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Summary
Summary
Intrinsicality is an essential property of experience (an axiom) and, by inference, also an essential property of the substrate of consciousness (a postulate).
The axiom states that experience is intrinsic: it exists for itself. Formulated in physical terms, the postulate states that the cause–effect power of the substrate of consciousness must be intrinsic: it must take and make a difference within itself.
Intrinsicality Axiom
Intrinsicality Axiom
Experience is intrinsic: it exists for itself.
Experience is intrinsic: it exists for itself.
[This excerpt is taken from Tononi, G. (forthcoming). On Being. Ch. 2: The axioms of phenomenal existence.]
Consider again the experience I have awakening from dreamless sleep. Soon enough, I will recognize my room, know where and who I am; thoughts and memories will rush in, and the onslaught of events, words, goals, and tasks will start. But sometimes, for a few moments, with my eyes still closed, I may not even realize who I am, whether I am human or some other animal, whether I am male or female, knowing nothing about where and when, without the intrusion of thoughts or memories. Yet something exists: a feeling of pure presence. And that feeling of pure presence, like every other feeling, exists from its intrinsic perspective, which may also be called subjective (symbolized by the halo in [the figure]).
Intrinsic thus denotes the property of existing for itself—from the inside—as opposed to existing for something else—from the outside. It does not denote the property of existing by itself—independently of anything outside. Likewise, subjective is meant in the classic sense of existing inside the mind, as opposed to objective in the sense of existing outside the mind. It does not imply that there is a subject “looking” at the experience as an object [1].
Intrinsicality was implicitly recognized by Descartes, as suggested by his use of the first person in “I think, therefore I am”—although he did not explicitly characterize intrinsicality as a property of existence. Again, in characterizing intrinsicality, the words I, my, and me should be understood as referring to the private nature of the experience, without implying the existence of a “self” or “person.” William James, after recognizing existence (“thought goes on”), also singled out intrinsicality as an essential feature of experience: “In this room—this lecture-room, say—there are a multitude of thoughts, yours and mine […]. My thought belongs with my other thoughts, and your thought with your other thoughts. […] It seems as if the elementary psychic fact were not thought or this thought or that thought, but my thought, every thought being owned” [2].
Like phenomenal existence, intrinsicality is an axiom because it is immediate and irrefutably true of every conceivable experience. It is immediate because I do not need to infer that the experience I am having is felt from my intrinsic perspective—it is right here, right now, “in front of my eyes.” Intrinsicality is irrefutable, in the sense that its negation is self-contradictory or absurd. If I try to think of an experience that were not occurring from my intrinsic perspective—that is, not the experience right here, right now, but an experience from some other perspective, right there, right then—I would have to conclude that the experience is occurring for another subject of experience. And that experience, too, would be occurring from its own intrinsic perspective, which reaffirms the validity of the axiom. Moreover, intrinsicality is true not just of the experience I am having now, but it must be true of every conceivable experience. It is thus an essential property of phenomenal existence.
Footnotes
[1] Nobody is looking; something is being. This idea has also been expressed by saying that experience is intransitive, in the sense that it does not point to an object as distinct from the subject. It is also related to the notion of nonduality in Indian traditions. [2] James, William. (1890). The Principles of Psychology, Chapter IX. Project Gutenberg 2018. He continues, “Neither contemporaneity, nor proximity in space, nor similarity of quality and content are able to fuse thoughts together which are sundered by this barrier of belonging to different personal minds. The breaches between such thoughts are the most absolute breaches in nature.”
Intrinsicality Postulate
Intrinsicality Postulate
The cause–effect power of the substrate of consciousness must be intrinsic: it must take and make a difference within itself.
The cause–effect power of the substrate of consciousness must be intrinsic: it must take and make a difference within itself.
[This excerpt is taken from Tononi, G. (forthcoming). On Being. Ch. 3: The postulates of physical existence I.]
How can we formulate the phenomenal property of intrinsicality as a corresponding property of a substrate? Phenomenally, intrinsicality means that every experience exists for itself, from the intrinsic perspective of a conscious being. Granted that physical existence is equivalent to cause–effect power, intrinsicality means that a substrate of consciousness must have cause–effect power for itself—taking and making a difference within itself from its intrinsic perspective, not from the extrinsic perspective of something outside. In other words, for something to exist for itself, the way consciousness does, it must be able to take a difference from itself and make a difference to itself.
Operationally, to establish whether a substrate can be characterized according to intrinsicality, we need to choose a set of units in a state as a candidate substrate, delimiting it from all units external to it. In our case, we choose ABCD (figure below, dashed blue outline on the brain and the TPM). The external units I and O then serve as background conditions, with their states fixed (causal marginalization, yellow pins) [1]. From the TPM of ABCD, we can then determine whether the candidate substrate has cause–effect power within itself—whether it can reliably take a difference from and make a difference to itself. For example, we may observe that setting all four units to ON increases the probability that the output state will also be all ON (0.6, bottom-right square of TPM below), whereas setting all four units to OFF increases the probability of output state all OFF (0.9, top-left square of TPM). Once again, we compare against chance—that is, the probability of obtaining the output state regardless of the state we impose on its units. We can thus conclude that the candidate substrate can take and make a difference within itself—from itself to itself.
The reason for describing ABCD as a candidate here is that a substrate only qualifies as a substrate of consciousness if it can be characterized in line with all the remaining postulates. In practice, the choice of candidate substrates would not be arbitrary but rather guided by reasonable inferences about how likely a given substrate would be to qualify as a complex.
Intrinsicality is simple to assess operationally; yet note that this postulate has far-reaching consequences. It requires us to take the intrinsic perspective of a given system—that is, to assess its cause–effect power from the perspective of the system itself rather than from that of an external observer of that system. As we will see, the intrinsic perspective figures strongly in all remaining postulates and their mathematical formalism.
Footnotes
[1] The reason to fix background conditions is that from the intrinsic perspective of the substrate of consciousness, its existence depends on the causal powers of its own units—which is to say it depends on the repertoire of possible internal states, given some fixed external state or condition. On the other hand, the causal powers of external units—the repertoire of possible external states—are not accessible intrinsically. By the same token, cause–effect power only “counts” as intrinsic if it is exerted by the units of a candidate substrate directly onto substrate units. Indirect influences, mediated by units external to the candidate substrate, do not exist intrinsically and must be discounted. Another way to say this is that unit A’s cause–effect power specifies unit B within a candidate substrate only if its power cannot be “screened off” by another unit external to the system. [For more, see this FAQ]
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For the intrinsicality axiom, please cite Tononi, Giulio. Forthcoming. On Being. Chapter 2: The axioms of phenomenal existence.For the intrinsicality postulate, please cite Tononi, Giulio. Forthcoming. On Being. Chapter 3: The postulates of physical existence I.
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