Entropy (Basel)
March 5, 2021
Camilo Miguel Signorelli, Quanlong Wang, Ilyas Khan
12 citations
Consciousness is treated as fundamental and characterized by other-dependence, meaning conscious processes are defined by their relations to one another. A mathematical framework using compact closed categories is introduced, where morphisms represent these co-dependent conscious processes. This compositional model naturally incorporates other-dependence and may help avoid the hard problem of consciousness while addressing the combination problem of conscious experiences.
Entropy (Basel)
August 4, 2025
Working memory capacity, essential for generating consciousness in the cerebral cortex, is supported by two distinct limbic memory systems: the dorsal (Papez) and ventral (Yakovlev) networks. The dorsal system is regulated by excitatory feedforward control, consolidated by REM sleep, and controlled in waking by phasic arousal from the pontine brainstem. The ventral system organizes inhibitory neurophysiology of NREM sleep, consolidates explicit memory, and operates under inhibitory feedback control from the midbrain. These dual systems alternate during sleep stages and must be balanced at criticality during waking to optimize active inference that generates conscious experiences. Their distinct affective properties—elation for phasic arousal and anxiety for tonic activation—regulate sleep and consciousness adaptively for optimal self-regulation and psychological health.
Entropy (Basel)
May 2, 2023
Tom Froese
Cognitive science lacks tools to explain how an agent's motivations directly shape behavior. The enactive approach, which embeds normativity in all cognitive activity, avoids representational architectures but still reduces agent-level normativity to non-normative system-level activity. A new nonreductive theory, irruption theory, introduces the concept of irruption to indirectly operationalize motivated involvement through the underdetermination of states by their material basis. Irruptions increase unpredictability in (neuro)physiological activity, quantifiable as information-theoretic entropy. Evidence linking action, cognition, and consciousness to higher neural entropy suggests greater motivated agential involvement. Counterintuitively, irruptions, shown in artificial life models, facilitate adaptive self-organization, making it intelligible how motivations make effective differences without direct control over neurophysiological processes.
Entropy (Basel)
August 11, 2021
A successful naturalistic account of consciousness must define it in terms compatible with other naturalistic descriptions. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) attempts this by equating phenomenal experience with a system's intrinsic causal power, but fails to explain the qualitative character of consciousness and the intentional nature of conscious perception. An alternative group of theories equates consciousness with inference; the Living Mirror theory holds that all living systems perform inference, which is consciousness itself. This overcomes IIT's shortcomings, especially for perception. A synthesis is possible: conscious living systems are self-organizing, requiring high integration. Consciousness depends on nontrivial integrated information, while the inference process is the fact of consciousness.