Environmental Memory as a Physical Constraint on Theories of Consciousness

Abstract

Environmental Memory as a Physical Constraint on Theories of Consciousness For years I treated Integrated Information Theory (IIT) as the most promising route toward a principled account of consciousness - and traces of that commitment are visible in my earlier texts. IIT offered a rigorous ambition: to connect phenomenology to formal structure. However, as the conceptual pair Two Pillars (Reconstruction and Homeostasis) emerged, and later solidified into Active Memory Engineering (AME), my view of Tononi’s framework shifted. Two Pillars and AME forced a different methodological emphasis: not the static evaluation of informational structure at a snapshot in time, but the trajectory-level problem of stability in open systems - systems embedded in environments with feedback, delay, and memory.From this perspective, the central question becomes operational: how does a system preserve functional organization under disturbance, reconstruct structure from noise, and relock onto a viable regime? AME reframes stability as a measurable engineering problem of coupling and control, and it changes what counts as evidence.This Zenodo release makes the manuscript available as part of that transition: from a snapshot-centric, structure-first view toward a trajectory-centric account in which persistence, relocking, and environmental memory become first-order explanatory objects.