Throughout this series, we have investigated various ways to explain the mind, navigating the tension between physicalists and idealists. We have looked at the purely materialist “user-illusion” of Daniel Dennett, the inherent “teleological” purpose proposed by Thomas Nagel, and the perspective of process philosophy, which views consciousness as a continuous flow of creative events. We even explored the radical “real materialism” of Galen Strawson, who argues that if we take physics seriously, we must conclude that matter is inherently experiential, and the classical substance dualism which insists that the mind and body are two distinct types of “stuff.” We have also considered the Idealism of George Berkeley, who famously claimed that “to be is to be perceived,” and modern thinkers like James Tartaglia, who suggest that reality is ultimately mental. Yet, a growing movement in both physics and philosophy suggests that we might be looking at the wrong building blocks entirely. This movement argues that the fundamental substrate of the universe is neither dead matter nor a separate ghostly spirit, but Information—a concept most rigorously defined in the study of consciousness through Integrated Information Theory (IIT).

Shannon and the Physics of Data

To understand the modern landscape of consciousness, we must start with the technical facts established by Claude Shannon in 1948. Before Shannon, “information” was a vague, psychological term associated with knowledge or meaning. Shannon redefined it as a purely physical, mathematical quantity. He argued that information is essentially the reduction of uncertainty. If you toss a coin, the “information” produced by the result is exactly one bit, because it resolves a choice between two equally likely possibilities. This perspective, often called the “It from Bit” hypothesis, suggests that every physical object is ultimately an outcome of binary informational states.

Shannon’s primary insight was that the meaning of a message is irrelevant to the amount of information it contains. This allowed science to treat information as a physical variable, much like energy or mass. In thermodynamics, the concept of entropy is used to measure the disorder of a system. Shannon realized that his mathematical formula for information was identical to the formula for entropy ($S$). This connection suggested that information is a physical property. If you know the exact position and velocity of every molecule in a gas, you have high information and low entropy. If the gas becomes chaotic and you lose that data, entropy rises.

The Landauer Principle later proved that erasing one bit of information generates a specific, measurable amount of heat. This confirmed that information is not an abstract concept; it is tied to the laws of energy and the very behavior of matter. If you are a physicalist, this is an exciting development because it suggests that the “mind” (which processes information) and the “body” (which obeys physics) are speaking the same mathematical language. However, Shannon’s theory only explains how information is transmitted—it does not explain how it becomes felt as an experience.

The Integration Factor: Why the Brain is Special

For proponents of Integrated Information Theory (IIT), such as neuroscientist Giulio Tononi and Christof Koch, Shannon’s “bits” are only the beginning. To explain why a brain is conscious while a high-powered digital camera or a sprawling telephone network is not, they point to a specific mathematical property: Integration. IIT is unique because it does not start with the brain’s anatomy; instead, it starts with the essential properties of experience itself.

Tononi identifies five “Axioms” that are true of every conscious experience:

1. Existence: My experience exists here and now, intrinsically, from its own point of view.
2. Composition: Experience is structured; it contains different components (shapes, colors, sounds) in specific relations.
3. Information: Each experience is unique and differentiated from trillions of other possible experiences.
4. Integration: Experience is unified; it cannot be divided into independent components.
5. Exclusion: Experience is definite; it contains exactly what it contains, no more and no less, at a specific “grain” of time.

The Axiom of Integration is the most critical for distinguishing the mind from a machine. It states that every conscious experience is unified and irreducible. You cannot experience the left half of your visual field independently of the right half; they are bound together into a single “whole.” IIT argues that for a physical system like a brain to produce consciousness, its physical architecture must be integrated in a way that makes the system “more than the sum of its parts.”

To understand this “magic ingredient,” consider a high-resolution digital camera sensor. A 50-megapixel sensor possesses an enormous amount of Shannon information. It can distinguish between billions of different light patterns. However, according to IIT, a camera has zero consciousness because the information is not integrated. In a camera sensor, each pixel is independent. Pixel A does not interact with Pixel B. The system is “reducible.” You could chop the sensor in half, and the two halves would still do exactly what they did before. In contrast, the human brain is highly integrated. The neurons processing color are constantly interacting with the neurons processing shape. The measure of this irreducibility is a mathematical value called $\Phi$ (Phi). The higher the $\Phi$ value, the more conscious the system.

Consciousness as Causal Power

This leads to the concept of consciousness as causal power. For proponents of IIT, consciousness is the causal power that a system has over itself. A conscious system is one where the state of the parts determines the state of the whole in a way that cannot be broken down into independent sub-processes. This is an “internal” view of information. While a computer has “extrinsic” information (bits that mean something to a human user), a brain has “intrinsic” information (bits that mean something to the system itself).

