Information Closure Theory of Consciousness
arXiv Preprint Archive September 28, 2019 Acer Y. C. Chang, Martin Biehl, Yen Yu et al.
Conscious experience corresponds to information encoded in coarse-grained neural states, such as the firing patterns of neuronal populations, rather than in the noisy activity of individual neurons or in macro-level interactions like interpersonal communication. The authors introduce Information Closure Theory of Consciousness (ICT), which hypothesizes that conscious processes form non-trivial informational closure (NTIC) with respect to the environment at certain coarse-grained levels. This closure confines conscious experience to those levels. ICT provides quantitative definitions of conscious content and conscious level, offering explanations and predictions for various consciousness phenomena and reconciling issues in existing theories.