Whenever I see the term "consciousness" in a paper, it automatically gets flagged in my head as non-serious. But I work in AI, so maybe that shouldn't apply to whatever your field is. That brings me to the next problem: I can't figure out what your field is supposed to be from this paper. It's lacking the background and prior work sections that would serve to position your work into the greater context of existing work.
Thanks for the critique — fair points. A few clarifications directly based on the ICT Model v1.1 (the version linked in the post):
- About “consciousness” as a red flag
In the paper “consciousness” is used operationally, not philosophically.
ICT defines it strictly as:
C ∝ dI/dT — rate of informational change over time (Section 1.1, Eq. 2)
No metaphysics, no claims about qualia — only measurable information dynamics (entropy-rate, LZ-complexity rate, update-energy).
- What field the work belongs to
Also clarified in v1.1: ICT sits at the intersection of:
information physics,
thermodynamics of computation,
temporal dynamics,
neuroscience of information processing.
(Sections 1.1, 2, and Correspondence Table)
The model does not present itself as philosophy of mind.
- Background / prior work
v1.1 explicitly connects the framework to:
Landauer limit,
Bekenstein bounds,
Friston’s free-energy principle,
algorithmic complexity measures,
temporal stability / phase structure.
(All referenced in Sections 1.1–2)
- Falsifiable predictions
The paper includes three concrete experiments (Section 8) designed for empirical testing:
-
Neuroenergetic test of dI/dT
-
Structure-without-energy input experiment
-
Cross-substrate information-fixation thresholds
All with operational variables, not philosophical language.
- Summary
Your comment is useful — especially about clearly signaling the disciplinary context. But everything I’ve referenced above is directly in the v1.1 preprint and defines ICT as a physical/informational model, not a metaphysical one.
Happy to refine further if needed.
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