Understanding Consciousness as Data Compression

Maguire, Phil; Moser, Philippe; Maguire, Rebecca

doi:10.17791/jcs.2016.17.1.63

Cited by 26 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…In fact, the only application of IIT to this date [194] completely relied on the concept of algorithmic complexity as a foundation of their proposed numerical measure using lossless compression applied on spatiotemporal patterns of electrocortical responses of humans using Lempel-Ziv where it was found to reliably discriminate levels of consciousness during wakefulness, sleep, anaesthesia and minimally conscious states even though such approach is closer to a measure of entropy and entropy has been shown to be extremely limited as a computable measure [195,183]. The nontrivial behaviour of slime mould and its intricated relationship of awareness and interaction with the environment suggests that one can device behavioural time series of slime mould behaviour and apply all these powerful tools and methods of algorithmic cognition [196] to determine the complexity of its behavioural capabilities and shed light on measures of integrated information suggesting some degree of consciousness in an experimental/numerical setup as an obvious experiment.…”

Section: Slime Mould Complexity and Brainless Information Integrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Slime mould: The fundamental mechanisms of biological cognition

et al. 2018

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The slime mould Physarum polycephalum has been used in developing unconventional computing devices for in which the slime mould played a role of a sensing, actuating, and computing device. These devices treated the slime mould as an active living substrate, yet it is a self-consistent living creature which evolved over millions of years and occupied most parts of the world, but in any case, that living entity did not own true cognition, just automated biochemical mechanisms. To "rehabilitate" slime mould from the rank of a purely living electronics element to a "creature of thoughts" we are analyzing the cognitive potential of P. polycephalum. We base our theory of minimal cognition of the slime mould on a bottom-up approach, from the biological and biophysical nature of the slime mould and its regulatory systems using frameworks such as Lyon's biogenic cognition, Muller, di Primio-Lengelerś modifiable pathways, Bateson's "patterns that connect" framework, Maturana's autopoietic network, or proto-consciousness and Morgan's Canon.

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Section: Slime Mould Complexity and Brainless Information Integrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Slime mould: The fundamental mechanisms of biological cognition

et al. 2018

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“…The better and more efficiently an organism can compress information, the more accurate its predictions will be. 16,17 All successful predictive systems, including the human brain, could be regarded as approximations of an ideal information compressor. 17 The basis of all mechanisms of information compression is removing at least some of the redundancy from the body of information.…”

Section: Consciousness and Information Compressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…16,17 All successful predictive systems, including the human brain, could be regarded as approximations of an ideal information compressor. 17 The basis of all mechanisms of information compression is removing at least some of the redundancy from the body of information. 18 An effective and powerful strategy to compress a body of information is to find two or more patterns that match each other, and merge or unify them so that multiple configurations of the same pattern are reduced to one.…”

Section: Consciousness and Information Compressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The idea that consciousness requires information compression was first proposed by Phil Maguire and his colleagues. 17 They attempted to explain consciousness in terms of data compression. Later, Giulio Ruffini 29 proposed that consciousness is possible only in computing systems that are capable of creating compressed representations of the external world.…”

Section: Consciousness and Information Compressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The QBIT Theory of Consciousness

Beshkar¹

2019

Preprint

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The QBIT theory is an attempt toward solving the problem of consciousness based on empirical evidence provided by various scientific disciplines including Quantum mechanics, Biology, Information theory, and Thermodynamics. This theory formulates the problem of consciousness in the following four questions: (1) What is the nature of qualia? (2) How are qualia generated? (3) Why are qualia subjective? (4) Why does a quale have a particular quality or meaning?In sum, the QBIT theory proposes that (1) when certainty of an observer about an event exceeds a certain level, the observer becomes conscious of that event; (2) consciousness requires Maxwell demon-assisted quantum computation; (3) a quale is a dense pack of meaningful quantum information encoded in maximally entangled pure states; (4) a quale is generated when robustness of an internal representation exceeds a certain threshold; (5) the quality or meaning of a quale is determined by a process of information compression via the matching and unification of patterns; and (6) subjectivity of consciousness is due to the fact that maximally entangled pure states are private and unshareable.

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“…23 The idea that consciousness is intimately related to information compression was first proposed by Phil Maguire and his colleagues. 24 Information compression is a kind of comprehension. 25 An effective and powerful strategy to compress a body of information is to find two or more patterns that match each other, and merge or unify them so that multiple instances of the pattern are reduced to one.…”

Section: Consciousness Requires Quantum Computationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The QBIT Theory of Consciousness

Beshkar¹

2019

Preprint

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This paper introduces the first version of the QBIT theory of consciousness which is based on inspirations and insights from Quantum mechanics, Biology, Information theory, and Thermodynamics. The ultimate goal of the QBIT theory is to find scientifically correct answers to the following four questions: What is the nature of qualia? How are qualia generated? Why are qualia subjective? Why does a quale have a particular meaning?The theory, in its first version, proposes tentative answers to these four fundamental questions about consciousness. According to the QBIT theory qualia are quantum information encoded in maximally entangled pure states. Qualia are generated when robustness of a representation exceeds a certain threshold. Qualia are subjective because maximally entangled pure states are not shareable. The quality or meaning of a particular quale stems from information compression via the matching and unification of patterns.

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Understanding Consciousness as Data Compression

Cited by 26 publications

References 45 publications

Slime mould: The fundamental mechanisms of biological cognition

Slime mould: The fundamental mechanisms of biological cognition

The QBIT Theory of Consciousness

The QBIT Theory of Consciousness

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