Greater than the parts: a review of the information decomposition approach to causal emergence
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences May 23, 2022 Pedro A. M. Mediano, Fernando E. Rosas, Andrea I. Luppi et al. 73 citations
Emergence—how galaxies form or consciousness arises from neurons—lacks formal tools for rigorous study. This article summarizes, elaborates, and extends a recent formal theory of causal emergence based on information decomposition, which is quantifiable and empirically testable. The theory links emergence to information about a system's temporal evolution that cannot be obtained from its parts separately. The article provides an accessible but rigorous introduction to this framework, discussing its merits in various scenarios, interpretation issues, and potential misunderstandings, highlighting the distinctive benefits of this formalism.