Vijay Shankar Sharma
Vijay Shankar Sharma
This page uses Papers 20 and 21 only. It does not lean on Layers 3–6. Criteria follow Kanai and Fujisawa. IIT is Giulio Tononi's Integrated Information Theory. BFUT is the Consciousness Index and Vijay's Law as stated in P20 and P21.
| Criterion | IIT | BFUT P20 and P21 |
|---|---|---|
| Universality | Partial. Not carried through to non-biological systems as a working measure. | Yes. Derived from Spaticle field physics. Applies from a hydrogen atom to plants, animals, and engineered systems with mass. |
| Intrinsic property | Partial. Φ is defined as intrinsic causal power, but the measure is not an independently observed physical structure. | Yes. CI0 is structural: channel capacity A, integration density N, control depth K. No observer judgement is required to assign the terms. |
| Mathematical formulation of constituents | Φ is defined. It is abstract and has no physical substrate. | Yes. CI0 = CI_floor + C × Ω(V) × (1 + 0.38A) × N^1.3 × K^1.2. Every term is physically derived, not fitted after the fact. |
| Graded consciousness | Yes. Φ is graded. | Yes. Vijay's Law: no physical system has zero consciousness. CI_floor > 0. The scale is open above the human average. |
| Physical substrate | None. Φ is informational structure without a derived field or force sequence. | Yes. Grounded in the Spaticle field channel hierarchy (Papers 14–18) and the sequential emergence of the four forces from one substrate. |
| Non-biological systems with numbers | In principle. In practice Φ is computationally intractable for real systems. | Yes. A 100-species dataset across nine biological categories, reproducible parameter by parameter. |
| Cross-species scale | Not available as a published working scale for real organisms. | Yes. One scale. Example values stated in the comparison record: viruses CI0 = 14.2, bacteria 27.3, trees 37.2, single cells 13.8. |
| Falsifiable predictions | Disputed. Subject of the 2023 Nature open letter controversy that labelled IIT unfalsifiable. | Yes. Five explicit falsifiable predictions in Papers 20 and 21, each testable with existing protocols. |
| Combination problem | Unresolved. How micro-Φ becomes a unified experience is not solved. | Yes. Capability = Channel × Transduction × Network × Control. Each factor is defined and measurable at every scale. |
| Evolution | None. | Yes. Evolution is progressive expansion of Spaticle field channel accessibility. Each step is a structural acquisition of a new channel coupling. |
| Emotions and governance | None. | Connected in the six-layer programme. Layer 4 and Layer 5 use the same physical mechanism. Those layers are not required for the P20/P21 comparison itself. |
| Specificity problem (Shevlin 2021) | Not addressed. | Yes. A, N, and K are read at each system's own scale. No human template is projected onto trees, bacteria, or viruses. |
| Role of quantum mechanics | Not required. | Not required for the consciousness measure. Quantum phenomena are treated separately in the substrate programme. |
| Empirical track | Extensive testing, contested interpretation. | Tied to measured biophysical quantities and the 100-species CI dataset. |
| Scope | Confined to consciousness studies. | The same substrate programme that derives cosmology, particle physics, and gravitation. P20 and P21 are the consciousness step of that chain, not a standalone school of mind. |
| Reception | Formal controversy in the research literature. | Published on Zenodo. Not yet a journal-of-record debate. The comparison is on the content of the theories, not on citation count. |
IIT defines consciousness as intrinsic causal structure and then cannot compute Φ for living systems of real size. The Consciousness Index names the physical terms, assigns numbers across species, and states tests. That is the difference this page records.