Information Closure Theory of Consciousness

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.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Information processing in neural systems can be described and analysed at multiple spatiotemporal scales. Generally, information at lower levels is more fine-grained and can be coarse-grained in higher levels. However, information processed only at specific levels seems to be available for conscious awareness. We do not have direct experience of information available at the level of individual neurons, which is noisy and highly stochastic. Neither do we have experience of more macro-level interactions such as interpersonal communications. Neurophysiological evidence suggests that conscious experiences co-vary with information encoded in coarse-grained neural states such as the firing pattern of a population of neurons. In this article, we introduce a new informational theory of consciousness: Information Closure Theory of Consciousness (ICT). We hypothesise that conscious processes are processes which form non-trivial informational closure (NTIC) with respect to the environment at certain coarse-grained levels. This hypothesis implies that conscious experience is confined due to informational closure from conscious processing to other coarse-grained levels. ICT proposes new quantitative definitions of both conscious content and conscious level. With the parsimonious definitions and a hypothesise, ICT provides explanations and predictions of various phenomena associated with consciousness. The implications of ICT naturally reconciles issues in many existing theories of consciousness and provides explanations for many of our intuitions about consciousness. Most importantly, ICT demonstrates that information can be the common language between consciousness and physical reality.