Hi all!
I've been incubating a theory for a mechanistic substrate-independent explanation of consciousness (specifically phenomenal consciousness) for a few years, but only recently had the bandwidth to engage with the significant theories in the field to see where mine sits in relation. From my perspective, GNW explains broadcast but not why it produces experience. IIT captures integration but Φ is intractable. HOT gets the meta-representational requirement right but doesn't specify the mechanism. Each captures something real but none unifies the picture.
I've written the theory up as a paper which is under consideration at the Journal of Consciousness Studies, but I'd love to get some educated engagement with it here.
The core claim: Phenomenal consciousness is what it is like, from the inside, to be a system whose integration products re-enter integration. In other words, integration alone is insufficient. The brain has to integrate signals from senses that process at different speeds. If/when the products of that integration feed back into the integration process itself, you get meta-representation, and that recursive loop is phenomenal experience.
I'd be interested to hear where you think this theory breaks. I'm particularly interested in responses to two claims: first, that the theory dissolves rather than bridges the explanatory gap; and second, that temporal binding is an engineering problem that evolving brains had to solve regardless of consciousness, but the solution turns out to be the mechanism.
Abstract:
Several theories propose that consciousness involves recursive self-reference, but none provides a complete mechanistic account: what specifically loops, why the looping apparatus exists, and what determines the character of the resulting experience. This paper presents Integration² (I²), a theory of phenomenal consciousness built on a single mechanism: integration products, broadcast to downstream processes, re-enter the integration process as inputs. This recursive loop, we argue, is phenomenal consciousness; not a correlate of it and not a process that produces it as a separate output. The hard problem of consciousness is thereby dissolved: asking why the loop "feels like something" is asking why integration-accessing-its-own-products is integration-accessing-its-own-products.
I² makes two claims that distinguish it from existing recursive theories. First, the loop is not a purpose-built feature but an inevitable consequence of two independently necessary capacities: integration (to solve the binding problem) and broadcast (to make integration products available to downstream systems, including the integration process itself). Second, a two-factor model explains both the threshold and the gradient of consciousness: the loop must exist (factor one), and the richness of experience depends on the sophistication of the downstream processing the signal passes through before re-entry (factor two). This second factor yields a topological distance framework that accounts for the nondual-dual gradient in contemplative and pharmacological altered states. The framework also unifies Block's (1995) tripartite distinction: access, phenomenal, and self-consciousness emerge as three orders of the same integrative process rather than three kinds requiring separate explanation. The theory generates falsifiable predictions distinguishable from those of Global Workspace Theory, Integrated Information Theory, and Higher-Order Thought theories.
Link to preprint: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19471820