The Brain as a Filter: Introducing a Quantum Ground into Integrated Information Theory

Integrated information theory (IIT) is an influential framework for understanding the link between the brain’s neural structure and consciousness. However, here I supplement IIT’s purely structural framework with an intrinsic aspect that, following Russellian monism, grounds the structure and provides the basis for conscious experience. I argue that an appropriate intrinsic element is the ontologically fundamental domain of the quantum wave function. Introducing this fundamental reality, or quantum ground, as an intrinsic element within IIT’s framework leads to interpreting the brain as a kind of filter or tuner that supports a range of experience from a more fundamental source of awareness. This proposed framework, filter integrated information theory (FIIT), does not change IIT’s formalism, yet views its structure as grounded in an ontologically deeper source of consciousness. In addition, I consider how this interpretation might fit with other notions of the brain as a filter with respect to a fundamental ground of consciousness.