Is "information" fundamental for a scientific theory of consciousness?
pp. 357-378
in: Sangeetha Menon, Nithin Nagaraj, Binoy (eds), Self, culture and consciousness, Berlin, Springer, 2017Abstract
In 1948, Claude Shannon ushered us into the Information Age by proposing a mathematical theory of communication with a precise definition of "information'. Since then, his theory of information has been widely applied in the sciences and engineering. Arguably, information could even be the fundamental brick with which physical reality is built (Wheeler's "It from Bit thesis'). In this chapter, we investigate the fundamental role of "information' towards building a scientific theory of consciousness. After a brief primer on Shannon's information, we are led to the exciting proposition of David Chalmers' "double-aspect information' as a bridge between physical and phenomenal aspects of reality. Subsequently, we discuss Tononi's axiomatic approach which takes phenomenology of experience and its characteristics as primary and built a theory to explain consciousness as the capacity of a system of mechanisms (neurons or logic gates) to integrate intrinsic information. Information plays a central role in this theory to measure the quantity of experience and to represent its quality. We explore some recent developments in the science of consciousness, focusing on the problem of "measurement' and discuss some interesting links between consciousness, information, brain complexity and data compression.
