The Brain as a Filter: Introducing a Quantum Ground into Integrated Information Theory

Abstract

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is an influential framework for understanding the link between the brain’s neural structure and consciousness. However, based on arguments that purely structural explanations, such as IIT, cannot address the hard problem of consciousness, I supplement IIT with an intrinsic element that includes properties extending beyond the purely structural, and which, according to arguments within philosophy of mind, provides the basis for conscious experience. I argue that a promising candidate for such an intrinsic element is the ontologically fundamental domain of the quantum wave function. Introducing this fundamental reality, or quantum ground, as an intrinsic element within IIT’s framework leads to interpreting the brain as a kind of filter or tuner that supports a range of experience from a more fundamental source of consciousness. For this approach, I propose the term Filter Integrated Information Theory (FIIT), which does not change IIT’s formalism, yet views its structure as grounded on an ontologically deeper source of consciousness. In addition, I consider how this new interpretation can assist toward improving our understanding in recent empirical research on psychedelics and meditation, as well as anomalous mind-matter perturbation.