The Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape: Reconciling Neuroscientific Theories With the Phenomenology of Consciousness

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of neuroscientific theories of consciousness. These include theories which explicitly point to EM fields, notably Operational Architectonics and, more recently, the General Resonance Theory. In phenomenological terms, human consciousness is a unified composition of contents. These contents are specific and meaningful, and they exist from a subjective point of view. Human conscious experience is temporally continuous, limited in content, and coherent. Based upon those phenomenal observations, pre-existing theories of consciousness, and a large body of experimental evidence, I derived the Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape (TICL). In brief, the TICL proposes that the neural correlate of consciousness is a structure of temporally integrated causality occurring over a large portion of the thalamocortical system. This structure is composed of a large, integrated set of neuronal elements (the System), which contains some subsystems, defined as having a higher level of temporally-integrated causality than the System as a whole. Each Subsystem exists from the point of view of the System, in the form of meaningful content. In this article, I review the TICL and consider the importance of EM forces as a mechanism of neural causality. I compare the fundamentals of TICL to those of several other neuroscientific theories. Using five major characteristics of phenomenal consciousness as a standard, I compare the basic tenets of Integrated Information Theory, Global Neuronal Workspace, General Resonance Theory, Operational Architectonics, and the Temporo-spatial Theory of Consciousness with the framework of the TICL. While the literature concerned with these theories tends to focus on different lines of evidence, there are fundamental areas of agreement. This means that, in time, it may be possible for many of them to converge upon the truth. In this analysis, I conclude that a primary distinction which divides these theories is the feature of spatial and temporal nesting. Interestingly, this distinction does not separate along the fault line between theories explicitly concerned with EM fields and those which are not. I believe that reconciliation is possible, at least in principle, among those theories that recognize the following: just as the contents of consciousness are distinctions within consciousness, the neural correlates of conscious content should be distinguishable from but fall within the spatial and temporal boundaries of the full neural correlates of consciousness.

The why of the phenomenal aspect of consciousness: Its main functions and the mechanisms underpinning it

“…This provides the agent with a sense of mineness or ownership, that is, the quality that all its experiences belong to, and are for it (and not for-someone-else); (b) what can be defined as the “point of view” from which any content is “seen”. This point of view persists through all conscious experiences independently of their contents ( Winters, 2021 , p. 12) and partitions the world into the asymmetric space of what monitors and what is monitored ( Merker, 2013a , b ); (c) a feature that is strictly associated with the “point of view”: the feeling of continuity. Our experience flows uninterruptedly like a river.…”

“…Various different theories try to explain the underlying mechanisms of consciousness (for recent reviews, see Northoff and Lamme, 2020 ; Winters, 2021 ). One of the most promising approaches that is fully adopted or partly shared by some of these theories is to investigate consciousness in informational terms.…”

Don’t forget the boundary problem! How EM field topology can address the overlooked cousin to the binding problem for consciousness

“…Our 1PP has a number of features which any prospective ToC must address. Winters (2021) states that our consciousness often appears unified and compositional; its contents are specific and meaningful, existing from a subjective point of view; it is temporally continuous and limited but coherent. Bayne (2010) provides a detailed account of how our consciousness is unified, typically integrating multiple parts.…”

On the origins and evolution of qualia: An experience-space perspective

“…To go further with the evolutionary argument, there are plausible conclusions to be drawn, given suitable assumptions, as to how subjective experience would have changed as consciousness first evolved. Here I take the simplest case, of an explicitly neurophysical stance: that the evolutionary precursor of subjective experience arose from some physical consequence of neural circuit activity, which equates to “the physical” ( Godfrey-Smith, 2019 ; Jylkka and Railo, 2019 ), or a neuroscientific point of view ( Winters, 2021 ). This, in some formulations, is attributed to underappreciated properties of electromagnetic fields ( McFadden, 2020 ; Kitchener and Hales, 2022 ), but regardless of details, the point is that a neurophysical stance gives meaning to the idea of redundancy, that it involves replicate circuits acting in concert.…”