This is why IIT proponents push back against the idea that a standard computer simulation of a brain would be conscious. In a standard computer, information flows in one direction (feed-forward). Even if the simulation looks perfect on a screen, the underlying hardware is just a collection of independent switches turning on and off. Tononi and Koch argue that a purely feed-forward system, no matter how complex, has a $\Phi$ value of zero. It is a “zombie.” Consciousness requires re-entrant or feedback loops, where the system “talks to itself” and constrains its own future states. You cannot “simulate” $\Phi$ any more than you can “simulate” the wetness of water. To have the experience, you must have the physical architecture of integration.

If we accept that $\Phi$ is a fundamental property of matter, then the universe is likely teeming with “proto-conscious” states. Wherever you have the right informational architecture—specifically, an architecture that is integrated and irreducible—consciousness is simply a fact of the universe. This suggests that information has two sides: an external, physical side and an internal, phenomenal side. IIT provides the mathematical ruler to determine exactly when that internal side “wakes up.”

The Ethical and Existential Implications

This perspective also impacts the realm of ethics. If the universe is a coherent structure of integrated information, then the destruction of that information—the extinguishing of a complex, integrated system—is a form of informational corruption. Luciano Floridi argues that we have a duty to preserve the “infosphere.” Ethics, in this view, is the duty to preserve the integrity and complexity of these informational structures. We protect things not necessarily because they have a “soul” in the religious sense, but because they are unique, integrated entities that contribute to the cosmic data set. This provides a bridge between environmentalism, animal rights, and human ethics, all based on the value of integrated complexity.

Furthermore, the philosophy of information allows us to reconsider the nature of the self. The self is not a specific piece of brain matter, but a stable pattern of integrated data. This pattern persists even as the physical atoms of the body are replaced over time. This treats the human person as a unique, complex algorithm that has achieved a high degree of integration. The Exclusion Principle in IIT further defines this individual self. It states that consciousness exists only at the level where $\Phi$ is at its maximum. Because the integration within a single brain is orders of magnitude higher than the integration between two people talking, the conscious experience stays locked at the level of the individual mind. This gives us a factual, structural reason for why we experience ourselves as single, unified observers rather than a collection of independent cells or a giant “social” mind.

Computational Emergence and Intelligibility

To expand on the physical reality of this theory, we must look at “computational emergence.” This suggests that the complexity we see in the world is the result of simple informational rules being applied over and over. If you have simple rules (bits) and enough time, you will inevitably end up with a universe that contains conscious observers. This provides a factual framework for the “teleology” we discussed earlier: the “goal” of the universe isn’t a mystical destination, but a mathematical inevitability toward higher informational density and integration. The universe “wants” to be integrated because integration is a stable state of complex information.

Ultimately, the Informational Turn in philosophy represents a shift in how we define what is “real.” In the old world, something was real if you could kick it. In the new world, something is real if it possesses a specific informational structure that interacts with other structures. This allows us to grant reality to things that materialism struggled with, such as mathematics and logic. All of these are informational entities. They are not “physical” in the sense of being made of atoms, but they are “real” because they govern the behavior of the universe.

The logical conclusion of this view is that we live in a world that is fundamentally intelligible. If the universe were made of “dumb” matter, there would be no reason for it to follow mathematical laws. But if the universe is made of information, then mathematics is its native language. Our minds are informational processors built from the same code as the rest of the universe. We are not looking at a strange, alien world; we are looking at a mirror of our own internal logic. By identifying information as the fundamental substrate and integration as the catalyst for awareness, we can finally bridge the gap between the objective mechanics of the brain and the subjective reality of the mind. In this view, consciousness is not an “add-on” to the universe; it is the feeling of the universe being integrated.

---

📚 Recommended Reading on the Philosophy of Information and IIT

Disclaimer: I am an Amazon Associate, which means I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases made through the links below. This helps support the research and writing of this series at no extra cost to you!

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick. A comprehensive history of how information evolved from human communication into a fundamental physical theory.

The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness Is Widespread but Can’t Be Computed by Christof Koch. A highly accessible explanation of IIT, focusing on why “simulation” is not “reality.”

The Fourth Revolution: How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality by Luciano Floridi. An essential text on the ethical and metaphysical implications of living in a world defined by data and informational structures.

Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul by Giulio Tononi. A creative narrative that uses Galileo as a character to explain the technical axioms of Integrated Information Theory.

Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information by Vlatko Vedral. A physicist’s argument for why information theory is the most fundamental way to explain the laws of nature.

I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter. While not strictly IIT, this book explores how self-referential information processing creates the “I” that we experience.