Neither Christof Koch (Integrated Information Theory) nor Karl Friston (Predictive Coding) has any formal philosophical training — yet both make sweeping claims about one of philosophy’s oldest and most difficult subjects. They are joined by a great many others, including academic philosophers, who prefer to deal with the “big questions” rather than first mastering the humble craft of thinking methodically.

Imagine a craftsman who begins to work without knowing how to handle his tools. That, in essence, is how many theorists of consciousness operate. They juggle terms like information, causality, or uncertainty without realizing that these belong to different descriptive domains — and therefore cannot be meaningfully combined.

The problem is that philosophy never truly established a methodological discipline. In the natural sciences, methodological rules are explicit and binding; in philosophy, one still prefers improvisation. Speculation becomes a virtue, and rhetorical elegance a substitute for conceptual clarity. The less one understands, the more mysterious — and therefore “profound” — the subject appears.

Modern philosophy has thus taken on the character of a stage performance. When David Chalmers, with long hair and leather jacket, walks onto a conference stage, the “wow effect” precedes the argument. Add a few enigmatic questions — “How does mind arise from matter?” — and the performance is complete.
Koch and Friston follow a similar pattern: their theories sound deep precisely because almost no one can truly assess them.

Philosophers, for their part, often lack the mathematical literacy to distinguish between a formal structure and an ontological claim. They swallow every equation presented to them as if it were metaphysical truth. Those who insist on sober analysis — on clarifying terms before admiring them — are dismissed as dull or pedantic.

Yet that is precisely what philosophy was meant to be: the discipline that distinguishes between what can be said and what can only be imagined. Without this methodological backbone, philosophy turns into a spectacle — a show of intelligence without understanding, and a theater of thought where metaphysics masquerades as science.

You are describing exactly what I consider the core confusion.
The problem is not the wish to connect physics and meaning — it is the belief that this connection can be realized by a physical mechanism.

When you speak of a “bridge mechanism,” you already presuppose that there is a level of description where semantics becomes physics. But this presupposition is itself metaphysical. Biophysics may show correlations between energy dissipation, metabolic regulation, and neural complexity — but it does not and cannot show how meaning arises from these processes. It only shows how living systems correlate with the conditions that make meaning possible.

The difference is not rhetorical but categorical.
Physical systems can organize, synchronize, and self-stabilize — all of which can be formally modeled. But semantic reference, intentionality, or subjective experience are not additional physical phenomena that arise through complexity. They are descriptions that belong to a different epistemic domain.

There can be no bridge law between the two, because any such law would require a common metric — and there is none.
A neuron can fire, but it does not mean.
Energy can flow, but it does not know.
Meaning appears only at the level of systemic coherence where correlations are interpreted — and “interpretation” is not a physical operation, but an epistemic one.

So when you say that biophysics “has already provided the bridge,” I would say: it has provided the conditions of correlation, not the transition itself. What you call a “bridge” is in truth an interface of perspectives, not a mechanism.

This is why the Free Energy Principle cannot “unify” physics and semantics — it only overlays one vocabulary on top of the other.
It does not explain how consciousness arises; it only reformulates life in terms of a statistical metaphor. And that is precisely the point where the philosophy must step in again.

I think I mentioned this before:
it is as if one tried to explain social bonding through magnetism, simply because both use the category of attraction.
The concept may be shared, but the phenomena have entirely different origins — and they cannot be causally connected.

1. Evidence for anticipation ≠ evidence for a global principle of “uncertainty minimization.
Elite batting or return tasks show anticipatory control because neural and sensorimotor delays demand feed-forward strategies. That is perfectly compatible with many control-theoretic explanations (internal models, Smith predictors, model predictive control, dynamical systems) that do not require Bayesian inference or a universal principle of “uncertainty minimization.” From “organisms behave as if anticipating” it does not follow that they literally minimize epistemic uncertainty.

2. Shannon information, thermodynamic free energy, and semantic or epistemic uncertainty are categorically different concepts.
Formal similarities (e.g., entropy, noise, and signal) do not justify treating them as identical. Variational free energy in Friston’s sense is a model-relative bound on surprisal, not a physical energy quantity; and “uncertainty” here is a term defined over the probability distributions of a generative model. Sliding between these domains without a strict translation rule is a category error.

Between physics and semantics there can be no bridge law, only correlation.
A physical process can correlate with a semantic or cognitive state, but it can never produce, translate into, or explain it. The physical and the semantic belong to different epistemic domains; their connection is observational, not generative.

