The Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness and the UFO phenomenon

There seems to be a strong correlation between close encounters with UFOs/UAP and psychological effects on the experiencer. Can a mainstream scientific theory of consciousness elucidate the consciousness aspect of the UFO phenomenon?

Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), “Buddha's Standpoint in the Earthly Life” (1920), courtesy Hamburger Bahnhof. Wikimedia commons.

This article is a modified version of a blog post I wrote on September 2020. I publish it here now, because the consciousness aspect of the UFO phenomenon has lately been getting some more attention in the general conversation about UFOs/UAP.

People familiar with the UFO topic are aware of the long history of biological and psychological effects on individuals who come into proximity of a UFO. However, this article will not overview past cases or recent discussions of the connection between UFO encounters and psychological effects. For a recent conversation about the consciousness aspect of the UFO phenomenon, you can watch and listen to an interview with Gary Nolan, professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, on Lex Fridman Podcast (February 6, 2022).

Before we dive into the purpose of this article, I want to point out at the beginning that I presume the reader is relatively familiar with the UFO phenomenon and its connection to consciousness in particular.

Introduction

This article presents the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness (IIT) and how it might apply to the study of the UFO phenomenon. Through the theoretical framework of IIT, we can ask what a person’s altered perception/experience of reality in connection to a UFO encounter can teach us about the nature and/or intent of the UFO phenomenon (the nature and intent of at least some part of the UFO phenomenon). We can also look at the question of what the effects of UFOs/UAP on human psychology may tell us about the abilities of human consciousness through the theoretical lens of IIT.

So keep those two questions in mind as you read on. In the following, I will start with a crude overview of what IIT postulates about consciousness. After that, I will try to explain in what ways IIT might apply to the study of the consciousness aspect of the UFO phenomenon.

What is the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness?

The Integrated Information Theory (IIT) was developed by Dr Giulio Tononi and collaborators at the Wisconsin Institute of Sleep and Consciousness at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I cannot claim to understand IIT in-depth, so I will let Dr Tononi himself summarize IIT in the video presentation at the end of this article. You can also read Dr Tononi's first research article (2004) on IIT here.

An easy-to-understand article about IIT, written and curated by Dr Tononi (2015), can be found on Scholarpedia.

Even though I cannot claim to understand the mathematics of IIT, I will, nevertheless, give my interpretation of what some of IIT's main concepts are.

As always, the best way to learn and understand a subject, or an aspect of a subject, is to study first-hand sources. Thus, do not trust my interpretation of IIT to be accurate. What follows is my level of understanding of IIT at this moment:

• The axioms of IIT are intrinsic existence, composition, information, integration, and exclusion. They are the five essential properties (axioms) of consciousness (of every experience).
• Consciousness, or experience, is about existence and “being”, rather than function and “doing”. Existence is cause-effect power within the system (human) itself. If something exists, it might have a high or low degree of consciousness, depending on its strength of cause-effect power. Consciousness can be graded.
• An experience has a specific geometry. Every experience is definite, differentiated, and integrated information: the quality of an experience is a “form”, or “shape”, in cause-effect space.
• The physical world (matter) is a postulate created by consciousness or inner subjectivity. Therefore, you have to start with the five essential properties (axioms) of consciousness and then infer what kind of properties physical systems must have to account for its essential properties. That is, you have to start with the experience itself and then ask why the five essential properties of every experience are the way they are: What are the properties required of the physical substrate (the postulates of IIT) of experience?
• The axioms (the phenomenology) and the postulates (the neurobiology) converge (identity as postulated by IIT). Consciousness is fundamental to physical systems with properties postulated by IIT, just as mass is fundamental to certain particles.

Obviously, my interpretation of IIT is simplified and coarse, so I recommend everyone interested to read Dr Tononi’s overview on Scholarpedia and other research articles by him and his collaborators (see the link above to the Wisconsin Institute of Sleep and Consciousness).

You can, and should, question the axioms of IIT (the axioms can be seen as premises to support the postulates (conclusions)), and other parts of the theory, just like you should question any other theory. For instance, ask yourself whether IIT is falsifiable.

IIT applied to the consciousness aspect of UFOs

Why might IIT be relevant regarding the consciousness aspect of the UFO phenomenon? Assuming my understanding of the main concepts of IIT is correct, then consciousness as a system of integrated information can be a useful framework when trying to understand the surreal changes of perception of space and time, which is a common feature in experiencers´ encounters with something unknown (UFOs or phenomena at places like Skinwalker Ranch).

