Why does consciousness feel like something, and why is experience unified rather than fragmented? We propose that these properties arise from an entangled trefoil of emotion, interference-based inference and hierarchical orchestration, shaped by the thermodynamic constraint that living systems must remain far from equilibrium using limited energy. Emotion compresses actions into valenced...
The question of AI consciousness is one of the most urgent pre-emptive problems in philosophy and computer science, yet progress is hampered by a cacophony of competing theories that often talk past each other. Separating the hard problem from the mapping problem allows the deepest metaphysical disagreements to be set aside: granting that experience supervenes on a system's organisation, the...
We propose three entangled characteristics that explain the functional properties of consciousness: Emotion, quantum-like interference and hierarchy. The argument proceeds from thermodynamic first principles. Biological systems must stay far from equilibrium at minimal energy cost, and emotion is one of evolution’s heuristic solutions to this constraint. Valenced summary statistics compress the...
Minimal Phenomenal Experiences (MPEs) are states of consciousness in which wakefulness is preserved but phenomenal content is low or absent. The Entropic Brain Hypothesis (EBH) is a model of conscious processes that regards the entropy of spontaneous brain activity as a marker of 'phenomenal richness', exemplified by high-content psychedelic experiences (HCPEs). Yet recent human neuroimaging...
As artificial intelligence (AI) improves, current alignment strategies may falter in the face of unpredictable self-improvement and the sheer complexity of AI. Rather than trying to control behavior, we show how four principles from contemplative traditions can help intrinsically align (super) intelligence. First, mindfulness enables self-monitoring and recalibration of emergent subgoals....
Can active inference model consciousness? We offer three conditions implying that it can. The first condition is the simulation of a world model, which determines what can be known or acted upon; namely an epistemic field. The second is inferential competition to enter the world model. Only the inferences that coherently reduce long-term uncertainty win, evincing a selection for consciousness...
Minimal Phenomenal Experiences (MPEs) represent states of consciousness reduced to their most fundamental elements, posing a unique challenge and opportunity for modeling consciousness. This paper introduces a novel computational framework based on Bayesian and active inference to model MPEs. We propose that MPEs arise when precision weighting shifts predominantly to the lower levels of a...
ABSTRACT Meditation is an ancient practice that is shown to yield benefits for cognition, emotion regulation and human flourishing. In the last two decades, there has been a surge of interest in extracting the neural correlates of meditation, in particular of mindfulness meditation. Yet, these efforts have been mostly limited to the analysis of certain regions or networks of interest and a...
This theoretical article revives a classical bridging construct, canalization, to describe a new model of a general factor of psychopathology. To achieve this, we have distinguished between two types of plasticity, an early one that we call 'TEMP' for 'Temperature or Entropy Mediated Plasticity', and another, we call 'canalization', which is close to Hebbian plasticity. These two forms of...
Minimal Phenomenal Experiences (MPEs) present a paradox for theories of consciousness.Defined by phenomenological simplicity, they are nonetheless accompanied by unexpectedly highneural signal diversity. Traditionally, entropy has been interpreted as a marker ofphenomenological richness, exemplified by psychedelic states. Yet MPEs such as advancedabsorptive meditation (jhāna) or 5-MeO-DMT...