Unity Without Integration: An Interface Account of the Unity of Consciousness
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that the unity of consciousness is an interface property fixed at the output—a commitment to one course of action through a single register—rather than a product of internal wiring such as integrated information or global broadcast. Proposes that experience tracks the number of independently closable registers, predicting split-brain consciousness divides or stays whole with the task, and offers a falsifier: two separately closable registers would support two experiences. |
Abstract
The unity of consciousness, that experience is one eld from one point of view rather than many parts, is standardly explained by what a system contains: integrated information, or globally broadcast content. The recent adversarial collaboration conrmed neither as a whole, inviting an account structured dierently. We oer one: unity is not about internal wiring but about the physical necessity of action. A self-maintaining system holds a joint distribution over the features its available policies, overt or covert, can act on. To act, it must commit to one course through a single register that admits one assignment. We prove that this commitment is a common eect of every policy-relevant content, so the experienced distribution does not factor: the experience is one. Unity is thus an interface property, xed at the output, not by internal organization. It survives the recurrent-to-feedforward transformation that renders integrated information undetectable. It predicts that experience tracks the number of independently closable registers, so split-brain consciousness divides or stays whole with the task. Above all it yields a buildable falsier: two separately closable registers would support two experiences. Experience, on this account, is less a state a system is in than an act it performs.