This text will discuss the concept of information and its relevance in the study of the nature of the mind. It will analyze a hypothesis that deals with the equivalence between information and causality, which results in information having a double ontological character: “intrinsic” and “extrinsic.” A discussion will follow on Integrated Information Theory, which is developed from a variation of this thesis. It will be proposed that this theory does not reach the objective of being an “intrinsic” information theory, (...) precisely because it is an adaptation of classical information theory. For this reason, it neither allows nor avoids the paradoxes of the subject–object distinction, nor shows how the causal evolution of an integrated system can be treated in informational terms; that is, it cannot unite causality and information. (shrink)

The theoretical use of representation faces, among others, two types of inconsistencies, namely: a representation requires the figure of the agent to which it will be representative, which leads either to circularity or to infinite return; and the resulting one, which is the difficulty in reconciling a description, in representative terms, with other more fundamental scientific categories. The proposal of the present study for the solution of these problems was the identification of a referential process starting from the correlation between (...) states of a physical system. It will present an inference about how the superposition of causal history moments of a system can result in a self-referential structure. (shrink)

The purpose of this text is to present a summary of the theory of self-reference as a result of the superposition of the causal history of a system. Self-reference is discussed here as an effect of the association between memory and causality. When considering the eventual situation of a physical system, different previous alternatives can take it to the same state. The means that constituted it are not intrinsic to it, there are no elements in it to retroact to its (...) previous state. In a system of causal superposition, however, the state contains the history of the states that constituted it. (shrink)