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Greater than the parts: a review of the information decomposition approach to causal emergence

Emergence is a profound subject that straddles many scientific disciplines, including the formation of galaxies and how consciousness arises from the collective activity of neurons. Despite the broad interest that exists on this concept, the study of emergence has suffered from a lack of formalisms...

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Autores principales: Mediano, Pedro A. M., Rosas, Fernando E., Luppi, Andrea I., Jensen, Henrik J., Seth, Anil K., Barrett, Adam B., Carhart-Harris, Robin L., Bor, Daniel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9125226/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35599558
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2021.0246
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author Mediano, Pedro A. M.
Rosas, Fernando E.
Luppi, Andrea I.
Jensen, Henrik J.
Seth, Anil K.
Barrett, Adam B.
Carhart-Harris, Robin L.
Bor, Daniel
author_facet Mediano, Pedro A. M.
Rosas, Fernando E.
Luppi, Andrea I.
Jensen, Henrik J.
Seth, Anil K.
Barrett, Adam B.
Carhart-Harris, Robin L.
Bor, Daniel
author_sort Mediano, Pedro A. M.
collection PubMed
description Emergence is a profound subject that straddles many scientific disciplines, including the formation of galaxies and how consciousness arises from the collective activity of neurons. Despite the broad interest that exists on this concept, the study of emergence has suffered from a lack of formalisms that could be used to guide discussions and advance theories. Here, we summarize, elaborate on, and extend a recent formal theory of causal emergence based on information decomposition, which is quantifiable and amenable to empirical testing. This theory relates emergence with information about a system’s temporal evolution that cannot be obtained from the parts of the system separately. This article provides an accessible but rigorous introduction to the framework, discussing the merits of the approach in various scenarios of interest. We also discuss several interpretation issues and potential misunderstandings, while highlighting the distinctive benefits of this formalism. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Emergent phenomena in complex physical and socio-technical systems: from cells to societies’.
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spelling pubmed-91252262022-05-27 Greater than the parts: a review of the information decomposition approach to causal emergence Mediano, Pedro A. M. Rosas, Fernando E. Luppi, Andrea I. Jensen, Henrik J. Seth, Anil K. Barrett, Adam B. Carhart-Harris, Robin L. Bor, Daniel Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci Articles Emergence is a profound subject that straddles many scientific disciplines, including the formation of galaxies and how consciousness arises from the collective activity of neurons. Despite the broad interest that exists on this concept, the study of emergence has suffered from a lack of formalisms that could be used to guide discussions and advance theories. Here, we summarize, elaborate on, and extend a recent formal theory of causal emergence based on information decomposition, which is quantifiable and amenable to empirical testing. This theory relates emergence with information about a system’s temporal evolution that cannot be obtained from the parts of the system separately. This article provides an accessible but rigorous introduction to the framework, discussing the merits of the approach in various scenarios of interest. We also discuss several interpretation issues and potential misunderstandings, while highlighting the distinctive benefits of this formalism. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Emergent phenomena in complex physical and socio-technical systems: from cells to societies’. The Royal Society 2022-07-11 2022-05-23 /pmc/articles/PMC9125226/ /pubmed/35599558 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2021.0246 Text en © 2022 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Articles
Mediano, Pedro A. M.
Rosas, Fernando E.
Luppi, Andrea I.
Jensen, Henrik J.
Seth, Anil K.
Barrett, Adam B.
Carhart-Harris, Robin L.
Bor, Daniel
Greater than the parts: a review of the information decomposition approach to causal emergence
title Greater than the parts: a review of the information decomposition approach to causal emergence
title_full Greater than the parts: a review of the information decomposition approach to causal emergence
title_fullStr Greater than the parts: a review of the information decomposition approach to causal emergence
title_full_unstemmed Greater than the parts: a review of the information decomposition approach to causal emergence
title_short Greater than the parts: a review of the information decomposition approach to causal emergence
title_sort greater than the parts: a review of the information decomposition approach to causal emergence
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9125226/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35599558
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2021.0246
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