This paper examines and ultimately rejects a proposed solution to a problem arising from the ontological commitments of Integrated Information Theory (IIT) 4.0, particularly its claim that only conscious entities truly exist. This commitment generates the “origin of consciousness problem”: if non-conscious entities are denied genuine existence, how could consciousness evolve from non-conscious ancestors? As argued by Cea et al. (2024a), this problem pushes IIT toward a very problematic form of “Big Bang consciousness”—a primordial ontological dust of minimally conscious elementary particles originating at the beginning of the universe. Here we analyze and ultimately reject an alternative solution to the origin of consciousness problem based on what we call the “formless stuff hypothesis” (Koch, 2024). This view seeks to avoid both the idea that consciousness arises from nothing and the need for “Big Bang consciousness”, positing instead that before conscious experience there exists a formless, undifferentiated state of reality, distinct from nothing. We argue, however, that this proposal is implausible i) for reasons internal to IIT, ii) due to considerations related to our scientific knowledge regarding the non-conscious world, and iii) because Koch’s main justification for introducing this ‘formless stuff’ rests on an epistemological–ontological conflation. Instead, IIT should adopt a form of causal-physical realism according to which a structured and lawful universe beyond consciousness truly exists.

The pre-reflective experience of being a body is a fundamental component of consciousness and selfhood. A leading account from the perspective of active inference is Seth and Tsakiris' (2018, see also Seth, 2021, 2024) proposal that this experience arises from instrumental interoceptive inference (III), namely the nervous system's interoceptive predictions about the sensory consequences of autonomic adjustments that continuously sustain physiological integrity. However, this approach does not distinguish between the anticipatory autonomic regulation that keeps us alive even during unconscious states (e.g., dreamless sleep) and the interoceptive predictions that ground the conscious feeling of being a body that arguably allows a distinctly conscious form of adaptive behavior. We therefore suggest two types of III: conscious and unconscious instrumental interoceptive inference (C-III and U-III). After rejecting two potential ways to resist this distinction, and building on recent literature on active inference and consciousness, we propose that C-III can be distinguished from U-III neurocomputationally: C-III might additionally involve in-context, real-time modulation of the precision weighting of interoceptive prediction errors, coupled with temporally and counterfactually deep self-models enabling basic future-oriented adaptive behaviors. We conclude that differentiating C-III from U-III clarifies the border between felt bodily selfhood and insentient allostasis, and provides a tractable framework for future neurobiological and computational investigations on the dividing line between adaptive, minimal forms of self-consciousness, and behaviorally rigid self-regulatory unconscious states.

Debates on the ethical status of disembodied neural organoids (DNOs) focus on whether, and when, precautionary principles should apply given the uncertain possibility of organoid consciousness. Some advocate applying precautionary principles to DNOs despite uncertainty; others deem such measures premature given current simplicity but foresee their future necessity; while more skeptical views hold that genuinely conscious DNOs remain too remote to warrant present ethical concern. By contrast, Croxford and Bayne [1] defend a more radical skepticism, as they claim that there is little reason to ascribe consciousness not only to current DNOs, but to DNOs as such. They ground this view on a constraint-based approach composed of an Embodiment Constraint (EC) and a Representational Constraint. EC is presented as enjoying broad cross-theoretical support among externalists and internalists, and thus undermining the grounds for a precautionary ethical concern regarding DNOs. We examine EC and argue that, as stated, fails to meet the authors’ own requirement of representing a broad consensus among externalists and internalists.

Models of consciousness need to explain both the objective correlates of conscious experience as well as its subjective structure. However, such an explanation would not need to entail a reduction exclusively in terms of physical or neural systems. A model that intends to avoid such reduction is integrated information theory (IIT). In this article, we discuss the explanatory rationale of IIT, its potential inconsistencies and its consequences for the neuroscience of consciousness more broadly. In particular, we identify ambiguities regarding the directionality of the explanation, i.e., important tensions between IIT's purported ontological and epistemological primacy of experience, and its explanatory aim of accounting for consciousness in physical, operational terms. Across the text, we propose several ways to avoid these issues and eventually complement, enhance or replace the model. The main goal is to motivate clarification among IIT-proponents and inform IIT-opponents on accurate points of contention, without thereby misrepresenting the model. In our final section, we introduce alternative explanatory paths: mathematical, processual, and autonomy-based types of explanations. These novel and sound explanatory strategies may better inspire the next generation of models of consciousness.

