---
title: "Integrated information theory · Library · Simulation Hypothesis"
url: https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/integrated-information
description: "Integrated information theory is Giulio Tononi’s proposal that consciousness matches the amount of integrated information (Φ) a system produces, over and above what its parts produce alone."
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
credit: "Ross Allan Dahl, Simulation Hypothesis (simulation-hypothesis.com)"
---

## Philosophy of mind

# Integrated information theory

Definition

Integrated information theory is Giulio Tononi’s proposal that consciousness matches the amount of integrated information (Φ) a system produces, over and above what its parts produce alone.

On this site

It’s one of the few frameworks that could in principle tell us whether a given simulation contains minds. The sandbox doesn’t try the calculation.

Role in the model

IIT puts consciousness in the physical cause-and-effect structure of a system, not in the computation it runs. So on IIT, a brain simulated on ordinary digital hardware would have almost none, whatever it simulates. It’s the best-known theory on which the model’s working premise fails. The sandbox assumes the premise and says so.

Related

[Consciousness](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/consciousness)[Functionalism](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/functionalism)

## The people behind the terms

14 short pages, one per thinker, each with its matching dial. See also the [reading list](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/reading).

[Plato’s cave](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/plato)[Zhuangzi’s butterfly](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/zhuangzi)[Vasubandhu’s dream](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/vasubandhu)[Shankara’s māyā](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/shankara)[al-Ghazali’s doubt](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/ghazali)[Ibn Arabi’s imagination](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/ibn-arabi)[Calderón’s life is a dream](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/calderon)[Descartes’ demon](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/descartes)[Berkeley’s perceiver](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/berkeley)[Borges’ circular ruins](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/borges)[Nozick’s experience machine](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/nozick)[Putnam’s brain in a vat](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/putnam)[Bostrom’s trilemma](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/bostrom)[Chalmers: virtual worlds are real](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/chalmers)