On the Minimal Theory of Consciousness Implicit in Active Inference

Summary

Our brains actively create our conscious experience through a process of prediction and inference. This fascinating insight emerges from research in computational neuroscience (q-bio.NC) that reveals how consciousness arises from the brain's constant effort to make sense of sensory input. By studying how neural systems perform Bayesian inference, researchers found that consciousness emerges from the brain's attempts to build and test models of reality, suggesting that awareness isn't just passive reception but an active process of prediction and updating.

Abstract

The multifaceted nature of subjective experience poses a challenge to the study of consciousness. Traditional neuroscientific approaches often concentrate on isolated facets, such as perceptual awareness or the global state of consciousness and construct a theory around the relevant empirical paradigms and findings. Theories of consciousness are, therefore, often difficult to compare; indeed, there might be little overlap in the phenomena such theories aim to explain. Here, we take a different approach: starting with active inference, a first principles framework for modelling behaviour as (approximate) Bayesian inference, and building up to a minimal theory of consciousness, which emerges from the shared features of computational models derived under active inference. We review a body of work applying active inference models to the study of consciousness and argue that there is implicit in all these models a small set of theoretical commitments that point to a minimal (and testable) theory of consciousness.

Tags