Intrinsic Cause-Effect Power: The Tradeoff Between Differentiation and Specification.
William G. P. Mayner, William Marshall, Giulio Tononi
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) April 4, 2026 DOI: 10.3390/e28040410 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Complexity Consciousness Differentiation Integrated information Intrinsic specification |
| Key points | Proposes that a tradeoff between differentiation and specification is a necessary condition for intrinsic existence and, according to integrated information theory, for consciousness. |
Abstract
Integrated information theory (IIT) starts from the existence of consciousness and characterizes its essential properties: every experience is intrinsic, specific, unitary, definite, and structured. IIT then formulates existence and its essential properties operationally in terms of cause-effect power of a substrate of units. Here, we address IIT's operational requirements for existence by considering that, to have cause-effect power, to have it intrinsically, and to have it specifically, substrate units in their actual state must both (i) ensure the intrinsic availability of a repertoire of cause-effect states, and (ii) increase the probability of a specific cause-effect state. We showed previously that requirement (ii) can be assessed by the intrinsic difference of a state's probability from maximal differentiation. Here, we show that requirement (i) can be assessed by the intrinsic difference from maximal specification. These points and their consequences for integrated information are illustrated using simple systems of micro units. When applied to macro units and systems of macro units such as neural systems, a tradeoff between differentiation and specification is a necessary condition for intrinsic existence-and therefore, according to IIT, for consciousness.