The scientific study of consciousness is currently undergoing a critical transition in the form of a rapidly evolving scientific debate regarding whether or not currently proposed theories can be assessed for their scientific validity. At the forefront of this debate is Integrated Information Theory (IIT), widely regarded as the preeminent theory of consciousness because it quantified subjective experience in a scalar mathematical measure called Φ that is in principle measurable. Epistemological issues in the form of the “unfolding argument” have provided a concrete refutation of IIT by demonstrating how it permits functionally identical systems to have differences in their predicted consciousness. The implication is that IIT and any other proposed theory based on a physical system’s causal structure may already be falsified even in the absence of experimental refutation. However, so far many of these arguments surrounding the epistemological foundations of falsification arguments, such as the unfolding argument, are too abstract to determine the full scope of their implications. Here, we make these abstract arguments concrete, by providing a simple example of functionally equivalent machines realizable with table-top electronics that take the form of isomorphic digital circuits with and without feedback. This allows us to explicitly demonstrate the different levels of abstraction at which a theory of consciousness can be assessed. Within this computational hierarchy, we show how IIT is simultaneously falsified at the finite-state automaton level and unfalsifiable at the combinatorial-state automaton level. We use this example to illustrate a more general set of falsification criteria for theories of consciousness: to avoid being already falsified, or conversely unfalsifiable, scientific theories of consciousness must be invariant with respect to changes that leave the inference procedure fixed at a particular level in a computational hierarchy.

中文翻译：

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跨计算层次的意识理论的形式化证伪


对意识的科学研究目前正在经历一个关键的转变，其形式是一场快速发展的科学辩论，关于当前提出的理论是否可以评估其科学有效性。这场争论的前沿是综合信息理论（IIT），它被广泛认为是卓越的意识理论，因为它以原则上可测量的称为 Φ 的标量数学度量来量化主观经验。以“展开论证”形式出现的认识论问题通过证明 IIT 如何允许功能相同的系统在其预测意识方面存在差异，为 IIT 提供了具体的反驳。这意味着，即使没有实验反驳，IIT 和任何其他基于物理系统因果结构提出的理论也可能已经被证伪。然而，到目前为止，围绕证伪论证的认识论基础的许多论证（例如展开论证）都过于抽象，无法确定其含义的全部范围。在这里，我们通过提供一个简单的示例，说明可以通过桌面电子设备实现的功能等效机器，这些机器采用带反馈和不带反馈的同构数字电路的形式，从而使这些抽象论点具体化。这使我们能够明确地展示可以评估意识理论的不同抽象层次。在这个计算层次结构中，我们展示了 IIT 如何同时在有限状态自动机级别被证伪，并且在组合状态自动机级别不可证伪。 我们用这个例子来说明意识理论的一套更一般的证伪标准：为了避免已经被证伪，或者反过来不可证伪，科学的意识理论必须对于使推理过程固定在特定水平的变化保持不变。计算层次结构。