Summer School 2025 で Faculty を務めた Matteo Grasso さん、Giulio Tononi さん、および TA を務めた Jeremiah Hendren さんの共著論文が、2026年8月11日に arXiv で公開されました。

　本論文は、統合情報理論（IIT）の枠組みに基づき、意識経験を「区別（distinctions）」とそれらを結ぶ「関係（relations）」からなる構造としてとらえ、基体の因果的な力を展開した Φ構造との一対一の対応として説明する方法を提示するものです。この方法を、空間の広がり・時間の流れ・対象という、内省にある程度ひらかれた三つの普遍的な経験内容に適用しています。限られた元素とその結合の仕方から無数の化合物を説明する化学になぞらえ、経験の「化学」を目指す試みとして位置づけられています。さらに、説明の良さを測る七つの基準に照らして各説明を評価し、活動や行動が同等であっても基体が指定する構造を変化させれば経験の内容も変化するはずだ、という予測が導かれることを示しています。

Paper Information

Authors:  Matteo Grasso, Jeremiah Hendren, and Giulio Tononi

Title: Consciousness as Intrinsic Structure: Towards a Chemistry of Experience

ArXiv, (2026). Accessed August 26, 2026. 

https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.11398.

Abstract

 To be conscious is to have an experience - not a collection of phenomenal atoms, but a structured whole composed of distinctions and the relations that bind them. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) identifies the essential properties of every experience (axioms), formulates them operationally as postulates that a substrate must satisfy, and unfolds the cause-effect power of the resulting complex into a Φ-structure. Accounting for a content of experience is then a matter of identifying the phenomenal distinctions and relations that compose it, and showing them reflected one-to-one in the causal distinctions and relations of the corresponding Φ-structure. We apply that method to three pervasive contents whose structure is partly open to introspection. Spatial extendedness is composed of spots, whose elemental signature is reflexivity, bound by reflexive inclusion, connection, and fusion; temporal flow is composed of moments, whose signature is directedness, bound by directed inclusion, connection, and fusion; objects bind a particular configuration of features to a general concept through relations bearing the signature of hierarchy. The endeavor is akin to chemistry, which accounts for an endless variety of compounds from a limited set of elements and the ways they bond. We assess these accounts against seven criteria of a good explanation - scope, synthesis, specificity, self-consistency, system consistency, simplicity, and scientific validation - and sketch the prediction that follows: altering the structure specified by a substrate should alter the corresponding content, even when activity and behavior are held comparable. The same method may reach narrow qualia, which resist introspection, and the compound contents that bind many qualia together, though there it remains a proof of concept and an open research program.