Federico Pigozzi
Tufts University (Levin laboratory)
Integrated information Consciousness is intrinsic causal power, measured as integrated information
Federico Pigozzi is a researcher in Michael Levin’s laboratory at Tufts University whose work gives causal emergence, Erik Hoel’s theory of higher-level causation, its strongest biological and machine-learning applications. His line runs in three connected steps. The 2025 Communications Biology paper with Adam Goldstein and Levin showed that associative conditioning in gene regulatory network models increases integrative causal emergence, evidence that learning-like processes and emergence scales move together. The 2026 preprint “The Causally Emergent Alignment Hypothesis” then proposed that alignment in artificial systems is itself a causally emergent property, examined on this site in the Pigozzi-Levin alignment analysis.
The program reaches in two further directions relevant to this site. With Levin, Pigozzi modeled catalytic networks relevant to the origin of life and found causal architecture rising before self-replicators arrive, covered in the causal emergence before self-replicators analysis. Emergence, on that result, precedes the systems biology usually credited with it. And with Cirrito and Levin, Pigozzi demonstrated AI-guided resetting of memories in gene regulatory network models, an intervention result that treats network memory as an editable, higher-level object.
For the consciousness debate, the position this work defends is that emergence is measurable, trainable, and manipulable rather than a metaphysical label. That aligns with the site’s measurement discipline: if higher-level causal structure can be quantified and shown to grow with learning, then claims about emergent minds inherit a quantity they can be wrong about, in both biological and artificial systems.
Known for. The causally emergent alignment hypothesis, causal emergence in gene regulatory networks, AI-guided memory resetting, causal architecture before self-replicators
Coverage on this site
- Causal Emergence Appears Before Self-Replicators in Catalytic Networks September 2026
- Causal Emergence Predicts Reward in Reinforcement Learning Agents July 2026
Related researchers
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Michael LevinAllen Discovery Center, Tufts UniversityBioelectric signalling, the cognitive light cone, and diverse intelligence
- Larissa AlbantakisUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison, Center for Sleep and ConsciousnessIntegrated Information Theory 4.0 and dissociating intelligence from consciousness in artificial systems
- Costas AnastassiouAllen InstituteEphaptic coupling of cortical neurons, endogenous electric fields as causal participants in neural activity, extracellular field biophysics
- Anton ArkhipovAllen Institute for Brain ScienceLarge-scale neural simulation, biophysically detailed cortical models, AIBRAIN program, State of Brain Emulation Report 2025
- Nihat AyHamburg University of Technology; external professor, Santa Fe Institute; honorary professor, Leipzig UniversityInformation geometry and information-theoretic measures of complexity and causal integration
- Bernard J. BaarsThe Neurosciences InstituteGlobal Workspace Theory (GWT), cognitive architecture of conscious access, A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness (1988), In the Theater of Consciousness (1997)
Federico Pigozzi is listed with the other integrated information theorists, who hold that consciousness is intrinsic causal power, measured as integrated information. The theory family behind that position is set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.