The study of consciousness is divided between mechanistic accounts that overlook subjective experience and phenomenological approaches limited to neural correlates. We propose a unified framework by grounding our ConCrit model of consciousness and critical brain dynamics within Spinoza's ontological monism. Spinoza's principle of psycho-physical parallelism-mind and body as attributes of one...
The quest to understand consciousness has spawned numerous theories, each offering unique perspectives but none achieving universal acceptance. While these theories provide valuable insights, they often serve more as guiding narratives than mechanistic frameworks for empirical validation. Here, we propose that incorporating critical brain dynamics - the idea that neural networks operate near a...