Event Horizons, Spacetime Geometry, and the Limits of Integrated Consciousness
arXiv Preprint Archive December 28, 2025 Jonathon Sendall
A conscious field cannot remain unified across a black hole event horizon, according to integration-based theories of consciousness such as Integrated Information Theory, Global Workspace Theory, and Predictive Processing. These theories require a single strongly connected component in a causal graph for unity. Because no such component can span an event horizon, the conscious field bifurcates: each causally connected subsystem independently satisfies the criteria for a unified field. The number and boundaries of conscious fields thus depend on both the substrate's internal architecture and the relativistic causal structure of spacetime, a dependency that becomes apparent only when the horizon withdraws the ordinary abundance of causal connectivity.