Is phenomenal consciousness a necessary requirement for the creation of artificial general intelligence (AGI)? Despite its philosophical, scientific, ethical and technological significance, this question has received little systematic attention. This paper offers a structured review of current positions on the matter, aiming to clarify the conceptual landscape and identify key points of contention. We begin by examining the dissociation view between phenomenal consciousness and general intelligence, according to which subjective experience and human-level general intelligence are both conceptually and empirically separable, suggesting no necessary connection between them. We then contrast this with the association view, which suggests that phenomenal consciousness plays an indispensable role in enabling the flexibility, autonomy, and meaningfulness that characterize human-level intelligence. This view can be further divided into two groups. According to the functionalist perspectives, phenomenal consciousness is identical to some functional property needed for general intelligence (e.g., global information broadcasting). According to the phenomenological perspectives, phenomenal consciousness is, in itself, constitutive of some key aspect of general intelligence, e.g., genuine semantic understanding or self-concerned adaptive behavior. Finally, we outline future research directions, highlighting key unresolved questions: whether true general intelligence can be fully defined in functional terms; whether phenomenal consciousness has any causal role in general-purpose intelligent behavior; to what extent general intelligence and functional consciousness overlap; and to what extent functional and phenomenal consciousness can be conceptually and empirically dissociated. Rather than taking a position, this paper aims to map the theoretical space and identify the foundational questions that future work must confront.

The science of consciousness requires multiple disciplines. There are complex philosophical questions that need to be understood, physical restrictions to consider, biological organisation that seems relevant to conscious beings, and phenomenological and psychological aspects that can not be studied under quantitative methods only. Today, however, scientific models of consciousness target a few aspects and little dialogue is found among them, even less among fields. In this article, we react to this current state of consciousness research and motivate a transdisciplinary, diverse and rigorous approach. We first introduce how the primacy of experience generates an explanatory paradox for mechanistic accounts and how to avoid it with a broader perspective. We follow by presenting tools such as mereological distinctions (constitution and causation), constraint-types of explanations and a sound axiomatic strategy for empirical and theoretical research. This critical and constructive reading motivates open dialogue and intellectual humility. We end our contribution by offering collaborative paths beyond neuroscience and calling for a fruitful exchange between different models of consciousness. This, we argue, might be the only way to solve and/or dissolve the "problem" of consciousness.

