PSY 0816 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Phi

• School: Temple University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 0816
• Professor: Todd Karpinski

Document Summary

Consciousness is a basic trait we all have in common. Its abstract, transparent, undefinable, from a scientific point of view unquantifiable. Giulio tononi has been working to find a way to quantify consciousness. Argues that it is possible to define consciousness mathematically. Measuring consciousness, assigning a number to your current state of awareness. Argues that consciousness is made of what he calls integrated information info that happens to be stored in our neurons, but that could, in principle, be stored in many different media. The info is integrated because of the complex, hierarchical way in which it"s organized. Smaller systems integrate elegantly into bigger and bigger ones, combining their info to create something that"s more than the sun of its parts. The human brain is unequalled in its ability to organize its information in a meaningfully integrated way.