Consciusness measurement

“A Computational Measurement of Consciousness Based on the View of a Computable Universe”

In the sciences of mind and brain, many believe that consciousness is one of the biggest mysteries because how could a few pounds of soft nervous tissue—brains consisting of cells, hormones, and electrical currents—give rise to the sensational world of conscious experience? Based on the view of a computable universe, this is, the claim that what might be behind the physical reality might be natural computation, or a general algorithmic process of information processing, this project suggests that some physical systems can have non-physical attributes such as consciousness, in other words, it offers a computationalist view of consciousness and offers some proves that consciousness could be probabilistic, algorithmic, irreducible, emergent, informational, or a computational aspect of the physical brain. In addition, based on natural theories under a computationalist framework a parameter called Alpha inspired on Tononi’s Phi parameter suggested in his information Integration Theory as measurement of consciousness is introduced, but, Unlikely Phi, Alpha is formulated to measure consciousness in largely sized systems since Phi has be unable to make measurements in big systems (more than 15 nodes) in a reasonable time with the power of the current computational. So, this project breaks with stronger forms of non-physicalism, since it takes consciousness to be non-physical and, at the same time, explainable via tools and methods in the physical sciences.

https://www.ianramseycentre.ox.ac.uk/the-workshop-in-salvador-da-bahia-brazil-2016