Condensed Past, Thick Present: Evolutionary Approach to the Conscious Experience

Abstract: This paper examines the conceptual convergence between Lee Smolin's Causal Theory of Views, Karl Friston's Free Energy Principle, and contemporary psychological accounts of the functions of consciousness. Although formulated within different domains -- physics, biology, and psychology -- all three frameworks, in one form or another, appeal to processes of transition from uncertainty to certainty, in which novelty arises through the resolution of surprise. According to the first two approaches, these transitions are realized within particular temporo-spatial gaps, which themselves evolve and become increasingly elaborate as organization grows. By tracing the structural and functional parallels between these frameworks, the paper proposes an account of how the evolution and the gradual elaboration of novelty, surprise, and these temporo-spatial gaps may be linked to the emergence and progressive development of consciousness, up to its highest forms addressed by psychology.