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TensorTympani
Sweden
90 Posts |
 Posted - Aug 23 2024 : 4:44:33 PM
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There is an interesting theory of consciousness, Integrated Information Theory (IIT), that starts from the phenomenal (subjective) aspects of consciousness and then makes statements about the necessary and sufficient conditions for a substrate (like a brain made of neurons and synapses) to harbor such subjective experiences. It claims to be complete in the sense that any conceivable subjective experience has a mathematical representation and in principle can be represented by a physical substrate.
I find this theory interesting because it tries to bridge the good old scientific method and the purely subjective investigation of consciousness. It cannot solve the "hard problem of consciousness" and it just postulates that consciousness exists and how it is tied to a substrate.
From a yogic philosophy perspective, one could say that the theory gives the rules of how and why the Purusha experiences the Prakriti. In particular why it usually fragments into many I's associated with nervous systems and what these I's experience. In short, it is the local maxima of integrated information that correspond to individual subjective experiences (the individual nervous systems) and the content of consciousness is fully determined by the cause-effect structure of the substrate.
I also like the theory because it is generic enough to fit the current scientific world view where consciousness is purely associated with the physical nervous system, but it would make equally sense (I think) in a yogic world view where there is a subtle nervous system yet unknown to science. The subtle nervous system would then correspond to the same substrate at a finer resolution scale, that under certain conditions provides a larger integrated information than the physical brain (the usually provides the maximum at the lower resolution scale), and thereby allowing consciousness to move outside of the realm of current scientific understanding.
Those are just my musings, but recently there was a paper where long-term meditators with the ability to reliably reach "Pure Presence" (samadhi without content) were studied with high-resolution EEGs while reaching those states. The theory (IIT) predicts that such states should be accompanied by very little to no brain activity. And this is what they found experimentally. At least the theory predicts that as long as the substrate has cause-and-effect power there is consciousness even if the substrate is inactive. The mere potentiality to reactivate is enough for consciousness to exist.
Here is the preprint: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10....90081v1.full
I'm not an expert, and so I probably misrepresented some of the statements of the theory or got them wrong. If you are interested in an overview that also mentions the study on meditators, here is a non-technical talk by the inventor and principal investigator of that theory, Giulio Tononi:
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Uf1lXxcvtE
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EG8sRIDaEg
Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR7ao_WwD34
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Integrated Information Theory and Samadhi