Integrated Information Theory 4.0 (IIT) is one of the leading frameworks in the neuroscience of consciousness (Consortium et al. 2023;A. K. Seth and Bayne 2022;Signorelli, Szczotka, and Prentner 2021). It aims to explain consciousness by mathematically formalizing its relation to causeeffect power and existence, while employing computational tools to investigate this experimentally (Zaeemzadeh and Tononi 2024;Albantakis et al. 2023;Ellia et al. 2021). In principle, IIT can be used to assess both the level and content of consciousness in any physical system, such as the brain of a comatose patient or under anesthesia (Albantakis et al. 2023;Tononi et al. 2016).More specifically, IIT Concerning IIT's explanatory strategy, it conceives consciousness as an intrinsic structure of cause-effect powers, proposing that any conscious system exists for itself as a maximally unitary whole, irreducible to its parts (Albantakis et al. 2023;Ellia et al. 2021). This is mathematically formalized and computationally analyzed in terms of several measures of "integrated information". In this article, we focus specifically on maximal system integrated information (□□ ! * ).This is used by IIT to identify, among a set of candidate systems, the one(s) that supports consciousness, and hence "exists for itself" subjectively and irreducibly. In contrast, according to IIT's assumptions, systems that do not specify □□ ! * , at best, only "exist" from the perspective of another conscious entity, and hence do not "truly exist" (Albantakis et al. 2023;Koch 2024;Tononi et al. 2022). In this way, IIT's measure of □□ ! * is conceptually tied to both consciousness and an absolute, intrinsic form of existence, thus providing a computational neuroscience framework to quantitatively address questions related to both consciousness and ontology (i.e., about existence)that have been relegated to centuries of endless philosophical debates. At the same time, we acknowledge that, unlike familiar physical frameworks (like classical mechanics or thermodynamics)which can be introduced at progressive levels of mathematical detail and complexity (e.g., from F = ma to more advanced vectorial formulations), IIT's formalism remains comparatively opaque and harder to grasp.Nevertheless, IIT still holds the potential to advance our understanding of questions related to ontology and consciousness through mathematical and computational means. But this potential is hindered by some key theoretical-ontological assumptions (i.e., relative to existence) of IIT, which lead to a problematic conceptual interpretation of its mathematical formalism, computational simulation results, and hypothetical scenarios allowed by the theory make it very problematic (Cea, Negro, and Signorelli 2024b;2023;2024a). This underscores the crucial role that conceptual interpretation plays in scientific theories employing mathematical formalisms. History shows that reinterpreting the samepre-existing formalisms can be crucial for scientific advancement. For example, non-Euclidean geometry, developed by Gauss and later generalized by Riemann into higher-dimensional spaces, was conceptually reinterpreted by Einstein in his general relativity to describe the curvature of spacetime, addressing the limitations of Newtonian gravity, including its assumption of instantaneous information transfer in gravitational fieldsA notable example is non-Euclidean geometry: initially an abstract mathematical theory, it became the foundation of Einstein's general relativity when he reinterpreted it to describe the curvature of spacetime (Renn 2007;Torretti 1996). While our aims are far more modest and we are not comparing our work to Einstein's monumental achievements, reconsidering IIT's mathematical formalism from a new conceptual perspective might help address current limitations and enhance its explanatory power concerning the relationship between brain activity, consciousness, and ultimately, the concept of existence.In the following, we first introduce the main principles of IIT (section 2), focusing on the mathematical formalization of the theory's proposed marker of intrinsic, conscious existence (i.e., maximal system integrated information □□ ! * ), its and IIT's associated conceptual interpretation based on the ontological principles of i) being, ii) true existence, iii) maximal existence and ontological iv)"Great Divide of Being". Next (section 3), we briefly explain why these ontological assumptions are troublesome and motivate revision. commitments, and why they are troublesome. Then (section 4),we propose specific amendments to these ontological assumptions to improve the theory's overall theoretical robustness and thus, its capacity to address issues about consciousness and existence from a computational neuroscience perspective. We end with concluding remarks and propose directions for future research (section 5).Grounded in the purportedly essential properties of experience (i.e., the "phenomenal axioms"), IIT proposes six "postulates of physical existence", which, according to the theory, define the necessary and sufficient conditions for any physical substrate to instantiate consciousness. In line with IIT's Principle of Being (PB), which states that "to be is to have cause-effect power" (Albantakis et al.2023, p. 11), these postulates are framed in terms of cause-effect power that must satisfy: i) existence, ii) intrinsicality, iii) information, iv) integration, v) exclusion, and vi) composition.The theory then mathematically formalizes these causal-physical postulates and applies them to simulated neural networks (i.e., candidate substrates/systems) 1 . As anticipated, Wwe will focus on maximal system integrated information □□ ! * , which is based on system integrated information □□ ! , a quantity that computes which measures the cause-effect power of a system as an irreducible whole (Albantakis et al., 2023;Marshall et al., 2023) foot_1 .Mathematically, □□ ! is computed as the minimum between a substrate's integrated cause information (□□ # ), and integrated effect information (□□ $ ), according to the formalism: et al., 2023, p. 17, Equations 19, 20 and 21) both describe state transitions probabilistically based on current states, but also differ because IIT's TPMs marginalize external influences to focus on the internal causal relationships of a system, and encode interventional, rather than purely observational probabilities. Thus, transitions between conscious states in a substrate are operationally tracked by its TPM and the corresponding unfolded cause-effect structure (=conscious state) at each time step. However, according to IIT's ontological narrative, what truly happens is that subjective conscious states successively cause one another irreducibly, as only consciousness "truly exists" (Tononi et al., 2022). This creates a problematic tension between IIT's operational framework and its ontological claims concerning the causality of consciousness, a point critiqued in other work (Signorelli et al., 2023). Many thanks to reviewer 1 for pressing these and other relevant points addressed below.□□ □□ (□□ $ ,Conceptually, bBoth □□ # and □□ $ quantify the difference that a partition □□ of the system makes, with respect to the probability with which the entire unpartitioned system specifies its past/cause state □□ # ( (for □□ # ), and its future/effect state □□ $ ( (for □□ $ ), given its current state s. The greater the cause/effect probabilities □□ □□ (□□ $ ( |□□) and □□ # ← (□□ # ( |□□) specified by the unpartitioned system, and the greater the difference when partitioned (evaluated by the logarithmic terms), the greater the integrated cause/effect information, and hence, its overall □□ !foot_2 .Given that IIT endorses the principle of maximal existence (PME), which posits that "what exists is what exists the most" (Albantakis et al. 2023, p. 11), the complex (i.e., consciousness substrate) is identified as the subset of interconnected units within a universe □□ , the network with maximal system integrated information (□□ ! * ), as formalized below: et al., 2023, p. 19, Equation 24) where □□ , represents the set of units available at iteration k, and S denotes a candidate subset. The subset achieving the maximum value, □□ ! * , is selected as the complex for that iteration, consistent with the PME. Iteratively, once a complex is identified, its units are removed from the universe □□ , , and the search continues within the remaining units to identify the next, non-overlapping, maximal subset. This process ensures that at the end of the iterative search, and "overlapping substrates with ) and therefore do not qualify as additional substrates of consciousness besides the main complex in our brains, IIT's ontological interpretation implies that our own bodies do not truly exist. At best, they merely exist as objects for some consciousness observing them:j ! * (□□ □□ , □□ □□ , □□ , ) = max -Í. ! □□ ! (□□ □□ , □□ □□ , □□) (Albantakis"since my body is a superset of my true PSC [i.e., neural complex], it is excluded from it-relegated to the realm of entities that only exist relatively, for an observer" (Tononi et al. 2022, 8). 4 In contrast to common computational approaches that prioritize input-output functions as critical for understanding conscious processes, IIT targets the internal causal structure of a system as explanatorily central i.e., how its constitutive mechanisms affect each other and the dynamical evolution of the whole system. Thus, while a complex does have clear boundaries defined by the subset of interacting units that maximize the value of □□ " compared to overlapping subsets, and it can receive/send input/output signals from/to units outside its boundaries, these external interactions are not constitutive of the system's intrinsic cause-effect power and consciousness. Nonetheless, a system's internal causal structure should somehow match the causal structure of the environment in perceptual experience, otherwise both individual and shared perception of the external world among different people would be impossible. This is currently an important limitation of IIT, but efforts to address it are ongoing (Mayner, Juel, and Tononi, 2024). Additionally, IIT provides, in principle, a framework to measure the internal causal structure of systems computationally through interventions and state-transition analyses. However, practical limitations, particularly in applying these methods to biological systems like the human brain, remain significant. We thank Reviewer 1 for pressing these important points.5 From IIT's perspective, only □□ " -maximal systems are conscious entities that truly exist as subjects experiencing their own existence and, potentially, an external world (Tononi et al. 2022;Cea, Negro, and Signorelli 2023). For instance, a □□ " -maximal brain region within a conscious neuroscientist would constitute a genuine subject. In turn, whether a patient observed by the neuroscientist is another intrinsically existing subject or merely an object within the neuroscientist's experience depends on whether the patient also possesses