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Full-Text Articles in Philosophy of Mind
When Do Parts Form Wholes? Integrated Information As The Restriction On Mereological Composition, Kelvin J. Mcqueen, Naotsugu Tsuchiya
When Do Parts Form Wholes? Integrated Information As The Restriction On Mereological Composition, Kelvin J. Mcqueen, Naotsugu Tsuchiya
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
Under what conditions are material objects, such as particles, parts of a whole object? This is the composition question and is a longstanding open question in philosophy. Existing attempts to specify a non-trivial restriction on composition tend to be vague and face serious counterexamples. Consequently, two extreme answers have become mainstream: composition (the forming of a whole by its parts) happens under no or all conditions. In this paper, we provide a self-contained introduction to the integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness. We show that IIT specifies a non-trivial restriction on composition: composition happens when integrated information is maximized. We …