Phi Without Phenomenology: The Compositional Failures of Integrated Information Theory (of "Consciousness")

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) proposes that consciousness is integrated information, quantified by a measure called Phi, with the proposal developed across four major versions (Tononi, 2004; Tononi, 2008; Oizumi, Albantakis, & Tononi, 2014; Albantakis et al., 2023). The variants share the central commitment that consciousness is identical with integrated information measured by Phi. This paper argues that IIT is not a theory of consciousness. It is a theory of mathematical potentials of brain function, with the consciousness label applied to instances of the measure exceeding zero. The formalism produces a number; the identity between the number and consciousness is asserted, not derived. The thesis…