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The possibility to describe the laws of the Universe in a computational way seems to be correlated to a principle that the density of information is bounded. This principle, that is dual to that of a finite velocity of information, has…
The no-supervenience theorem limits the capacity of physicalist theories to provide a comprehensive account of human consciousness. The proof of the theorem is difficult to formalize because it relies on both alethic and epistemic notions…
We discuss views about whether the universe can be rationally comprehended, starting with Plato, then Leibniz, and then the views of some distinguished scientists of the previous century. Based on this, we defend the thesis that…
The science of consciousness has made great strides by focusing on the behavioral and neuronal correlates of experience. However, correlates are not enough if we are to understand even basic neurological fact; nor are they of much help in…
The purpose of this paper is to formalize the concept that best synthesizes our intuitive understanding of quantum mechanics -- that the information carried by a system is limited -- and, from this principle, to construct the foundations of…
This essay considers a simple model of observers that are influenced by the world around them. Consistent quantification of information about such influences results in a great deal of familiar physics. The end result is a new perspective…
Partial information decomposition (PID) seeks to decompose the multivariate mutual information that a set of source variables contains about a target variable into basic pieces, the so called "atoms of information". Each atom describes a…
The quantum prepare-and-measure scenario has been studied under various physical assumptions on the emitted states. Here, we first discuss how different assumptions are conceptually and formally related. We then identify one that can serve…
All knowing is material. The challenge for Information Systems (IS) research is to specify how knowing is material by drawing on theoretical characterizations of the digital. Synthetic knowing is knowing informed by theorizing digital…
Does information play a significant role in the foundations of physics? Information is the abstraction that allows us to refer to the states of systems when we choose to ignore the systems themselves. This is only possible in very…
We develop an operational approach for reconstructing the quantum theory of qubit systems from elementary rules on information acquisition. The focus lies on an observer O interrogating a system S with binary questions and S's state is…
This paper presents Integrated Information Theory (IIT) 4.0. IIT aims to account for the properties of experience in physical (operational) terms. It identifies the essential properties of experience (axioms), infers the necessary and…
A formal model of the structure of information is presented in five axioms which define identity, containment, and joins of infons. Joins are shown to be commutative, associative, provide inverses of infons, and, potentially, have many…
The Hilbert space dimension of a quantum system is the most basic quantifier of its information content. Lower bounds on the dimension can be certified in a device-independent way, based only on observed statistics. We highlight that some…
We propose to address the problem of how to know students' knowledge in an entirely new approach called ?epistemography? which is, roughly, an attempt to describe the structure of this knowledge. We claim that what is to be known is made of…
Biological infants are naturally curious and try to comprehend their physical surroundings by interacting, in myriad multisensory ways, with different objects - primarily macroscopic solid objects - around them. Through their various…
Rational agents acting as observers use ``knowables'' to construct a vision of the outside world. Thereby, they are bound by the information exchanged with what they consider to be objects. The cartesian cut or, in modern terminology, the…
This overview of integrated information theory (IIT) emphasizes IIT's "consciousness-first" approach to what exists. Consciousness demonstrates to each of us that something exists--experience--and reveals its essential properties--the…
We approach the question "What is Consciousness?" in a new way, not as Descartes' "systematic doubt", but as how organisms find their way in their world. Finding one's way involves finding possible uses of features of the world that might…
A perplexing problem in understanding physical reality is why the universe seems comprehensible, and correspondingly why there should exist physical systems capable of comprehending it. In this essay I explore the possibility that rather…