The Morphospace of Consciousness
arXiv Preprint Archive May 31, 2017 Xerxes D. Arsiwalla, Ricard Sole, Clement Moulin-Frier et al.
A complexity-based morphospace with three axes—autonomous, cognitive, and social complexity—can represent both biological and synthetic conscious systems. Awareness corresponds to computational complexity and wakefulness to autonomous complexity. Consciousness is argued to function as an evolutionary game-theoretic strategy, motivating social complexity as a third dimension. The framework yields a taxonomy of four types of consciousness based on embodiment: biological, synthetic, group, and simulated. This classification aids in identifying design principles for engineering conscious machines and in comparing signatures of consciousness across domains relevant to cognitive neuroscience, AI, and biomimetics.