a □□ " -maximal brain region.In previous works, we have examined the problematic implications of these radical assumptions in detail we will t (Cea, Negro, and Signorelli 2024a;2024b;2024c;2023;Signorelli, Cea, and Prentner 2023). Here, we will briefly introduce them and direct the reader to that literature for further details.First, IIT's ontological commitments create an explanatory tension with both common neuroscientific practice and IIT's own declared goal of explaining consciousness in physical terms: why attempt to explain consciousness in neuroscientific terms if it is considered ontologically primitive, while, in contrast, any non-conscious physical entity is deemed mind-dependent? (Signorelli, Cea, and Prentner 2023). Second, IIT's ontology seems to entail that truly existing, conscious systems, can i) be eliminated from existence solely by altering external, non-existent entities; ii) be engineered out of nothing; and iii) phylogenetically originate from nothing (Cea, Negro, and Signorelli 2024b;2024a). Now, IIT could prima facie address these issues by invoking an "ontological dust" (Tononi et al. 2022) ultimately composed of minimally conscious monads (indivisible units) (Hendren et al. 2024).However, there are several problems with the latter (Cea, Negro, and Signorelli 2024a;2024c). to contradict IIT's own formalism (Cea, Negro, and Signorelli 2024c), which requires-to apply the integration postulate-that valid partitions of a system into at least two non-overlapping, non-empty parts, are possible (Albantakis et al. 2023). Otherwise, □□ ! is not computable as such, but has to be replaced in practice by the measure of intrinsic information, which is insufficient for consciousness according to IIT's postulates (Cea, Negro, and Signorelli 2024c).In sum, IIT's Great Divide of Being, along with its principles of true existence and eliminativism regarding non-conscious entities, raises several important issues 6 . To address these concerns and align better with neuroscience practice, we propose minimal theoretical conceptual adjustments for IIT to adopt causal-physical realism, which asserts that non-□□ ! * , non-conscious systems may also truly exist if they have cause-effect power. This conceptual revision allows a reinterpretation of IIT's formalism such that maximal □□ ! (i.e., □□ ! * ) is no longer the exclusionary marker of a truly existent entity, but just the marker of consciousness, while causally powerful non-conscious entities may also be acknowledged to exist.In the following, we propose that for IIT to endorse causal-physical realism and overcome the many problems we briefly sketched in the previous section, the theory should: IIT should: i) reject the principle of true existence (PTE)(and associated Great Divide of Being) (section 4.1), ii) modify the principle of maximal existence (PME) (section 4.2), and iii) endorse a realistic, not merely operational, principle of being (PB) (section 4.3).6 Another important issue is the ontological relationship, in IIT, between a physical substrate and its consciousness. , are they one entity? Different properties of the same entity? Different entities? Although a difficult question, iIn previous work we argued at length that the most plausible interpretation is that a physical substrate ontologically reduces to its intrinsic □□-structure, which in turn ontologically reduces to its inner subjective experience. In other words, what truly exists would be the subjective experience, but it could be observed from an extrinsic point of view as a physical substrate, whose experience can be described-in scientific-theoretical terms-as a □□-structure (Cea, Negro, and Signorelli 2023). Thus, although subjective experience is ontologically primary and not directly observable from the third-person perspective, IIT suggests that it can be scientifically represented by the corresponding Φ-structure, which, in principle, can be computed for any physical system modeled as a causal stochastic network, . In principle, this Φ-structure could be derived computationally from the causal properties of the physical substrate through interventions and state-transition analyses according to equations 57 and 58 in Albantakis et al. 2023 (p. 29)., althoughHowever, this is not yet feasiblepractical for actual biologicalrealistic systems,. due to combinatorial explosions in the calculations, manipulations and observations needed, making it currently practical only for idealized systems with a few units. This is a significant limitation that requires further development (e.g. Zaeemzadeh and Tononi (2024)) to enable rigorous empirical testing of IIT. Without this, IIT remains only 'testable in principle'-a shortcoming for a theory that seeks to scientifically explain consciousness. Nevertheless, practical tools like the Perturbational Complexity Index (PCI), inspired by IIT, have provided some initial empirical validation for the theory by reliably estimating consciousness levels in clinical settings (Massimini et al. 2009;Casarotto et al. 2024). We thank again reviewer 1 for highlighting this issue.According to IIT's principle of true existence (hereafter "PTE", Cea, Negro, and Signorelli 2023), only consciousness (i.e., phenomenal existence) is true existence, as it is "the only existence worthhaving-what we might call true existence" (Tononi et al., 2022, p. 8). While there is no systematic philosophical defense of PTE in the IIT literature, its core intuition seems to be that true, absolute existence is self-evident and immediately known by itself, a condition only conscious, intrinsically existing entities can meet: "consciousness truly exists because it exists for itself -it exists absolutely" (Tononi et al., 2022, p. 9). Therefore, only consciousness would truly exist, as only it exists for itself.We have two worries about this intuition. First, it seems to rest on a necessity-sufficiency equivocation, conflating self-consciousness as a sufficient condition for the truth of one's existence (inspired by the Cartesian ""cogito ergo sum"") with self-consciousness as a necessary condition for existence (as implied by PTE). One could argue that self-consciousness is sufficient to prove one''s existence but reject the stronger claim that self-consciousness is required to exist. The Cartesian intuition supports the idea that ""entities that exist for themselves truly exist"" (a sufficiency claim), but this is compatible with the existence of non-conscious physical entities, not entailing that ""only entities that exist for themselves truly exist"" (a necessity claim).Second, IIT's motivation to adopt PTE may also stem from an epistemic-ontological equivocation.While consciousness may entail knowing that one exists, there is no clear reason why this knowledge is inextricably tied to existence. However, IIT conflates this epistemic fact-self-known existence (""existing for itself"")-with the ontological fact of truly existing (""existing in itself""). We see no reason why something must know that it exists in order to exist cannot exist without knowing it (e.g. why a non-conscious stone cannot exist if it doesn't know its existence?). In short, "existing in itself"(true existence) does not imply "existing for itself" (self-aware existence), and thus the latter is not a necessary condition for the former.In sum, we are happy to grant the Cartesian intuition according to which being conscious about one's existence may suffice for the truth of one's existencefoot_3 (a sufficiency claim) which IIT may safely embrace to assert the intrinsic existence of subjective experience based on its epistemic certainty and immediacy. This epistemic and phenomenological primacy of consciousness could position IIT in dialogue with the enactive approach and its neurophenomenological method, where first-person experience plays a foundational role in the scientific study of the mind (Varela 1996;Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 2016;Signorelli, Cea, and Prentner 2023). However, we see no reason to accept IIT's stronger thesis that in order to exist, an entity must "exist for itself (phenomenally)" (a necessity claim), which underlies the theory's principle of true existence and associated "Great Divide of Being". Therefore, we propose that IIT theorists set aside this necessity claim and its associated theses to open up the conceptual possibility that non-conscious systems might exist in themselves, independently from any consciousness. In other words, without the problematic necessity claim underlying the PTE, the 'Great Divide' between truly existing conscious entities and the merely relative, observer-dependent 'existence' attributed to non-conscious entities disappears.The the theory to endorse a full-blown realism about all non-conscious (non-□□ ! * specifying)-but causally powerful-physical entities, and thus, potentially resolve all the issues we briefly outlined, which arise from non-conscious systems not being regarded as truly existent which stem from non-conscious systems with causal power being excluded from true existence. In the technical terms of IIT, we propose that specifying eitherboth non-maximal □□ ! , and even or just intrinsic information (causeeffect power), may be sufficient for an entity to exist genuinely, even if not consciously.In sum, our analysis suggests that IIT needs to endorse causal-physical realism, and to achieve that, ("PRB"), according to which "to truly exist is to have causal power". This would allow IIT theorists to pursue their current neuroscientific methodology and computational framework to find the physical substrate of consciousness (i.e., complex) and unfold its cause-effect structure, without conceptually entailing the rejection of the mind-independent, genuine existence of elementary particles, molecules, and the non-conscious parts of their own brains and bodies.Future theoretical research should assess the types of entities allowed by IIT's formalism, once the "Great Divide of Being" is overcome. For instance, what is the ontological difference between entities that only specify positive values of intrinsic information but zero system integrated information, compared to entities that do specify positive values of the latter? Presumably, both exist in virtue of having cause-effect power, but only the latter present causal emergence (Hoel, Albantakis, and Tononi 2013;Mediano et al. 2022;Hoel et al. 2016).Additionally, future research could explore IIT's potential to integrate theoretical insights and empirical findings from embodied approaches, which propose that the non-neural body, far from 'existing' solely from the perspective of the conscious brain, is structurally and dynamically intertwined with it (Thompson and Cosmelli 2012; Thompson and Varela 2001) and fundamental to understanding both the origins of our mathematical capacities (Lakoff and Nunez 2000) and the very feeling of existence at the root of all consciousness. (Thompson and Cosmelli 2012; A. Seth 2021; 2024; Damasio and Damasio 2023; 2024; Thompson and Varela 2001; Cea and Martínez-Pernía 2023; Ratcliffe 2020).

