Big Bang consciousness: IIT 4.0 and the origin of subjective experience

Abstract

This paper addresses a problem that arises from the ontological commitments of Integrated Information Theory (IIT) 4.0, particularly its stance that only conscious entities truly exist. This position leads to the "origin of consciousness problem": if non-conscious entities do not truly exist, how could consciousness have evolved from non-conscious ancestors? We explore several responses IIT might offer, such as the co-origin of life and consciousness, or the idea that non-conscious ancestors might have been constituted by "ontological dust"—minimally conscious, intrinsic micro-entities collectively aggregated to form bigger objects lacking unified consciousness. Our analysis shows that IIT’s ontological framework, along with scientific knowledge regarding biological evolution, prebiotic chemical structures, and physical cosmology, ultimately forces the theory into positing a form of "Big Bang consciousness", that is, a primordial ontological dust constituted by minimally conscious elementary particles created soon after the Big Bang. Although IIT may accept this striking implication, we think that it introduces tensions with both the received scientific view of the evolutionary origin of consciousness and the cosmological understanding of early universe components. We also present but ultimately reject an alternative option based on what we call the “formless stuff hypothesis”, which might avoid the implication that consciousness originates from nothing as well as the necessity of a "Big Bang consciousness”. We conclude by suggesting that IIT's metaphysical commitments, especially the equation true existence=phenomenal existence, require re-examination to reconcile its framework with standard scientific knowledge, and in particular, with the received view about the phylogenetic origin of consciousness.