Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
June 20, 2021
Adam Safron
53 citations
Explaining goal-directed behavior may require rethinking mental homunculi and Cartesian theaters as embodied self-models (ESMs)—body maps with agentic properties that function as predictive-memory systems and cybernetic controllers. ESMs are proposed as a major organizing principle for neural architectures, providing foundational inductive biases that constrain inference spaces during cognitive and affective development. Drawing on the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference, the account describes how consciously imagined goal states influence action selection via predictive coding and backward-chained imaginings. Embodied experience supplies empirical priors, and bidirectional linkages between sensory modalities and frontal-parietal control hierarchies infuse perception with somatic-motoric properties, solving frame problems. The manuscript offers neurophenomenological treatments of qualia like pleasure, pain, and desire, and argues that radically embodied minds create foundations for intelligence, consciousness, and will.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
May 30, 2020
Johannes Kleiner
37 citations
Mathematical models of consciousness often lack a clear justification for their formal structure. This article provides that justification by examining what makes phenomenal experience suitable for mathematical representation. It derives a general mathematical framework grounded in the epistemic context of consciousness—specifically, the non-collatability of experience and the structure of phenomenal space. The framework shows how key characteristics of conscious experience imply particular mathematical structures, allowing theory-building to go beyond what standard philosophical methodology alone can achieve. The result is a formal foundation that can guide the development and evaluation of specific mathematical models of consciousness.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
May 14, 2020
Michael Silberstein, William Stuckey
21 citations
The authors argue that conscious experience and fundamental physics are most deeply related through a metaphysical starting point called neutral monism, specifically the variant from William James and Bertrand Russell. Rather than treating physics as fundamental, they derive key features of relativity and quantum mechanics from two axioms grounded in neutral monism, suggesting a unity between these theories. They claim that biases toward property dualism and reductive dynamical explanation create the hard problem of consciousness and the explanatory gap, as well as unresolved issues in physics like the measurement problem and quantum entanglement. The paper aims to resolve these problems and offer a more intuitive model of the relationship between conscious experience and physics.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
February 26, 2025
Lea Gassab, Onur Pusuluk, Marco Cattaneo et al.
8 citations
This perspective article categorizes quantum models of consciousness into three groups based on the brain level at which quantum mechanics might operate: electron delocalization within microtubules, the brain's electromagnetic field, or neurotransmitter-mediated interactions between neurons. The authors focus on the Posner model of cognition, presenting preliminary calculations on how entanglement of phosphate molecules is preserved within the geometric structure of Posner clusters. The work suggests that quantum information theory can improve understanding of brain functions.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
March 27, 2024
Tom Froese
8 citations
The mind and body are one but not the same, related in a way that is efficacious yet non-reducible, non-observable, and non-intelligible. This proposal treats the mind as a hidden 'black box' coupled to the body, introducing two concepts: irruption, where the unobservable mind makes a difference to observable matter, and absorption, where observable matter makes a difference to the unobservable mind. These concepts align with information-theoretic neuroscience, measuring cognitive activity and subjective qualia via entropy and compression respectively. The theory offers responses to the hard problem of consciousness and mental causation from first principles, aiming to set the agenda for future mind sciences.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
July 28, 2020
Matthew Owen
8 citations
Mental causation is central to integrated information theory (IIT), which holds that consciousness exists because it is causally efficacious. This article surveys three problems for mental causation—the lack of psychophysical laws, the causal exclusion problem, and the causal pairing problem—and assesses their threat to IIT under different metaphysical commitments. Three versions of IIT are distinguished: reductive, non-reductive, and non-physicalist. The lack of psychophysical laws appears unthreatening to all versions. Reductive and non-reductive IIT are seriously threatened by the exclusion problem, and it is difficult to see how they could overcome it while maintaining the causal closure principle. Non-physicalist IIT denies that principle but faces the pairing problem, for which a response is briefly outlined. The survey aims to clarify which commitments lead to which problems.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
September 13, 2023
Ivanna Montoya, Daniel Montoya
7 citations
A biologically inspired neural network (BNN) made from human cortical cells learned to predict a digital ball's trajectory and move a paddle, with performance improving as sensory information increased. Among theories of neural correlates of consciousness, only Information Integration Theory (IIT) allows for the possibility that such a BNN could be conscious, because its Φ value is greater than zero. IIT holds that any system capable of integrating information has some degree of phenomenal consciousness. The real-time neural activity responding to environmental stimuli, together with the pattern of increased information density leading to better performance, suggests the BNN could be conscious, raising psychological, philosophical, and ethical questions.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
October 31, 2021
Jonathan W D Mason
7 citations
Phenomenal unity is a key property of consciousness but often poorly defined. This paper introduces model unity: a system has model unity when a single relational model covering the whole system is optimal; otherwise, unity may exist only at a higher level. As part of expected float entropy minimisation theory, relational models interpret system states and may explain why visual experience is unified and why separate people do not share unified consciousness. Four example investigations are given, along with a postulate that distills the foundations of EFE minimisation into a clear statement for evaluating whether it identifies a self-evident fundamental property of consciousness.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
January 19, 2025
Giulio Ruffini, Francesca Castaldo, Jakub Vohryzek
6 citations
Tracking natural data forces an agent to mirror the symmetry properties of the generative world model, enforcing a hierarchical organization in the agent's neural network consistent with the manifold hypothesis. Using Lie pseudogroups to formalize invariance in natural data and drawing parallels to Noether's theorem, the study shows that data tracking constrains both the agent's constitutive parameters and dynamical repertoire. This bridges algorithmic information theory, symmetry, and dynamics, offering insights into neural correlates of agenthood and structured experience, as well as AI and brain model design.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
May 29, 2026
Zoe Lee-Youngzie, Naotsugu Tsuchiya, Michael Robinson et al.
