Free-energy-based variational principles provide a powerful framework for describing perception, inference, and decision making. The Free Energy Principle (FEP) is one prominent realization of this idea, but its standard formulation is usually expressed in terms of classical probabilistic generative models. Here, we propose an FEP-inspired, quantum-like variational approach by integrating...
Recent work in the structural approach to consciousness has shown great promise as a research paradigm for the formal and empirical study of the phenomenal qualities of experience, i.e., qualia. In this paradigm, qualia are characterized by modeling the internal organization of parts within an experience, or by modeling external relations between instances of experience. A major next step for...
Integrated information theory (IIT) starts from the existence of consciousness and characterizes its essential properties: every experience is intrinsic, specific, unitary, definite, and structured. IIT then formulates existence and its essential properties operationally in terms of cause-effect power of a substrate of units. Here, we address IIT's operational requirements for existence by...
Could there be quantum superpositions of conscious states, as suggested by the Wigner's friend thought experiment? Mathematical theories of consciousness, notably integrated information theory (IIT), make this question more precise by associating physical systems with both quantitative amounts of consciousness and structural characterizations of conscious states. Motivated by a recent proposal...
The organization of consciousness is described through increasingly rich theoretical models. We review evidence that working memory capacity—essential to generating consciousness in the cerebral cortex—is supported by dual limbic memory systems. These dorsal (Papez) and ventral (Yakovlev) limbic networks provide the basis for mnemonic processing and prediction in the dorsal and ventral...
Meaningful information represents reality in its potential form, and its actualization increases the system's negentropy. Biological evolution leads to the expansion of meaningful information by generating new coding systems (codepoiesis). Through this expansion, any evolutionary change obtains functional value when it receives an interpretation through which it gives rise to a meaningful...
The Thoughtseeds Framework introduces a novel computational approach to modeling thought dynamics in meditative states, conceptualizing thoughtseeds as dynamic attentional agents that integrate information. This hierarchical model, structured as nested Markov blankets, comprises three interconnected levels: (i) knowledge domains as information repositories, (ii) the Thoughtseed Network where...
Theories of consciousness grounded in neuroscience must explain the phenomenal binding problem, e.g., how micro-units of information are combined to create the macro-scale conscious experience common to human phenomenology. An example is how single 'pixels' of a visual scene are experienced as a single holistic image in the 'mind's eye', rather than as individual, separate, and massively...
This perspective explores various quantum models of consciousness from the viewpoint of quantum information science, offering potential ideas and insights. The models under consideration can be categorized into three distinct groups based on the level at which quantum mechanics might operate within the brain: those suggesting that consciousness arises from electron delocalization within...
We present and develop local prospect theory (LPT), a novel framework for understanding consciousness, and, in particular, subjective experience and free will. While predictive processing (PP) theories model the brain as trying to optimize the accuracy of predictions, LPT sees uncertainty as an essential feature of conscious decision-making. This is achieved by creating a "local prospect"-a...
In the Kolmogorov Theory of Consciousness, algorithmic agents utilize inferred compressive models to track coarse-grained data produced by simplified world models, capturing regularities that structure subjective experience and guide action planning. Here, we study the dynamical aspects of this framework by examining how the requirement of tracking natural data drives the structural and...
The representation of intelligence is achieved by patterns of connections among neurons in brains and machines. Brains grow continuously, such that their patterns of connections develop through activity-dependent specification, with the continuing ontogenesis of individual experience. The theory of active inference proposes that the developmental organization of sentient systems reflects...
Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is one of the most prominent candidates for a theory of consciousness, although it has received much criticism for trying to live up to expectations. Based on the relevance of three issues generalized from the developments of IITs, we have summarized the main ideas of IIT into two levels. At the second level, IIT claims to be strictly anchoring consciousness,...
Without proven causal power, consciousness cannot be integrated with physics except as an epiphenomenon, hence the term 'hard problem'. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) side-steps the issue by stating that subjective experience must be identical to informational physical structures whose cause-and-effect power is greater than the sum of their parts. But the focus on spatially oriented...
The question of what generates conscious experience has mesmerized thinkers since the dawn of humanity, yet its origins remain a mystery. The topic of consciousness has gained traction in recent years, thanks to the development of large language models that now arguably pass the Turing test, an operational test for intelligence. However, intelligence and consciousness are not related in obvious...
Cognitive science is confronted by several fundamental anomalies deriving from the mind-body problem. Most prominent is the problem of mental causation and the hard problem of consciousness, which can be generalized into the hard problem of agential efficacy and the hard problem of mental content. Here, it is proposed to accept these explanatory gaps at face value and to take them as positive...
The concept of the brain's own time and space is central to many models and theories that aim to explain how the brain generates consciousness. For example, the temporo-spatial theory of consciousness postulates that the brain implements its own inner time and space for conscious processing of the outside world. Furthermore, our perception and cognition of time and space can be different from...
It has been shown that the theory of relativity can be applied physically to the functioning brain, so that the brain connectome should be considered as a four-dimensional spacetime entity curved by brain activity, just as gravity curves the four-dimensional spacetime of the physical world. Following the most recent developments in modern theoretical physics (black hole entropy, holographic...
The quest to comprehend the nature of consciousness has spurred the development of many theories that seek to explain its underlying mechanisms and account for its neural correlates. In this paper, I compare my own conscious electromagnetic information field (cemi field) theory with integrated information theory (IIT) and global workspace theory (GWT) for their ability to 'carve nature at its...
Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is currently one of the most influential scientific theories of consciousness. Here, we focus specifically on a metaphysical aspect of the theory's most recent version (IIT 4.0), what we may call its idealistic ontology, and its tension with a kind of realism about the external world that IIT also endorses. IIT 4.0 openly rejects the mainstream view that...
Integrated information theory (IIT) is a powerful tool that provides a framework for evaluating consciousness, whether in the human brain or in other systems. In Computing the Integrated Information of a Quantum Mechanism, the authors extend IIT from digital gates to a quantum CNOT logic gate, and while they explicitly distinguish the analysis from quantum theories of consciousness, they...
It has been shown that three-dimensional self-assembled multicellular structures derived from human pluripotent stem cells show electrical activity similar to EEG. More recently, neurons were successfully embedded in digital game worlds. The biologically inspired neural network (BNN), expressing human cortical cells, was able to show internal modification and learn the task at hand (predicting...
Resilience is a basic trait of cognitive systems and fundamentally connected to their autopoietic organization. It plays a vital role in maintaining the identity of cognitive systems in the face of external threats and perturbances. However, when examining resilience in the context of autopoiesis, an overlooked issue arises: the autopoietic theory formulated by Maturana and Varela (1980)...
Cognitive science is lacking conceptual tools to describe how an agent's motivations, as such, can play a role in the generation of its behavior. The enactive approach has made progress by developing a relaxed naturalism, and by placing normativity at the core of life and mind; all cognitive activity is a kind of motivated activity. It has rejected representational architectures, especially...
Originally conceived as a theory of consciousness, integrated information theory (IIT) provides a theoretical framework intended to characterize the compositional causal information that a system, in its current state, specifies about itself. However, it remains to be determined whether IIT as a theory of consciousness is compatible with quantum mechanics as a theory of microphysics. Here, we...