The target article misrepresents the foundations of integrated information theory and ignores many essential publications. It, thus, falls to this lead commentary to outline the axioms and postulates of IIT and correct major misconceptions. The commentary also explains why IIT starts from phenomenology and why it predicts that only select physical substrates can support consciousness. Finally, it highlights that IIT's account of experience – a cause–effect structure quantified by integrated information – has nothing to do with “information transfer.”.

The paper aims to assess the theory of mind of sexual offenders. We administered to 21 sexual offenders and to 21 nonoffenders two classical first- and second-order ToM tasks, a selection of six Strange Stories, and a semi-structured interview, the Theory of Mind Assessment Scale , which provides a multi-dimensional evaluation of ToM, investigating first- vs. third-person and egocentric vs. allocentric perspectives. Results show that sexual offenders performed worse than controls on second-order ToM tasks, on Strange Stories and on each (...) of the Th.o.m.a.s dimensions, whereas they did as well as the control group on first-order ToM tasks. A detailed analysis of participants’ performance on Th.o.m.a.s. showed that sex offenders performed worse on the third-person than on the first-person ToM scale, and worse on the allocentric than on the egocentric perspective; these findings did not apply to the controls. Implications for future research and treatment are discussed. (shrink)

A set of images can be considered as meaningfully different for an observer if they can be distinguished phenomenally from one another. Each phenomenal difference must be supported by some neurophysiological differences. Differentiation analysis aims to quantify neurophysiological differentiation evoked by a given set of stimuli to assess its meaningfulness to the individual observer. As a proof of concept using high-density EEG, we show increased neurophysiological differentiation for a set of natural, meaningfully different images in contrast to another set of (...) artificially generated, meaninglessly different images in nine participants. Stimulus-evoked neurophysiological differentiation (over 257 channels, 800 ms) was systematically greater for meaningful vs. meaningless stimulus categories both at the group level and for individual subjects. Spatial breakdown showed a central-posterior peak of differentiation, consistent with the visual nature of the stimulus sets. Temporal breakdown revealed an early peak of differentiation around 110 ms, prominent in the central-posterior region; and a later, longer-lasting peak at 300–500 ms that was spatially more distributed. The early peak of differentiation was not accompanied by changes in mean ERP amplitude, whereas the later peak was associated with a higher amplitude ERP for meaningful images. An ERP component similar to visual-awareness-negativity occurred during the nadir of differentiation across all image types. Control stimulus sets and further analysis indicate that changes in neurophysiological differentiation between meaningful and meaningless stimulus sets could not be accounted for by spatial properties of the stimuli or by stimulus novelty and predictability. (shrink)

This paper presents Integrated Information Theory (IIT) 4.0. IIT aims to account for the properties of experience in physical (operational) terms. It identifies the essential properties of experience (axioms), infers the necessary and sufficient properties that its substrate must satisfy (postulates), and expresses them in mathematical terms. In principle, the postulates can be applied to any system of units in a state to determine whether it is conscious, to what degree, and in what way. IIT offers a parsimonious explanation of (...) empirical evidence, makes testable predictions, and permits inferences and extrapolations. IIT 4.0 incorporates several developments of the past ten years, including a more accurate translation of axioms into postulates and mathematical expressions, the introduction of a unique measure of intrinsic information that is consistent with the postulates, and an explicit assessment of causal relations. By fully unfolding a system's irreducible cause-effect power, the distinctions and relations specified by a substrate can account for the quality of experience. (shrink)