The Wave and the Torus: Why Integrated Information Is Grain Diversity, Not Scalar Consciousness
Preprints.org March 31, 2026 Luis Escobar L.-Dellamary preprint
The paper argues that Integrated Information Theory (IIT 4.0) errs by treating the quantity Φ (integrated information) as a single number, which leads to the exclusion postulate—the claim that only one spatiotemporal grain of maximum Φ is conscious, making all other grains non-existent. This creates the combination problem, the grain problem, and an untenable view of physical reality. The author proposes reinterpreting Φ as grain diversity over dissociative awareness: the number of nested levels of self-resolution a system sustains simultaneously. The topological condition for this diversity is a transition from open, feed-forward architectures (genus-0) to closed, recurrent architectures (genus-≥1, tori).