What if consciousness emerges from a predictive loop?

post by JohnMarkNorman · 2025-03-07T19:46:46.169Z · LW · GW · 0 comments

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Most theories of consciousness either struggle with falsifiability or fail to explain key phenomena like split-brain cases and blindsight. I've been developing a framework that offers a direct, testable hypothesis:

Conscious experience emerges when potential language expressions loop back through the brain's existing representational systems.

The key mechanism is surprisingly simple:

1. The brain naturally discovers it can predict its own language output
2. This prediction activates the same neuronal patterns that would be activated by hearing/seeing that expression
3. This "looping" creates what we experience as consciousness

This framework makes specific falsifiable predictions:

• Conscious experience should always correlate with activity in language-related systems, even for seemingly non-linguistic awareness
• Split-brain patients should show distinct behavioral patterns explicable through this loop mechanism
• Blindsight and similar phenomena represent cases where sensory processing occurs without engaging this loop

Unlike global workspace theories or integrated information approaches, this framework suggests consciousness depends on a specific predictive looping function that emerged through pattern discovery in the brain's own activity.

Unlike predictive processing theories that focus on perception, this model suggests that consciousness arises from the brain at large predicting its own potential expressions.

I've presented the complete framework through a series of dialogues: Seven Dialogues between Haplous and Synergos [https://sites.google.com/view/7dialogs/dialog-1]

I'm particularly interested in feedback on:

• If each generation must rediscover the looping mechanism (rather than inheriting it directly), does this align with what we observe in child development and language acquisition?
  • Could this explain why consciousness doesn’t emerge immediately in infancy but follows a specific developmental trajectory?
• What other phenomena might this framework help explain?
  • Could it offer insights into autism, psychopathologies, or other cognitive conditions? Are there unexpected domains where a predictive loop model of consciousness might be applicable?
• Are there any aspects of consciousness or cognition that you think this framework might struggle to explain?
  • I welcome the challenge to identify such cases and incorporate them as validating principles!

The dialogues develop these ideas step by step, with each building on the previous, so reactions to the framework as a whole are most valuable after reading at least the first few conversations.

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