Scaling Behaviour and Critical Phase Transitions in Integrated Information Theory
1
IAS-Research Center for Life, Mind and Society, University of the Basque Country, 20018 Donostia, Spain
2
ISAAC Lab, Aragón Institute of Engineering Research, University of Zaragoza, 50018 Zaragoza, Spain
Entropy 2019, 21(12), 1198; https://doi.org/10.3390/e21121198
Received: 14 March 2019 / Revised: 28 November 2019 / Accepted: 30 November 2019 / Published: 5 December 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Integrated Information Theory)
Integrated Information Theory proposes a measure of conscious activity ( ), characterised as the irreducibility of a dynamical system to the sum of its components. Due to its computational cost, current versions of the theory (IIT 3.0) are difficult to apply to systems larger than a dozen units, and, in general, it is not well known how integrated information scales as systems grow larger in size. In this article, we propose to study the scaling behaviour of integrated information in a simple model of a critical phase transition: an infinite-range kinetic Ising model. In this model, we assume a homogeneous distribution of couplings to simplify the computation of integrated information. This simplified model allows us to critically review some of the design assumptions behind the measure and connect its properties with well-known phenomena in phase transitions in statistical mechanics. As a result, we point to some aspects of the mathematical definitions of IIT that 3.0 fail to capture critical phase transitions and propose a reformulation of the assumptions made by integrated information measures.
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Keywords:
Integrated Information Theory; Phi; Ising model; criticality; phase transitions
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MDPI and ACS Style
Aguilera, M. Scaling Behaviour and Critical Phase Transitions in Integrated Information Theory. Entropy 2019, 21, 1198. https://doi.org/10.3390/e21121198
AMA Style
Aguilera M. Scaling Behaviour and Critical Phase Transitions in Integrated Information Theory. Entropy. 2019; 21(12):1198. https://doi.org/10.3390/e21121198
Chicago/Turabian StyleAguilera, Miguel. 2019. "Scaling Behaviour and Critical Phase Transitions in Integrated Information Theory" Entropy 21, no. 12: 1198. https://doi.org/10.3390/e21121198
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