A Structuralist Defence of the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness

Date

2018-09-01

Author

Davoody Benı, Majıd

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This paper addresses John Searle's criticism of the integrated information theory of consciousness (IITC for short). Among other things, Searle claimed that, since information is a syntactic notion, IITC cannot account for the content of consciousness. He also argued that IITC cannot explain consciousness in causal terms. In this paper, I demonstrate that the original formulation of IITC is compatible with a structuralist reading. After that, I explain how a structuralist reconstruction of IITC could deal with the objections that Searle raised. Among other things, I argue that IITC could provide genuine scientific explanations of consciousness, but the explanations are to be presented in structural, rather than causal, terms.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/93422

Journal

JOURNAL OF CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES

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Department of Philosophy, Article

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Citation Formats

M. Davoody Benı, “A Structuralist Defence of the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness,” JOURNAL OF CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES, vol. 25, no. 9-10, pp. 75–98, 2018, Accessed: 00, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/93422.