This paper addresses a problem that arises from the ontological commitments of Integrated Information Theory (IIT) 4.0, particularly its stance that only conscious entities truly exist. This position leads to the "origin of consciousness problem": if non-conscious entities do not truly exist, how could consciousness have evolved from non-conscious ancestors? We explore several responses IIT might offer, such as the co-origin of life and consciousness, or the idea that non-conscious ancestors might have been constituted by "ontological dust"—minimally conscious, intrinsic micro-entities collectively aggregated to form bigger objects lacking unified consciousness. Our analysis shows that IIT’s ontological framework, along with scientific knowledge regarding biological evolution, prebiotic chemical structures, and physical cosmology, ultimately forces the theory into positing a form of "Big Bang consciousness", that is, a primordial ontological dust constituted by minimally conscious elementary particles created soon after the Big Bang. Although IIT may accept this striking implication, we think that it introduces tensions with both the received scientific view of the evolutionary origin of consciousness and the cosmological understanding of early universe components. We also present but ultimately reject an alternative option based on what we call the “formless stuff hypothesis”, which might avoid the implication that consciousness originates from nothing as well as the necessity of a "Big Bang consciousness”. We conclude by suggesting that IIT's metaphysical commitments, especially the equation true existence=phenomenal existence, require re-examination to reconcile its framework with standard scientific knowledge, and in particular, with the received view about the phylogenetic origin of consciousness.

