ABSTRACT
Integrated Information Theory (IIT) accepts the Cartesian conviction that consciousness has immediate, self-evident properties, and outlines the implications of these phenomenological axioms for conscious physical systems. This characterization does not exhaustively describe the theoretical ambition of IIT. According to IIT, the physical state of any conscious system must converge with phenomenology; otherwise the kind of information generated could not realize the axiomatic properties of consciousness. IIT's conception of consciousness as mechanisms systematically integrating information through cause and effect lends itself to quantification. IIT strives, among other things, not just to claim the existence of a scale of complexity of consciousness, but to provide a theoretical approach to the precise quantification of the richness of experience for any conscious system. IIT claims that its principles are consistent with the existence of cases of dual consciousness within split-brain patients. IIT's criteria for consciousness are consistent with the existence of artificial consciousness.
