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Phi fluctuates with surprisal: An empirical pre-study for the synthesis of the free energy principle and integrated information theory

The Free Energy Principle (FEP) and Integrated Information Theory (IIT) are two ambitious theoretical approaches. The first aims to make a formal framework for describing self-organizing and life-like systems in general, and the second attempts a mathematical theory of conscious experience based on...

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Autores principales: Lundbak Olesen, Christoffer, Waade, Peter Thestrup, Albantakis, Larissa, Mathys, Christoph
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10619809/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37862364
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011346
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author Lundbak Olesen, Christoffer
Waade, Peter Thestrup
Albantakis, Larissa
Mathys, Christoph
author_facet Lundbak Olesen, Christoffer
Waade, Peter Thestrup
Albantakis, Larissa
Mathys, Christoph
author_sort Lundbak Olesen, Christoffer
collection PubMed
description The Free Energy Principle (FEP) and Integrated Information Theory (IIT) are two ambitious theoretical approaches. The first aims to make a formal framework for describing self-organizing and life-like systems in general, and the second attempts a mathematical theory of conscious experience based on the intrinsic properties of a system. They are each concerned with complementary aspects of the properties of systems, one with life and behavior, the other with meaning and experience, so combining them has potential for scientific value. In this paper, we take a first step towards such a synthesis by expanding on the results of an earlier published evolutionary simulation study, which show a relationship between IIT-measures and fitness in differing complexities of tasks. We relate a basic information theoretic measure from the FEP, surprisal, to this result, finding that the surprisal of simulated agents’ observations is inversely related to the general increase in fitness and integration over evolutionary time. Moreover, surprisal fluctuates together with IIT-based consciousness measures in within-trial time. This suggests that the consciousness measures used in IIT indirectly depend on the relation between the agent and the external world, and that it should therefore be possible to relate them to the theoretical concepts used in the FEP. Lastly, we suggest a future approach for investigating this relationship empirically.
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spelling pubmed-106198092023-11-02 Phi fluctuates with surprisal: An empirical pre-study for the synthesis of the free energy principle and integrated information theory Lundbak Olesen, Christoffer Waade, Peter Thestrup Albantakis, Larissa Mathys, Christoph PLoS Comput Biol Research Article The Free Energy Principle (FEP) and Integrated Information Theory (IIT) are two ambitious theoretical approaches. The first aims to make a formal framework for describing self-organizing and life-like systems in general, and the second attempts a mathematical theory of conscious experience based on the intrinsic properties of a system. They are each concerned with complementary aspects of the properties of systems, one with life and behavior, the other with meaning and experience, so combining them has potential for scientific value. In this paper, we take a first step towards such a synthesis by expanding on the results of an earlier published evolutionary simulation study, which show a relationship between IIT-measures and fitness in differing complexities of tasks. We relate a basic information theoretic measure from the FEP, surprisal, to this result, finding that the surprisal of simulated agents’ observations is inversely related to the general increase in fitness and integration over evolutionary time. Moreover, surprisal fluctuates together with IIT-based consciousness measures in within-trial time. This suggests that the consciousness measures used in IIT indirectly depend on the relation between the agent and the external world, and that it should therefore be possible to relate them to the theoretical concepts used in the FEP. Lastly, we suggest a future approach for investigating this relationship empirically. Public Library of Science 2023-10-20 /pmc/articles/PMC10619809/ /pubmed/37862364 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011346 Text en © 2023 Olesen et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Lundbak Olesen, Christoffer
Waade, Peter Thestrup
Albantakis, Larissa
Mathys, Christoph
Phi fluctuates with surprisal: An empirical pre-study for the synthesis of the free energy principle and integrated information theory
title Phi fluctuates with surprisal: An empirical pre-study for the synthesis of the free energy principle and integrated information theory
title_full Phi fluctuates with surprisal: An empirical pre-study for the synthesis of the free energy principle and integrated information theory
title_fullStr Phi fluctuates with surprisal: An empirical pre-study for the synthesis of the free energy principle and integrated information theory
title_full_unstemmed Phi fluctuates with surprisal: An empirical pre-study for the synthesis of the free energy principle and integrated information theory
title_short Phi fluctuates with surprisal: An empirical pre-study for the synthesis of the free energy principle and integrated information theory
title_sort phi fluctuates with surprisal: an empirical pre-study for the synthesis of the free energy principle and integrated information theory
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10619809/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37862364
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011346
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