RESUMO
Under what conditions are material objects, such as particles, parts of a whole object? This is the composition question and is a longstanding open question in philosophy. Existing attempts to specify a non-trivial restriction on composition tend to be vague and face serious counterexamples. Consequently, two extreme answers have become mainstream: composition (the forming of a whole by its parts) happens under no or all conditions. In this paper, we provide a self-contained introduction to the integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness. We show that IIT specifies a non-trivial restriction on composition: composition happens when integrated information is maximized. We compare the IIT restriction to existing proposals and argue that the IIT restriction has significant advantages, especially in response to the problems of vagueness and counterexamples. An appendix provides an introduction to calculating parts and wholes with a simple system.
RESUMO
Perceptual filling-in for vision is the insertion of visual properties (e.g., color, contour, luminance, or motion) into one's visual field, when those properties have no corresponding retinal input. This paper introduces and provides preliminary empirical support for filled/non-filled pairs, pairs of images that appear identical, yet differ by amount of filling-in. It is argued that such image pairs are important to the experimental testing of theories of consciousness. We review recent experimental research and conclude that filling-in involves brain activity with relatively high integrated information (Φ) compared to veridical visual perceptions. We then present filled/non-filled pairs as an empirical challenge to the integrated information theory of consciousness, which predicts that phenomenologically identical experiences depend on brain processes with identical Φ.
