Any system that persists must minimise surprisal, thereby gathering evidence for its own generative model, a process known as self-evidencing. However, one dimension of self-evidencing is provably impossible: evidencing the boundary that would constitute the agent as an entity separate from their environment. Recent results in quantum information theory demonstrate that no finite system can...
Multiple theoretical models of dissociative experiences have been formulated over the last century. These theories are clinically useful; however, it remains unclear if common factors exist in various pathways leading to an onset of dissociations. In this paper we provide a framework for building an integrated, dynamical model of dissociative experiences. This framework combines a...
This paper examines the constraints that the free-energy principle (FEP) places on possible model of consciousness, particularly models of attentional control and imaginative experiences, including episodic memory and planning. We first rehearse the classical and quantum formulations of the FEP, focusing on their application to multi-component systems, in which only some components interact...
This paper aims to assess whether the recently proposed "inner screen model" of consciousness that follows from the free-energy principle (FEP) can be regarded as a minimal unifying model (MUM) of consciousness, thereby providing a common foundational model for consciousness studies, and integrating approaches to consciousness based on the FEP. We first present the inner screen model, which...
This paper presents a model of consciousness that follows directly from the free- energy principle (FEP). We first rehearse the classical and quantum formulations of the FEP. In particular, we consider the “inner screen hypothesis” that follows from the quantum information theoretic version of the FEP. We then review applications of the FEP to the known sparse (nested and hierarchical)...
A theory of consciousness, whatever else it may do, must address the structure of experience. Our perceptual experiences are richly structured. Simply seeing a red apple, swaying between green leaves on a stout tree, involves symmetries, geometries, orders, topologies, and algebras of events. Are these structures also present in the world, fully independent of their observation? Perceptual...