This report reviews what quantum physics and information theory have to tell us about the age-old question, How come existence? No escape is evident from four conclusions: (1) The world cannot be a giant machine, ruled by any preestablished continuum physical law. (2) There is no such thing at the microscopic level as space or time or spacetime continuum. (3) The familiar probability function or functional, and wave equation or functional wave equation, of standard quantum theory provide mere continuum idealizations (...) and by reason of this circumstance conceal the information-theoretic source from which they derive. (4) No element in the description of physics shows itself as closer to primordial than the elementary quantum phenomenon, that is, the elementary device-intermediated act of posing a yes-no physical question and eliciting an answer or, in brief, the elementary act of observer-participancy. Otherwise stated, every physical quantity, every it, derives its ultimate significance from bits, binary yes-or-no indications, a conclusion which we epitomize in the phrase, it from bit. (shrink)

Investigations of the function of consciousness in human information processing have focused mainly on two questions: (1) where does consciousness enter into the information processing sequence and (2) how does conscious processing differ from preconscious and unconscious processing. Input analysis is thought to be initially "preconscious," "pre-attentive," fast, involuntary, and automatic. This is followed by "conscious," "focal-attentive" analysis which is relatively slow, voluntary, and flexible. It is thought that simple, familiar stimuli can be identified preconsciously, but conscious processing is needed (...) to identify complex, novel stimuli. Conscious processing has also been thought to be necessary for choice, learning and memory, and the organization of complex, novel responses, particularly those requiring planning, reflection, or creativity. (shrink)

Introduction -- A default position -- Experience -- The character of experience -- Understanding-experience -- A note about dispositional mental states -- Purely experiential content -- An account of four seconds of thought -- Questions -- The mental and the nonmental -- The mental and the publicly observable -- The mental and the behavioral -- Neobehaviorism and reductionism -- Naturalism in the philosophy of mind -- Conclusion: The three questions -- Agnostic materialism, part 1 -- Monism -- The linguistic argument (...) -- Materialism and monism -- A comment on reduction -- The impossibility of an objective phenomenology -- Asymmetry and reduction -- Equal-status monism -- Panpsychism -- The inescapability of metaphysics -- Agnostic materialism, part 2 -- Ignorance -- Sensory spaces -- Experience, explanation, and theoretical integration -- The hard part of the mind-body problem -- Neutral monism and agnostic monism -- A comment on eliminativism, instrumentalism, and so on -- Mentalism, idealism, and immaterialism -- Mentalism -- Strict or pure process idealism -- Active-principle idealism -- Stuff idealism -- Immaterialism -- The positions restated -- The dualist options -- Frege's thesis -- Objections to pure process idealism -- The problem of mental dispositions -- Mental -- Shared abilities -- The sorting ability -- The definition of mental being -- Mental phenomena -- The view that all mental phenomena are experiential phenomena -- Natural intentionality -- E/c intentionality -- The experienceless -- Intentionality and abstract and nonexistent objects -- Experience, purely experiential content, and n/c intentionality -- Concepts in nature -- Intentionality and experience -- Summary with problem -- Pain and pain -- The neo-behaviorist view -- A linguistic argument for the necessary connection between pain and behavior -- A challenge -- The Sirians -- N.N. Novel -- An objection to the Sirians -- The Betelgeuzians -- The point of the Sirians -- Functionalism, naturalism, and realism about pain -- Unpleasantness and qualitative character -- The weather watchers -- The rooting story -- What is it like to be a weather watcher? -- The aptitudes of mental states -- The argument from the conditions for possessing the concept of space -- The argument from the conditions for language ability -- The argument from the nature of desire -- Desire and affect -- The argument from the phenomenology of desire -- Behavior -- A hopeless definition -- Difficulties -- Other-observability -- Neo-behaviorism -- The concept of mind. (shrink)

I Physics of Information Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links John Archibald Wheeler Information from Quantum Measurements Benjamin Schumacher Local Accessibility of Quantum States William K. Wootters The Entropy of Black Holes V. F. Mukhanov Some Simple Consequences of the Loss of Information in a Spacetime with a Horizon Shin Takagi Why is the Physical World so Comprehensible? P. C. W. Davies II Laws of Physics and Laws of Computation Algorithmic Information Content, Church-Turing Thesis, Physical Entropy, and Maxwell’s Demon (...) W. E. Zurek Entropy and Information: How Much Information is Needed to Assign a Probability? Carlton M. Caves Complexity of Models J. Rissanen Laws and Boundary Conditions C. H. Woo How to Define Complexity in Physics, and Why Charles H. Bennett III Complexity and Evolution Requirements for Evolvability in Complex Systems: Orderly Dynamics and Frozen Components Stuart A. Kauffman Valuable Information Seth Lloyd Non-Equilibrium Polymers, Entropy, and Algorithmic Information Dilip K. Kondepudi The Dynamics of Complex Computational Systems Tad Hogg Computation at the Onset of Chaos James P. Crutchfield and Karl Young IV Physics of Computation Parallel Quantum Computation Norman Margolus Information Processing at the Molecular Level: Possible Realizations and Physical Constraints W. G. Teich and G. Mahler How Cheap Can Mechanics’ First Principles Be? Tommaso Toffoli Intermittent Fluctuations and Complexity Xiao-Jing Wang Information Processing in Visual Perception A. Zee V Probability, Entropy, and Quantum Thermodynamic Constraints on Quantum Axioms Asker Peres Entropy and Quantum Mechanics M. Hossein Páriovi Einstein Completion of Quantum Mechanics Made Falsifiable O. E. Rossler Quantum Mechanics and Algorithmic Complexity J. W. Barrett Probability in Quantum Theory E. T. Jaynes Quantum Measurements and Entropy H. D. Zeh VI Quantum Theory and Measurement Quantum Mechanics in the Light of Quantum Cosmology Murray Gell-Mann and James B. Hartle Information Dissipation in Quantum Cosmology and the Emergence of Classical Spacetime Jonathan J. Halliwell The Quantum Mechanics of Self-Measurement David Z. Albert The Quantum-Classical Correspondence in Light of Classi- cal Bell’s and Quantum Tsirelson’s Inequalities X. A. Khalfin Some Progress in Measurement Theory: The Logical Inter- pretation of Quantum Mechanics Roland Omnes. (shrink)

When philosophers and psychologists think about consciousness, they generally focus on one or more of three features: phenomenality , intentionality , and introspectibility . Using examples from empirical psychology and neuroscience, I argue that consciousness is not a unitary state, that, instead, these three features characterize different and dissociable states, which often happen to occur together. Understanding these three features as dissociable from each other will resolve philosophical disputes and facilitate scientific investigation.

The mathematical theory of communication.

_Metaphysics of Consciousness_ opens with a development of the physicalist outlook that denies the need for any explanation of the mental. This "inexplicability" is demonstrated not to be sufficient as refutation of physicalism. However, the inescapable particularity of modes of consciousness appears to overpower this minimal physicalism. This book proposes that such an inference requires either a wholly new conception of how consciousness is physical or a deep and disturbing new kind of physical inexplicability.