Identity and persistence through change: SMM/DTT and Integrated information theory

01The question behind the comparison

Persistence is the relation by which an object or person continues despite change. In SMM/DTT, a world generated through successive completions invites a pattern-based account: what persists may be a stable organization and its inherited history rather than an unchanged material token. This is a promising way to connect renewed creation with ordinary identity. It also raises a precise question: which continuities are sufficient, and how are rival successors distinguished?

Physical, functional and personal identity need not use the same criterion. A repaired instrument can remain the same instrument through replacement of parts. A mathematical pattern can have many identical copies. A person’s identity involves bodily continuity, memory, commitments and first-person perspective in ways that philosophers contest. Calling all of these retained information does not settle the disagreement. Two copies may carry the same stored information while having different locations and future experiences. A source theory must therefore distinguish qualitative resemblance from numerical identity.

The six nested levels could help articulate a hierarchy of persistence conditions: lower distinctions support relations, relations support an organized readout, and completed records support a history. But the architecture does not automatically establish personal survival or an immortal psychical carrier. Such claims need their own arguments. A physically useful account would first identify stable equivalence classes of generated configurations and the transitions that preserve them. A philosophical account would then ask whether those equivalence classes capture the kind of identity at issue.

02The single-source and nested-time proposal

SMM begins with one nonspatial generative source. DTT distinguishes its inner production from the outer order in which completed results become accessible. The six inner levels are nested functional dependencies within that production; the seventh denotes outer completion. They are not six independent clocks, six spatial directions, or six simultaneously occupied temporal axes. This distinction makes the framework more specific than a general claim that everything changes: it asks how a world of persistent relations can be generated before its spatial representation is taken for granted. ^[2]

03The comparator’s explanatory structure

IIT proposes that experience corresponds to an intrinsic, irreducible cause-effect structure. Its formal analysis concerns a specified system, its state and counterfactual transitions under a chosen modelling scale. It should not be reduced to the claim that more stored bits mean more consciousness. Integration, information and the identification of a subject are separate requirements within the programme.

Consider two independent memory banks storing the same file. Their data agree, but agreement is not the same as an integrated causal organization. Connecting them through reciprocal operations changes the causal model even if the visible file remains the same. This distinction is useful for SMM/DTT: a common source or a completed archive need not constitute one conscious subject. A bridge to IIT would require a transition structure and an account of system boundaries, then a reason to accept IIT’s proposed identity with experience. The mathematical calculation and that identity claim should remain distinguishable. ^[1]

04The precise agreement and difference

IIT identifies a system’s intrinsic causal organization under a specified analysis, while personal persistence concerns a relation across time. Even if one accepts IIT’s account of experience at a moment, a further argument is needed to identify the same subject through changing structures. DTT’s renewed completions raise exactly that additional question. The theories meet at the continuity of causal organization, not at a simple equality between memory and selfhood.

A source model could preserve a recurrent integrated pattern while replacing component tokens. That would support functional continuity. If the pattern is copied into two independent successors, however, one cannot infer that they are numerically one subject merely because their structures initially match. DTT’s retained lineage and access conditions may help distinguish the successors, but phenomenal identity remains an additional philosophical issue. The useful comparison therefore divides the work: integration characterizes an organization, source dynamics explains its continuation, and a subject criterion addresses ownership of experience. The six nested levels can contribute to the first two without being treated as a completed solution to the third. ^[1]

05Worked example: what follows and what does not

Suppose a notebook is copied perfectly, including its history. The copies are qualitatively identical at the copying moment, but one can later be edited while the other remains unchanged. They are therefore two objects with a shared informational ancestor. If a renewal theory identified identity with data alone, it would have difficulty distinguishing them. Adding causal lineage helps: each successor has a particular relation to the copying event. For persons, however, lineage alone may still leave questions about subjecthood. The example shows why memory is essential to a persistence account without making memory a complete definition of identity.

06What this comparison contributes

A strong SMM/DTT account can make persistence a lawful achievement of generation. It should state which features are conserved, how successors inherit them and what counts as interruption. This has value even without settling every metaphysical dispute: it clarifies what a generated world must preserve to support stable objects and accountable histories. Comparisons then become concrete disagreements about identity criteria rather than vague contrasts between static substances and flowing processes.

THE SAME QUESTION, DIFFERENT STARTING POINTS

The comparison at a glance

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