Dr Tononi and his collaborators postulate that intrinsic information is radically different from external information. Intrinsic information is what it “feels like” to be you. So, what you are (or your experience of being you) is identical to your intrinsically integrated information. No one else has your particular set of integrated information, and that is why I cannot fully know what it is to be you, or vice versa. The cause of your variety of experiences is the ability of your intrinsically integrated information to instantiate differences within itself (cause-effect power, feedback loops).

If you understand the meaning of what I have said in the paragraph above, then you already realize the relevance of ITT to the study of the consciousness aspect of the UFO phenomenon (henceforth “the Phenomenon”). Again, in what follows, we assume IIT is a reasonable, testable theory of consciousness, and that my interpretation of ITT is accurate.

Is every experience constituted of or caused by a specific pattern or geometry of information? The more complex the system of integrated information is, the more aware the system is of its own existence. The system can at a minimum differentiate between what information is internal (“I”) and what information is external (“the world”). It is the beginning of a binary experience of being a specific organism that can move around in a space. Movement is made possible by space, but space also restricts movement. An organism encloses its inner space. It is both protection and restriction.

Now, what if a person's altered perception, or experience, of space and time, as often told by experiencers, is caused by the Phenomenon's capability to perceive, access, and manipulate the mathematical structure (i.e., your intrinsically integrated information that has physical substrates) of a person's consciousness? If the quality of your every experience is a specific geometrical “form”, as IIT postulates, then, in principle, it should be possible to access and manipulate (I use the word in a neutral sense) someone's perception of reality. In other words, the Phenomenon might have the ability/capability to change the geometrical form of a person's experience of reality. Could it be one explanation why witnesses to the same UFO encounter perceive and experience, in some cases, very different chain of events, different emotional reactions, etc.?

Furthermore, when experiencers report that they have floated through a brick wall, or that entities came through a solid wall, are these physical events, or the result of some manipulation of the experiencers’ integrated information (consciousness), which causes an illusion or a hallucination? If yes, a physical being with some advanced technology could do the manipulation. There are, however, more esoteric alternatives too. But I am not sure how far I can draw the implications and predictions of IIT, so I stop here.

So perhaps the surreal changes of perception/experience of space and time are caused by some unknown entity and/or technology, manipulating the way an information system (a brain, a consciousness) instantiates cause and effect within itself (i.e., creates meaningful experiences = patterns of information)? I think that is the main question that IIT might be helpful to explain regarding the consciousness aspect of the UFO phenomenon.

Even though I just said that I am not sure if IIT can support more esoteric alternatives as to the cause of the manipulations of someone’s experience of space and time, I think it's worthwhile to apply IIT to Jacques Vallée’s paper “Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects” (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol 4, №1, pp. 105–117, 1990). I am thinking about what Vallée writes in his fifth argument (“Physical Considerations,” pp. 114–115) and in “New Hypotheses” (pp. 115- 116). For example, on page 116, Vallée writes:

British researcher Randles has stressed that the analysis of the discourse of abductees consistently reveals a breakpoint in time, after which the percipient leaves normal reality behind. On the “other side” of this boundary, ordinary space-time physics no longer seems to apply and the percipient moves as if within a lucid dream (or indeed a lucid nightmare) until returned to the normal world.

IIT might be even more relevant to another paper by Dr Jacques Vallée (co-authored by Dr Eric W. Davis), “Incommensurability, Orthodoxy and the Physics of High Strangeness: A 6-layer Model for Anomalous Phenomena” (2003).

A young Jacques Vallée (b. 1939).

Perhaps a controversial but still mainstream theory of consciousness such as IIT could be a tool for UFO researchers interested in the consciousness aspect to better understand the UFO phenomenon and the experiencer aspect (abductees, contactees)?

Maybe a theory like IIT could, at a minimum, stimulate to new discussions on how it is possible to leave “normal reality behind” and move “as if within a lucid dream” (or “lucid nightmare”)? What can the encounters and altered experiences of space-time of “the percipient” tell about the UFO phenomenon’s nature and intent, and about human consciousness?

Below is the presentation (duration 20 minutes) of ITT by Dr Giulio Tononi. I can also recommend this more comprehensive lecture (you can go to the 37:55 minute mark into the lecture) on IIT by one of Dr Tononi’s collaborators, neuroscientist Christof Koch: https://youtu.be/LGd8p-GSLgY.

“Giulio Tononi on Consciousness.” Uploaded by YouTube channel Foundational Questions Institute (FXQi) on May 10, 2017. Duration: 20:28 minutes.