Consciousness science is fragmented, with theories operating orthogonally and accumulating anomalies. The principle of recurrency—functional and architectural feedback loops—offers a unifying scaffold. All theories tacitly invoke feedback loops and can be re-expressed along a single axis of recursion. Four nested levels (cellular, local inter-areal, global, and lateral) map onto state, phenomenal content, manipulative access, and experiential similarity, tying evolved anatomy to phenomenon. The phenomenal-versus-access distinction dissolves into a graded cascade where deeper recursion expands reportable variables. Recurrence is evolutionarily favored, rebutting feed-forward objections, while brain-body loops ground selfhood. Clinically, targeting recurrent pathways promises new biomarkers and alleviation in disorders of consciousness.
Two major theoretical frameworks—the Free Energy Principle, which describes how self-organizing systems maintain order, and Integrated Information Theory, which aims to mathematically characterize conscious experience—are brought together. Analyzing data from an earlier evolutionary simulation, the authors show that agents' surprisal (a measure from the Free Energy Principle) decreases as their fitness and neural integration increase over evolutionary time. Furthermore, surprisal fluctuates in tandem with IIT-based measures of consciousness within individual trials. This suggests that IIT's consciousness measures are partly shaped by the agent's interaction with its environment, making a formal link between the two theories possible.
The mainstream science of consciousness includes several prominent theories about how the brain produces awareness, such as Higher Order Thought Theory, Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, and Integrated Information Theory. Meanwhile, predictive processing approaches are providing concrete mechanisms for how interoceptive inference shapes selfhood, affect, and perception. This work examines what these newer approaches can contribute to empirical, phenomenological, and philosophical understanding of consciousness and its neurobiological foundations.