Consciousness as a State of Matter
arXiv Preprint Archive May 2, 2014 preprint
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Physics.pop-ph Consciousness Awareness Mind Sentience Perceptronium Quantum physics Quantum mechanics Quantum theory Neural networks Artificial intelligence Ai Machine learning Theoretical physics Fundamental physics Physics theory |
| Key points | Proposes that consciousness can be understood as a state of matter ('perceptronium') characterized by five principles that generalize integrated information theory to quantum systems. |
Abstract
I examine the hypothesis that consciousness can be understood as a state of matter, "perceptronium", with distinctive information processing abilities. I explore five basic principles that may distinguish conscious matter from other physical systems such as solids, liquids and gases: the information, integration, independence, dynamics and utility principles. This approach generalizes Giulio Tononi's integrated information framework for neural-network-based consciousness to arbitrary quantum systems, and provides interesting links to error-correcting codes and condensed matter criticality, as well as an interesting connections between the emergence of consciousness and the emergence of time. (For more technical details, see arXiv:1401.1219).