What examples of attempts to formalize a principled physical basis for consciousness and/or a general theory of the mind exist?
I read a fascinating ArXiV preprint last year called Consciousness as a State of Matter. In this paper, physicist Max Tegmark proposed a formalization of consciousness in terms of a distinctive state of matter he termed perceptronium. Tegmark concludes that we may identify conscious systems by use of six principles, which he bases on Tononi's integrated information framework (Tononi, 2008), which I provide primarily for illustration:
- Information: A conscious system has substantial information storage capacity.
- Dynamics: A conscious system has substantial information processing capacity.
- Independence: A conscious system has substantial independence from the rest of the world.
- Integration: A conscious system cannot consist of nearly independent parts.
- Autonomy: A conscious system has substantial dynamics and independence.
- Utility: An evolved conscious system records mainly information that is useful for it.
(More accessible introductions may be found here and here.)
Formalizing consciousness and the mind?
Tegmark's theory is prototypical of a number of recent jabs at a viable, general theory of the mind defined as what we might call the physical system which causes behavior that I am very excited about. I am also familiar with the somewhat related How Can the Human Mind Occur in the Physical Universe? (Anderson, 2007) as well as the general field of ecological psychology and radical embodied cognitive psychology, e.g. Chemero (2009). Because the content theory behind all of these are so qualitatively different, I would say the common denominator is more methodological and scope-related than strictly empirical, however.
Specifically, these jabs appear to represent a move away from the near-universal dependence on linear models and non-overlapping research scopes, and towards more unifying theories of mind, cognition and behavior. I have some limited awareness of strictly methodological articles such as this recent Psych Methods article which proposes topology as a general tool for the purpose (Butner et al., 2014).
I find that these theories and methodologies, while often flawed in obvious ways (though not necessarily more-so than any others are), raise difficult questions that traditional theories and methodologies do not seem to allow for (Butner et al., 2014 discusses this in some detail). I would be very interested to know more about both general theories and methodologies similar to what I have referenced here, which I hope is sufficient to clarify this complex question.
Formal generalizations allow us to see our fields' otherwise isolated findings in a wider perspective, and allow us to identify the forest we may otherwise miss for the trees. For example, an extremely interesting question raised by Tegmark's formalization is the following quote from the the Medium article:
Tegmark points out that any information stored in a special network known as a Hopfield neural net [a type of neural network which Tegmark deems to satisfy his principles] automatically has this error-correcting facility. However, he calculates that a Hopfield net about the size of the human brain with 10^11 neurons, can only store 37 bits of integrated information.
I think this is a difficult problem for Tononi's content theory to solve in other ways than by claiming Tegmark is somehow not fairly representing the theory, and this line of reasoning potentially has serious implications for all information-based theories. It is often asserted that the brain has incredible computational power ... but we rarely formalize our understanding of what this means. What if we have it all wrong, and it's simply physically and/or mathematically impossible for such a computational system to exist?
Question
What examples of attempts to formalize a principled physical basis for consciousness and/or a general theory of the mind exist?
(Please don't feel discouraged from giving answers based on anything I have referenced. I would not say the information I have provided for anything besides Tegmark's theory constitutes a remotely sufficient answer, so they are fair game.)
Related questions
- Criteria for evaluating cognitive systems
- What are good examples of applying dynamical systems in cognitive science?
References
- Anderson, J. R. (2007). How can the mind exist in a physical universe.
- Butner, J. E., Gagnon, K. T., Geuss, M. N., Lessard, D. A., & Story, T. N. (2014). Utilizing Topology to Generate and Test Theories of Change.
- Chemero, A. (2009). Radical embodied cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT press.
- Tegmark, M. (2014). Consciousness as a State of Matter. arXiv preprint arXiv:1401.1219.
- Tononi, G. (2008). Consciousness as integrated information: a provisional manifesto. The Biological Bulletin, 215(3), 216-242.