3. What would count as a risky, discriminative prediction?
If “organisms minimize uncertainty” is to be an empirical claim rather than a post-hoc description, it must yield a pre-specified, falsifiable prediction that (i) distinguishes the FEP/predictive-coding framework from alternative non-Bayesian control models, (ii) is measurable in the organism itself (not only in our statistical model), and (iii) could in principle fail.
Without such criteria, the “principle” remains unfalsifiable and collapses into metaphor.

So the issue is not anticipation or control per se — I fully agree that organisms stabilize their internal dynamics. The issue is the illegitimate conceptual leap from physical energy flow to semantic uncertainty, and from probabilistic modelling to biological reality. That’s precisely the confusion I am objecting to.

Thank you for the clarification — I see your point.

However, I think we are talking about two different kinds of unverifiability. You are right that many scientific models begin with speculative hypotheses that can eventually become empirically testable. But that is not the case here.

The hypotheses of IIT or Predictive Coding are not temporarily unverifiable; they are principally unverifiable, because they connect concepts that belong to entirely different descriptive levels. They claim that a physical or mathematical structure (e.g., integrated information, energy minimization) produces or is identical with a semantic–phenomenological phenomenon (experience, uncertainty).

This is not an empirical speculation but a category error — precisely the kind of confusion that Gilbert Ryle described in his famous example: after a student had toured all the buildings of a university, he asked, “But where is the university?” The mistake lies in confusing a physical arrangement (the buildings) with an institutional meaning (the university). The same confusion occurs when physical quantities or mathematical constructs are taken to be or to produce semantic phenomena such as experience.

Between physics and semantics there can be no bridge law, only correlation.
A physical process can correlate with a semantic event, but it can never translate into or cause it. The relationship between brain and mind is therefore not causal, but correlative — two complementary descriptions of one and the same dynamic viewed from different epistemic perspectives.

That is why such theories can never be verified even in principle. There is no possible experiment that could demonstrate a causal transition from a physical process to a semantic or experiential one. Any attempt to do so merely redefines consciousness in physical terms and then claims success by definition.

So the problem is not that we currently lack the appropriate empirical tools, but that the conceptual architecture of these theories confuses what cannot be unified.
Not every speculation can be turned into science — only those that remain within a single, coherent descriptive level can.

Let me put it again in simple terms:
Theories of consciousness usually start with an unproven assumption and then build a theory around it. This assumption is neither empirically confirmed nor even verifiable – and therefore such a theory is not only unscientific but also epistemically useless.

Two examples:
The Integrated Information Theory (IIT) claims that consciousness arises from and is identical with integrated information. According to this logic, even a simple LED would have consciousness. Such a statement is neither provable nor falsifiable in Popper’s sense.

The second example is Predictive Coding or the Free Energy Principle. It claims that organisms minimize uncertainty. This claim cannot be empirically confirmed. Friston believes that he can derive this from the physical principle of energy minimization – which, however, represents a massive category error. Physical energy and semantic uncertainty belong to entirely different descriptive levels; they have nothing to do with each other.

Such theories are, in the end, fairy tales wrapped in scientific terminology. They offer no real progress in understanding – quite the opposite. They create the illusion of knowledge by citing empirical data to confirm the theory and then using the same theory to “explain” these data. That is a logical circle, not a proof.

I have discussed this in more detail here:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17277410

You're disqualifying yourself here and you don't realize it, sad.

I won't discuss this further. You write, "The Bayesian algorithm describes how an organism in fact maintains a dynamical balance in this regard." That's complete nonsense. It would be best to ask an organism whether it actually uses algorithms.

1. what does this have to do with prediction, 2. what do you want to do with such a general statement

Each theory interprets optical illusions differently, since all are underdetermined, i.e. they have no empirical explanatory power.

Perhaps you'll read my post again, more carefully; you might then notice that I never mention a substance. I consider Karl Friston's uncertainty minimization paradigm to be one of the most nonsensical of recent decades. He analogizes a physical principle with a semantic concept, as if I were to derive a theory of social bonds from magnetism on the grounds that both argue with the concept of attraction. And then he assumes organisms have the ability to calculate probabilities. Because the whole thing is mathematically inflated, most philosophers don't understand it.

A lot of the confusion comes from us applying our everyday concepts like 'particle' or 'wave' and giving them an absolute, real meaning.

A good (though imperfect) way to think about it is a water surface: Is it a wave or individual droplets? The question isn't really answerable until you measure it. The moment you put an object into it, a droplet sticks to it—you've made a measurement. The previous superposition of possibilities (wave/droplet) has 'collapsed' into a single, concrete result (one droplet).

