An Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT) of Consciousness: Combining Integrated Information and Global Neuronal Workspace Theories With the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference Framework; Toward Solving the Hard Problem and Characterizing Agentic Causation

Abstract

The Free Energy Principle and Active Inference Framework (FEP-AI) begins with the understanding that persisting systems must regulate environmental exchanges and prevent entropic accumulation. In FEP-AI, minds and brains are predictive controllers for autonomous systems, where action-driven perception is realized as probabilistic inference. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) begins with considering the preconditions for a system to intrinsically exist, as well as axioms regarding the nature of consciousness. IIT has produced controversy because of its surprising entailments: quasi-panpsychism; subjectivity without referents or dynamics; and the possibility of fully-intelligent-yet-unconscious brain simulations. Here, I describe how these controversies might be resolved by integrating IIT with FEP-AI, where integrated information only entails consciousness for systems with perspectival reference frames capable of generating models with spatial, temporal, and causal coherence for self and world. Without that connection with external reality, systems could have arbitrarily high amounts of integrated information, but nonetheless would not entail subjective experience. I further describe how an integration of these frameworks may contribute to their evolution as unified systems theories and models of emergent causation. Then, inspired by both Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT) and the Harmonic Brain Modes framework, I describe how streams of consciousness may emerge as an evolving generation of sensorimotor predictions, with the precise composition of experiences depending on the integration abilities of synchronous complexes as self-organizing harmonic modes (SOHMs). These integrating dynamics may be particularly likely to occur via richly connected subnetworks affording body-centric sources of phenomenal binding and executive control. Along these connectivity backbones, SOHMs are proposed to implement turbo coding via loopy message-passing over predictive (autoencoding) networks, thus generating maximum a posteriori estimates as coherent vectors governing neural evolution, with alpha frequencies generating basic awareness, and cross-frequency phase-coupling within theta frequencies for access consciousness and volitional control. These dynamic cores of integrated information also function as global workspaces, centered on posterior cortices, but capable of being entrained with frontal cortices and interoceptive hierarchies, thus affording agentic causation. Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT) represents a synthetic approach to understanding minds that reveals compatibility between leading theories of consciousness, thus enabling inferential synergy.

Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT) Revisited

“…Mechanistically, traveling waves (Muller et al, 2018;Zhang et al, 2018;Roberts et al, 2019) from ESMs may form major points of nucleation for the formation of self-organizing harmonic modes (SOHMs) (Safron, 2020) as large-scale meta-stable rhythmic attractors (Deco and Kringelbach, 2016;Atasoy et al, 2018Atasoy et al, , 2019Deco et al, 2019;Lord et al, 2019), so being able to influence the global coordination of brain activity. This model of resonant binding via simulated embodied engagements suggests patterns of neuronal synchronization could potentially be linked to either the overt or covert specific actions.…”

“…That is, not only is there necessarily a sense in which brains compute information, but where the serial operation of conscious access may even be thought of as a kind of (neural) Turing machine (Dehaene, 2014;Graves et al, 2014). Even more, if neural systems minimize (variational) free energy, then this not only provides computational justification for pressure-based analogies (Carhart-Harris and Friston, 2010), but potentially even analogies drawing on the causal powers of engines as systems that perform thermodynamic work cycles (Safron, 2019d(Safron, , 2020. Thus, these previous attempts to analogize the nature of mind with existing technologies may have been surprisingly prescient.…”

Windows of Integration Hypothesis Revisited

“…This question has not ceased to intrigue scholars across disciplines (for review, see Mudrik et al, 2014 ) and is still unresolved. Integration – defined here as a process whereby individual signals are combined to a novel, unified representation – has been repeatedly suggested to be tightly related to consciousness ( Dehaene and Changeux, 2011 ; Oizumi et al, 2014 ; Ruffini, 2017 ; Safron, 2020 ). Yet the nature of these relations is unclear, some studies report evidence for different types of integrative processes taking place without awareness (to be reviewed below; a few examples are the integration of 3D objects: Cho and He, 2019 ; integration of names and professions: Scott et al, 2018 ; and integration of successive arrows: Tu et al, 2020 ).…”

Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT) Implemented: Towards Reverse Engineering Consciousness with the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference

“…FEP-AI has been used to address consciousness in multiple ways [1,6], with IWMT representing one such attempt. Below I briefly summarize the major claims of IWMT via modified excerpts from the original publication of the theory in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence [7], as well as the accompanying preprint, "IWMT Revisited" [8]. Please see these longer works for further discussion.…”

“…IWMT's primary claims are as follows (originally published in [7]): 1. Basic phenomenal consciousness is what it is like to be the functioning of a probabilistic generative model for the sensorium of an embodied-embedded agent [9].…”