Consciousness as Uncommon Self-Knowledge: A Synergistic Information Framework
arXiv Preprint Archive May 11, 2026 Krti Tallam
A proposed criterion for consciousness, uncommon self-knowledge (USK), is the synergistic information a system carries about itself that exists only in the joint of its subsystems and is destroyed by decomposition. Drawing on information theory, the framework distinguishes consciousness (synergistic self-knowledge) from metacognition (redundant self-knowledge) and claims to resolve counterexamples to Integrated Information Theory, Global Workspace Theory, and Higher-Order Thought theories. It yields empirical predictions, including a timing dissociation in Global Workspace Theory where consciousness correlates with pre-broadcast synergy formation, and a dissociation between self-report and task-performance disruption under middle-layer perturbation in large language models. The proposal is consistent with findings that anaesthesia and Alzheimer's disease reduce synergistic information processing while preserving or increasing redundancy.