4 citations
A structural approach to consciousness models qualia—the qualities of experience—by examining either the internal organization of parts within an experience or the external relations between experiences. Integrating these two perspectives is a key step toward understanding phenomenally unified global experience. This paper describes both types of structural models and their category-theoretic formalizations, then proposes a sheaf-theoretic framework that maps mereological parts of experience to empirical measures of their qualia. Applying the framework to visual space demonstrates a formal description of experience's structure and conditions for phenomenal unity. The approach supports an empirical research program linking local and global phenomenal qualities.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
June 24, 2025
Abir U Igamberdiev
3 citations
Meaningful information is reality in potential form; its actualization increases a system's negentropy. Biological evolution expands meaningful information by generating new coding systems (codepoiesis), where evolutionary changes gain functional value through interpretation that yields a meaningful function. Complexification corresponds to generating new meaningful information and developing new structures with functions. Each biological function has meaning within its environmental context, and the evolutionary search for new meanings establishes sustainable non-equilibrium as an attractor, maximizing power through synergistic effects. At higher organizational levels, innovations emerge as niche construction, behavioral choices, and cognition. The growth of meanings is part of an expanding information system formed by organisms, expanding greatly with consciousness, which incorporates the world's image into knowledge acquisition and enables global civilization.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
August 22, 2023
Rasmus Gahrn-Andersen
3 citations
Resilience, a fundamental property of cognitive systems, is tied to their autopoietic (self-maintaining) organization and helps preserve their identity against disturbances. The autopoietic theory of Maturana and Varela rejects traditional Shannon information as irrelevant to cognition. This paper proposes an alternative: an affordance-based view of information from radical cognitive science that avoids that critique. It argues that social influence on how affordances are used is key to understanding resilience in the informational relations within the human cognitive ecology.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
April 24, 2025
Prakash Chandra Kavi, Gorka Zamora-López, Daniel Ari Friedman et al.
2 citations
A computational model called the Thoughtseeds Framework simulates thought dynamics during focused-attention Vipassana meditation. It treats thoughts as dynamic attentional agents organized in a hierarchy of nested Markov blankets across three levels: knowledge domains, a network where thoughtseeds compete, and meta-cognition that regulates awareness. The model generates four states—breath control, mind wandering, meta-awareness, and redirecting to breath—through self-organizing interactions. Expert meditators sustain control dominance, reinforcing focused attention, while novices show frequent and prolonged mind wandering, reflecting instability. The framework integrates Global Workspace Theory and active inference to explain how meta-awareness shapes a unitary meditative experience, offering testable predictions about meditation skill development.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
March 25, 2025
Chris Percy, Andrés Gómez-Emilsson
2 citations
Neuroscientific theories of consciousness must address how separate micro-units of information combine into a single, unified conscious experience—the phenomenal binding problem. This paper examines how Integrated Information Theory (IIT) v4.0 offers a solution by proposing that particular entities called 'complexes' define existence. While this works in a static framework, it creates difficulties when applied to dynamic systems. The authors identify a dilemma for IIT: non-local entity transitions versus contiguous selves, termed the 'dynamic entity evolution problem.' Three potential ways IIT could dissolve this dilemma are described. The paper contributes to IIT's shift from static to dynamic analysis.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
January 28, 2025
Francis Heylighen, Shima Beigi
1 citation
Local prospect theory (LPT) proposes that consciousness relies on uncertainty, not just accurate prediction. The brain creates a "local prospect"—a range of possible futures shaped by subjective experience—from which an agent freely chooses how to respond. Consciousness is a self-sustaining loop of neural activity that forms a temporary working memory, allowing thoughts and feelings from different brain modules to interact non-linearly, unlike automatic unconscious processes. Entropy-based measures, such as the determination of actions by conditions and the breadth of prospect, quantify the range of considered possibilities. The framework explains Buddhist mindfulness and meditation as broadening consciousness and reducing automatic reactions by lessening conditioning. The prospect measure could be operationalized through action variety, perception breadth, and behavioral unpredictability for empirical testing.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
September 5, 2024
Don M Tucker, Phan Luu
Intelligence arises from patterns of connections among neurons, whether in brains or machines. Brains develop continuously as experience shapes their neural connections. Active inference theory suggests that sentient systems organize themselves by minimizing free energy, a process of informatic self-evidencing. This implies that the mind can be described in information terms independent of its physical substrate. At a certain complexity level, self-evidencing becomes hierarchical and reentrant, leading to consciousness as a good regulator. These principles indicate that adequate reconstruction of an individual human brain's computational dynamics is possible through neuromorphic computational emulation.