. That is as silly a quest as trying to explain the origin of cities by developing some abstract "theory of structure" that pays no attention to roads or streets or buildings or houses or parks. We don't need any mere "theory of consciousness," and when someone presents such a theory you should suspect your time is being wasted. What we need are theories of the human mind that can offer some credible idea about how such a mind can exist, and how humans can have all the mental experiences and mental capabilities they have.  

The second biggest blunder of theories such as Integrated Information Theory is the presumption that there is such a thing as a "substrate of consciousness." The word "substrate" means "an underlying substance or layer." We have no basis for assuming that there is any such thing as a "substrate of consciousness."  There is no obvious reason why a mental thing such as a mind would have a physical substrate. Also, we know that many physical things have no substrate. Planets don't have a substrate; the Sun and other stars don't have a substrate; and galaxies don't have a substrate.  So it is anything but obvious that there should exist any such thing as a "substrate of consciousness."

In the "Integrated information theory (IIT) 4.0" paper the authors simply assume that there is such a thing as a physical "substrate of consciousness," without doing anything to back up such a claim. The paper uses the term "substrate" 144 times, but never justifies its presumption that there is any "substrate of consciousness." The idea that the brain is a substrate of consciousness is erroneous.  During cardiac arrest, after the brain has shut down and EEG signals show a flat line, human minds often continue to have very vivid mental experiences known as near-death experiences. Such an observational reality strongly suggests that the brain is not actually a substrate of consciousness, and that human minds can continue to function when brains have shut down. 

Talking about a "substrate of consciousness" is fallacious. A substrate is an underlying layer, and when you assume a "substrate of consciousness" you are assuming the mind is a bottom-up phenomenon.  Because of all the brain physical shortfalls discussed on this blog and in my previous post, there is no credibility in the idea that the human mind is something arising from mere "bottom-up" causes such as brain activity. The only credible explanation for a human mind is a "top-down" explanation, in which we think that a human mind arises from some reality greater than a human or any of its parts. 

Alas, the 50+ page paper mainly written by neuroscientists suggests that our theorizing neuroscientists still are not paying halfway decent attention to the characteristics of brains; for in the paper I read not one single mention of synapses. A proper study of the physical shortfalls of brains (such as the very short lifetimes of synaptic proteins, the slow average speed of brain signals and the noisy unreliable transmission of signals in synapses) leads to the conclusion that the brain is not any credible cause of human mental experiences.  Humans can instantly recall with perfect accuracy large bodies of memorized information they learned years ago, something that would not be possible through synaptic activity, synapses being too noisy, unreliable and unstable. 

The widely read blogger Scott Aaronson (a quantum computing expert) says this about Integrated Information Theory:

"It unavoidably predicts vast amounts of consciousness in physical systems that no sane person would regard as particularly 'conscious' at all: indeed, systems that do nothing but apply a low-density parity-check code, or other simple transformations of their input data.  Moreover, IIT predicts not merely that these systems are 'slightly' conscious ...but that they can be unboundedly more conscious than humans are."