A CISR-Based Critique of Integrated Information Theory (IIT)

Description This paper offers a focused and restrained critique of Integrated Information Theory (IIT), aimed not at rejecting the theory, but at clarifying the limits of what it can legitimately explain. Rather than disputing IIT’s mathematical framework or its empirical motivations, the paper examines how IIT’s formal measures—particularly Φ and causal –structural descriptions—are interpreted in relation to conscious experience. Using the CISR framework as a methodological constraint, the paper distinguishes experiential registration from neural–functional description and formal representation. Within this lens, IIT is treated as a powerful tool for characterizing integration and causal organization, while its stronger claims about phenomenology are examined for possible category errors arising from cross-layer conflation. The analysis shows that many well-known controversies surrounding IIT stem not from empirical failure, but from interpretive overreach—specifically, the identification of formal structure with experience itself. The aim of this work is not to replace IIT with a competing causal theory, but to reframe the debate by enforcing clearer explanatory boundaries. When IIT is situated within appropriate limits, its contributions remain valuable, while its most contentious conclusions lose their apparent force. This critique is conditional and methodological in scope: it follows if one accepts CISR as a constraint on explanatory interpretation rather than as an ontological theory of consciousness.