Integrated Information Theory (IIT)

The starting point of this theory is that each experience has specific essential properties. It is necessary, structured, and distinct. It is unified and definite. An experience of sitting on a park bench on a warm, sunny day, watching children play, cannot be separated into parts. Doing so will alter the experience.

• The hypothesis is that any complex and interconnected mechanism whose structure encodes a set of cause-and-effect relationships will have these properties and some level of consciousness.
• IIT predicts that programming for consciousness will never create a conscious computer as it cannot be computed. It must be built into the structure of the system.