In a recent remarkable article, Froese (2023) presents his Irruption Theory to explain how motivations can make a behavioral difference in motivated activity. In this opinion article, we review the main tenets of Froese’s theory, and highlight its difficulty in overcoming the randomness challenge it supposedly solves, that is, the issue of how adaptive behavior can arise in the face of material underdetermination. To advance our understanding of motivated behavior in line with Froese’s approach, we recommend that future work should endorse a multilevel pluralistic approach to causation and explanation in which motivations could genuinely play an irreducible role. Additionally, in line with the life-mind continuity thesis, we suggest that the best place to look for the interplay between motivations and nonmotivational physical, biological, and dynamical factors, may be at the level of the continuous feeling of being an embodied, living organism.

The Chilean Government's Artificial Intelligence National Policy addresses, among other issues, the impacts that these technologies are likely to have in the workplace. Its position is techno-optimistic, emphasizing that new jobs will be created and the country's productivity will increase, dismissing the possibility that technological advances could bring serious increases in unemployment. This article argues against this techno-optimistic position. We will claim, first (section 2), that the Chilean ap- proach is based on an implausible premise, namely that the present industrial revolu- tion is similar to previous ones. We will show five fundamental dimensions that dif- ferentiate the present revolution: speed, transversality, ubiquity, relative-immateriality, and unpredictability. Then (section 3), we will present diverse scientific evidence that indicates that a future of high unemployment in Chile due to automation is a possible scenario that warrants a precautionary stance. With this, we hope to inform the per- tinent institutions, so that policies can be designed aimed at minimizing the potential negative consequences of these technologies in the workplace.

La Política Nacional de Inteligencia Artificial del Gobierno de Chile trata, entre otros temas, los impactos que estas tecnologías probablemente tendrán en el ámbito laboral. Su postura es tecno-optimista al enfatizar que se crearán nuevos puestos de trabajo y aumentará la productividad del país, desestimando la posibilidad de que el desarrollo tecnológico traiga graves alzas en el desempleo. El presente artículo argumenta contra esta postura tecno-optimista. Sostendremos, primero (sección 2), que el enfoque chileno está basado en una premisa implausible, a saber, que la presente revolución industrial es similar a las anteriores. Mostraremos cinco dimensiones fundamentales que la diferencian: velocidad, transversalidad, ubicuidad, relativa-inmaterialidad, e impredecibilidad. Luego (sección 3), presentaremos diversa evidencia científica que indica que un futuro de alto desempleo en Chile por automatización es un escenario posible que amerita una postura cautelar. Con esto, esperamos informar a la institucionalidad pertinente, para que se puedan diseñar políticas orientadas a minimizar las potenciales consecuencias negativas de estas tecnologías en el ámbito laboral.

