Towards a Materialist Ontology of Consciousness: An Autopoietic Alternative to Wendt's Quantum Consciousness Theory

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study re‐examines Alexander Wendt's quantum consciousness theory, arguing that the explanatory aims attributed to quantum consciousness—particularly with respect to agency, teleology, intentionality and emergence—can be addressed more coherently within established nonquantum frameworks of self‐organisation theory. Drawing on thermodynamics, complexity theory and autopoietic theory, the paper suggests that far‐from‐equilibrium self‐organising systems provide a materially grounded account of purposive, self‐maintaining organisation that is directly relevant to social ontology. Integrated with embodied, enactive and practice‐theoretical approaches in cognitive and social theory, this framework supports a conception of consciousness as an emergent material‐informational process arising from organism–environment interaction rather than from quantum‐level mentality. The analysis does not claim metaphysical neutrality; rather, it defends a fallibilist and naturalised materialism in which matter, energy, fields, motion, organisation and information are treated as analytically distinguishable but materially instantiated dimensions of reality. On this basis, consciousness can be understood as an emergent material‐informational process, whereas social structures can be understood as relatively enduring relational organisations with emergent causal powers; both remain empirically investigable within self‐organising processes. The paper therefore proposes the self‐organisation paradigm, represented by autopoietic theory, as a more productive foundation for addressing the Consciousness Anomaly and for advancing the unification of physical and social ontology.