The crucial point that goes beyond the water analogy is that the mathematics describing this 'fuzziness' (the Schrödinger equation) is ultimately a probability calculation. It's a tool for our knowledge about the system (epistemic), not necessarily an exact description of a physical vibrating process. What happens 'in reality' before we measure is the subject of various interpretations of quantum mechanics. The most common one (the Copenhagen Interpretation) indeed says that the measurement itself brings about a definite state.

I cannot give the whole philosophy here. Of course, evolution is a material process. We collect fossils, etc. What seems immaterial to you are theories that are formulated from fossils, etc. Of course, theories are not material, but theories never are. After all, they have no ontological status, they are our mental creations.

Don't be angry with me, but unfortunately my explanation has to end here.

Do you know anything other than matter? Why are we always looking for something we have never seen before? Maybe because we want to solve problems that we have created for ourselves through category errors.

No, there is no mind stuff, at least none has ever been proven. Everything is matter, we don't know anything else.
Mind and body are n o t two forms of the same stuff. They are two forms of description!!!
You could also describe an individual from a sociological perspective. It is and always remains the same individual.

It links a mental state (e.g. pain) to a physiological state (specific electrochemical state). A physiological state would be meaningless without referring to a mental state.

Both are descriptions, one through psychology (mental state), the other through physiology (electrochemical state.

If there were an ontological relationship, body and mind would have to be ontologies. That would mean that we are dealing with two substances or entities, a body and a mind. Descartes could not find a mind anywhere. His conclusion was that it must be immaterial. My conclusion is that they are descriptions of one and the same thing. Let's call it an individual, an organism, a brain, whatever you like.

Descartes' rules largely belong to the second dimension, his doubts, his cogito ergo sum and his self-reflection belong to the third dimension. He has nothing to do with the fourth dimension, since he reflects on the universal validity of reason and less on its possible relativity or limitations.

I have written two posts on this, one in which I reject simulation because it contains the false idea that consciousness can be introduced into any entity. A second that describes our universe as the work of an experimenter, with the sole purpose of curbing our arrogance.
https://medium.com/p/b2709f6c48bc
https://medium.com/p/3b0eb3e66048

Everyone can interpret the world as they wish. I am presenting a point of view here that you can share or not. If you see it differently, that's OK.
If you want to understand my point of view (but you don't have to), it's best to read my epistemological article. There you will see that there are four levels of knowledge and it depends on which one you want to argue on: https://www.dr-stegemann.de/erkenntnistheorie-anthropischer-relativismus/genetisch-relativistische-erkenntnistheorie/
It is in German, but you can have it translated without any problem. It will also appear soon on my medium.com account: https://medium.com/@drwolfgangstegemann

As I have already said, we make an ontology out of the phenomenology of the world. Some people then believe that this is identical with an objective truth in the transcendent sense. For me, this idea is naive. Classical and quantum physics are therefore two ontologies that we have made out of two different phenomenologies.

If we now argue from our operational level of knowledge, it seems as if the microworld is fundamental. But this statement can only be understood relativistically.

Ultimately, we only transform the world into a modality that suits us. In our case, this is a neuronal one. In the case of a photon, it would be a photonic one. And that would look completely different to ours.

Whether it is an ontological emergence depends on us, because it is we who epistemically construct the world.
But regardless of that, it seems that this fine carpet of matter is fundamental at the smallest level and everything macroscopic 'unravels', but then evolves according to its own rules and acts deterministically (gravity through planets).
In any case, we will not be able to describe classical and quantum physics with the same terms and theories.

I'm out...

I don't know what you're getting at (I haven't read everything). Of course, consciousness is our window to the world and therefore the most important thing. But a theory of consciousness has to integrate everything, including the 1st and 3rd person perspective, otherwise you can't measure anything. Both perspectives are usually correlated in studies.

Something general: The brain and our consciousness are so complex things that I believe you have to study the entire spectrum intensively for years in order to be able to make reasonably meaningful statements. I know that philosophy often leads you to spontaneously develop plausible thoughts. But that usually leads to pure speculation. I have discussed the methodic and methodological errors that can be made in this portal, but also on my medium page.

A theory of consciousness should include as many aspects, levels and perspectives as possible, including the 1st and 3rd person. If we do not take the 3rd person into account, we will not receive any empirical data about the brain and will not be able to correlate it with behavior or experience.
It is extremely difficult to combine the many aspects due to the complexity.
I think it is important, however, not to derive consciousness causally, because it already exists. So we 'only' have to find the mechanisms that maintain it.
On AI: How should a machine become conscious? Consciousness means (from the 1st person perspective) sensations that arise through sensors and the nerves to the brain and the projection onto the body via the neuroendocrine system. I think it is almost impossible to recreate this, at least in the next few decades. We should not be too impressed by LLMs. They have nothing whatsoever to do with consciousness.