The meta-learning framework proposed by Binz et al. would gain significantly from the inclusion of affective and homeostatic elements, currently neglected in their work. These components are crucial as cognition as we know it is profoundly influenced by affective states, which arise as intricate forms of homeostatic regulation in living bodies.

In this article we present two ontological problems for the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness 4.0: what we call the (i) the intrinsicality 2.0 problem, and (ii) the engineering problem. These problems entail that truly existing, conscious entities can depend on, and be engineered from, entities that do not objectively exist, which is problematic: if something does not exist in objective reality (i.e., in itself, independently of another entity’s consciousness), then it seems that it cannot be part of the material basis and determinants of other entities that do exist on their own. We argue that the core origin of these problems lies in IIT’s equation between true existence and phenomenal existence (consciousness), and the corresponding ontological exclusion of non-conscious physical entities (i.e., extrinsic entities) from objective reality. In short, these two problems seem to show that IIT should reconsider the ontological status of these extrinsic entities, because they need to exist objectively to account for the ontological implications of the scenarios we present here, which are permitted by the operational framework of the theory.

In this article, we address the problem of the potential crisis in people's life's meaning due to massive automation -driven technological unemployment. Assuming that the problem of (re)distribution of economic resources to the whole of society in such a scenario will be solved (e.g. through provision of a Universal Basic Income), the question arises concerning the meaning in people's lives in a world in which almost everyone does not have to (or even could not) work in order to live. Here, we side with many current proposals that paid work is not the only possible source of meaning and hence, that a meaningful life could indeed be led in a post-work society. We especially focus on one of the most developed accounts, Danaher's Virtual Utopia (Danaher, 2016, 2019, 2022). According to him, living immersed in playful virtual worlds where new, expanded and personalized possibilities of personal and collective experiences and actions, could not only be perfectly meaningful lives, but furthermore, "be the utopia we are looking for" (Danaher, 2019, p. 270). However, our analysis will suggest that although it is a very well thought and carefully articulated position, it suffers from various important problems. Our criticism will be based on an alternative framework to think about life's meaning and the conditions for leading a good life in general. This alternative is based on the philosophy of buen vivir ("good living"). This notion has its roots in common aspects of various Latin American indigenous cultures regarding a community -centered way of life where humans, society and nature are taken to be deeply interconnected and interdependent, and where the notions of respect, harmony and balance are at the core of this interrelationship (Gudynas, 2011; Acosta, 2008; Beling et al., 2021). Buen vivir has many facets, but we will focus on three: the importance of healthy human communities, the humannature relationship, and the intrinsic value of nature. Based on these, we argue that the Virtual Utopia is not a good candidate for human's post -work utopia because i) it unnecessarily augments the environmental damage that is already involved in massive labor automation; ii) it entails an unnecessary and detrimental dependence on technology for human relationships; and iii) increases the severance of the link between humanity and nature. We conclude that the buen vivir approach is a promising candidate for an alternative utopian project, but one that needs further construction.

The deep influence of affectivity on learning is now widely acknowledged (Keefer et al., 2018; Sánchez-Álvarez et al., 2021). For instance, it has been shown that affect influences key learning-relevant processes, such as motivation, perception, behavior, and critical thinking (Izard, 2002; Mayer & Salovey, 1997). Evidence also shows that emotion and mood strongly influence attention, which in turn drives learning and memory (Elbertson et al., 2010; Elias et al., 1997). Intersubjective phenomena, such as the degree of affection and respect between child and teacher, also affect the child’s learning processes, academic outcomes, and brain development (Kusché & Greenberg, 2006; Ryan & Patrick, 2001). However, the relevant literature is not paying attention to increasing evidence showing that affective phenomena are rooted in interoceptive and homeostatic self- and co-regulatory processes within and between people’s living bodies (Barrett, 2017; Carvalho & Damasio, 2021; Craig, 2015, 2018; Fotopoulou et al., 2022; Fotopoulou & Tsakiris, 2017; Seth & Friston, 2016). In this theoretical chapter, we explore this connection and its importance for learning. We argue that affective experience plays a fundamental role in learning, and that affective experience is rooted in the homeostatic self-/co-regulation of living bodies. Therefore, the homeostatic self-/co-regulation of living bodies plays a fundamental role in learning. In other words, there is an intra- and interpersonal somatic dimension of learning that demands explicit consideration in educational contexts. In this way, we aim to contribute to an understanding of learning and education that moves away from an individualistic, brain-centered information-processing conception toward one centered on sentient, interdependent living bodies.

