From structure to experience: a Spinozist framework for consciousness rooted in critical brain dynamics

Abstract

The study of consciousness is divided between mechanistic accounts that overlook subjective experience and phenomenological approaches limited to neural correlates. We propose a unified framework by grounding our ConCrit model of consciousness and critical brain dynamics within Spinoza’s ontological monism. Spinoza’s principle of psycho-physical parallelism—mind and body as attributes of one substance—provides a metaphysical basis to dissolve the explanatory gap between neural processes and lived experience. Within this framework, three properties which are maximized near criticality correspond, under Spinoza’s parallelism, to mental dimensions: entropy corresponds to experiential richness—the diversity of idea under the attribute of Thought, internal susceptibility to reflexive capacity or degrees of autonomy, and scale-free dynamics to the structural alignment with the common order of nature that, under the attribute of Thought, is expressed in adequate ideas. Thus, we propose that brain activity near criticality under the attribute of Extension is the very same phenomenon that, under the attribute of Thought, is conscious experience. This synthesis reinterprets leading theories—including Integrated Information Theory, Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, and the Entropic Brain Hypothesis—as complementary views of a shared underlying reality. By situating ConCrit within Spinoza’s monism, we argue that consciousness is not emergent or epiphenomenal but the parallel manifestation of universal organizational principles, offering a conceptually unified and interpretively transparent framework for neuroscience.