Think logically: if they were stimulus-response machines, who would monitor the sensors? A homunculus, perhaps? The whole thing is self-organized. There is no red alarm light that lights up in case of danger. Life has to do everything itself. So it senses everything that is there inside and outside.
You have to distance yourself from yourself and your oh-so-fascinating experience, otherwise it will be difficult to understand it.

Suppose you know nothing about consciousness, but you examine a human organism and find that there are sensors and nerves. Do you then ask yourself what this is good for? The answer will be that it must have a function. Perhaps you then think that it is there so that these beings can sense what they are doing. So that they are not eaten in the next moment. Sensing is nothing other than consciousness. In our case, this has now become more differentiated, so that we experience entire dramas. This does not change the principle.

Imagine a fluid or graphene intelligence, how would they conceptualize the world? And who would be right, them or us? This inevitably leads to an epistemic relativism.
This states that we can recognize the world within our modality, but not in its 'objective' modality. For this we would need a 'neutral' observer from outside - something like God, who could recognize all subjective worlds.
Instrumentally we could therefore recognize the world step by step, but not epistemologically.

I think you have to differentiate between pure logic and linguistic logic. The liar paradox is a linguistic construct - nothing more.

Western thinking - of course it exists - has so clogged up people's brains that it takes an immense epistemological effort to rise from the frog's perspective and build up the maximum distance in order to understand these things.
The power of the factual is immense and prevents us from taking on other perspectives. It also prevents you from wanting to take on different perspectives and from wanting to learn. People resist any epistemological change. That is more than understandable.

Maybe read my post here (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14959/epistemology-anthropic-relativism) then you will understand my epistemological position.
Furthermore, I assume that we are the ones who interpret the world using our neural means. So there is no 'objective' ontology.
The ontology that we are able to construct leads to the classical physics of the mesocosm. The microworld is 'too small' for us to be able to construct an ontology that is adequate for us.
Both classical and quantum phasic are constructions. In classical physics it takes the form of an ontology; in quantum physics it remains phenomenology.

The transfer of the quantum world to the mesoworld meant philosophy, not technology, example structural realism. Please read carefully!

If you just label my arguments but don't address them further, further discussion makes no sense.

I argue purely logically by saying that we are neuronally established in this world and act here exclusively in this modality. That means we sit in this neural bubble. There is nothing else for us, otherwise we could perhaps switch back and forth between two or more modalities.
If there is no other 'world' for us, then there is nothing behind this world of ours, so there is no meta-physics.
I understand that this argument destroys all dreams of a better, otherworldly world.

I base myself on the fact that we are transforming the world and therefore there cannot be another (for us).
For me, metaphysics is that other world 1 that does not exist for us and therefore there is and cannot be any metaphysics. We have to come to terms with the fact that we can only ever act neurally instantiated, so that every argument is ultimately always tautological. The only question is, can you justify it or just assert it?

I provide an explanation for the fact that metaphysics does not exist

Not at all, while others say that one can know the world or not, I provide a justification, and that is: Every existent is instantiated in the world with its modality and interacts with it by means of this modality.

I only used the photon example to illustrate how relative our existence is. Panpsychism is completely far from my mind.
You have probably understood that World 1 is only an auxiliary mental construct. World 1 as such does not exist (for us).
What I mean to say is that what we call cognition refers to this bubble in which we live as neural beings. Flammarion's wood engraving symbolizes this bubble, from which we cannot escape.
What is the consequence of my epistemology? Instrumentalism, constructivism, genetic epistemology and rejection of everything esoteric and religious. Long live the bubble and we should take care of it.

"...whatever exists must accommodate both minds and brains..."
No, that is exactly the dualism that we cannot get out of our thinking. The brain and the mind are not both up there in the head. Depending on who examines it, they call it a brain or a mind. Both together don't work.

You can investigate anything scientifically. But you cannot scientifically answer questions that are asked incorrectly.
Many believe that one can combine the first and third person perspectives of consciousness simply because they are the same term, consciousness. But both have nothing to do with each other, they are completely different levels.
You cannot objectify qualia, therefore you cannot examine them scientifically.
The phenomenologists can't do it either, they just don't know it yet. :wink:

Read my article here: https://medium.com/neo-cybernetics/cars-and-technology-or-the-mind-body-problem-7ec2b50748c2
Maybe then you'll understand better what I mean.