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Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is currently one of the most influential scientific theories of consciousness. Here, we focus specifically on a metaphysical aspect of the theory’s most recent version (IIT 4.0), what we may call its idealistic ontology, and its tension with a kind of realism about the external world that IIT also endorses. IIT 4.0 openly rejects the mainstream view that consciousness is generated by the brain, positing instead that consciousness is ontologically primary while the physical domain is just “operational”. However, this philosophical position is presently underdeveloped and is not rigorously formulated in IIT, potentially leading to many misinterpretations and undermining its overall explanatory power. In the present paper we aim to address this issue. We argue that IIT’s idealistic ontology should be understood as a specific combination of phenomenal primitivism, reductionism regarding Φ-structures and complexes, and eliminativism about non-conscious physical entities. Having clarified this, we then focus on the problematic tension between IIT’s idealistic ontology and its simultaneous endorsement of realism, according to which there is some kind of external reality independent of our minds. After refuting three potential solutions to this theoretical tension, we propose the most plausible alternative: understanding IIT’s realism as an assertion of the existence of other experiences beyond one’s own, what we call a non-solipsistic idealist realism. We end with concluding remarks and future research avenues.

Introduction Traditionally, empathy has been studied from two main perspectives: the theory-theory approach and the simulation theory approach. These theories claim that social emotions are fundamentally constituted by mind states in the brain. In contrast, classical phenomenology and recent research based on the enactive theories consider empathy as the basic process of contacting others’ emotional experiences through direct bodily perception and sensation. Objective This study aims to enrich the knowledge of the empathic experience of pain using an experimental phenomenological method. Materials and methods Implementing an experimental paradigm used in affective neuroscience, we exposed 28 healthy adults to a video of sportspersons suffering physical accidents while practicing extreme sports. Immediately after watching the video, each participant underwent a phenomenological interview to gather data on embodied, multi-layered dimensions (bodily sensations, emotions, and motivations) and temporal aspects of empathic experience. We also performed quantitative analyses of the phenomenological categories. Results Experiential access to the other person’s painful experience involves four main themes. Bodily resonance: participants felt a multiplicity of bodily, affective, and kinesthetic sensations in coordination with the sportsperson’s bodily actions. Attentional focus: some participants centered their attention more on their own personal discomfort and sensations of rejection, while others on the pain and suffering experienced by the sportspersons. Kinesthetic motivation: some participants experienced the feeling in their bodies to avoid or escape from watching the video, while others experienced the need to help the sportspersons avoid suffering any injury while practicing extreme sports. The temporality of experience: participants witnessed temporal fluctuations in their experiences, bringing intensity changes in their bodily resonance, attentional focus, and kinesthetic motivation. Finally, two experiential structures were found: one structure is self-centered empathic experience, characterized by bodily resonance, attentional focus centered on the participant’s own experience of seeing the sportsperson suffering, and self-protective kinesthetic motivation; the other structure is other-centered empathic experience, characterized by bodily resonance, attentional focus centered on the sportsperson, and prosocial kinesthetic motivation to help them. Discussion We show how phenomenological data may contribute to comprehending empathy for pain in social neuroscience. In addition, we address the phenomenological aspect of the enactive approach to the three dimensions of an embodiment of human consciousness, especially the intersubjective dimension. Also, based on our results, we suggest an extension of the enactive theory of non-interactive social experience.

In consciousness studies there is a growing tendency to consider experience as (i) fundamentally affective and (ii) deeply interlinked with interoceptive and homeostatic bodily processes. However, this view still needs further development to be part of any rigorous theory of consciousness. To advance in this direction, we ask: (1) is there any affective type that is always present in consciousness?, (2) is it related to interoception and homeostasis?, and (3) what are its properties? Here we analyse and compare Jim Russell's core affect and Thomas Fuchs' concept of vitality, and propose a more encompassing notion that subsumes both: continuous organismic sentience. It provides affirmative answers to questions 1 and 2, and, regarding question 3, a preliminary list of thirteen properties divided into ontological, phenomenological, and functional categories. This is the first of a series of studies that will systematically address different notions of a fundamental, homeostatically-rooted affective type, to achieve a rigorous, unified concept for consciousness science.

The relevance of inner speech for human psychology, especially for higher-order cognitive functions, is widely recognized. However, the study of the phenomenology of inner speech, that is, what it is like for a subject to experience internally speaking his/her voice, has received much less attention. This study explores the subjective experience of inner speech through empathy for pain paradigm. To this end, an experimental phenomenological method was implemented. Sixteen healthy subjects were exposed to videos of sportswomen/sportsmen having physical accidents practicing extreme sports. Immediately after the exposure to the stimuli, a phenomenological interview was conducted to gather data about bodily sensations, emotions, motivations, and inner speech of watching other people’s accidents. Participant’s inner speech expresses concern about the consequences the accident could generate to the sportswomen/sportsmen or about the participants themselves. Simultaneously, participants’ inner speech happened with negative emotional feelings, many sensations distributed throughout their bodies, and a felt knowledge coming from a meaningful but pre-reflective and pre-verbal bodily dimension. Our findings show that inner speech in empathy is not merely a psycholinguistic process or high-order cognitive function, but rather it is a complex experience that occurs deeply related to meaningful emotions, bodily sensations, and an implicit, somatically felt knowledge.