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Consequently, two extreme answers have become mainstream: composition (the forming of a whole by its parts) happens under no or all conditions. In this paper, we provide a self-contained introduction to the integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness. We show that IIT specifies a non-trivial restriction on composition: composition happens when integrated information is maximized. We compare the IIT restriction to existing proposals and argue that the IIT restriction has significant advantages, especially in response to the problems of vagueness and counterexamples. An appendix provides an introduction to calculating parts and wholes with a simple system.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1093\/nc\/niad013","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,6,2]],"date-time":"2023-06-02T22:27:04Z","timestamp":1685744824000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":5,"title":["When do parts form wholes? Integrated information as the restriction on mereological composition"],"prefix":"10.1093","volume":"2023","author":[{"given":"Kelvin J","family":"McQueen","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Philosophy Department, Chapman University , California, United States"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4216-8701","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Naotsugu","family":"Tsuchiya","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health & School of Psychological Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing, and Health Sciences, Monash University , Melbourne, Victoria, Australia"},{"name":"Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNet), National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) , Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan"},{"name":"Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institutes International (ATR) , 2-2-2 Hikaridai, Seika-cho, Soraku-gun, 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