Topos Institute
Quanlong Wang
University of Oxford and Topos Institute
Johannes Kleiner
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Bob Coecke
University of Oxford
Project Title
Categorical Theories of Consciousness: Bridging Neuroscience and Fundamental Physics
Project Summary
The relation between consciousness – ‘what it is like to experience something’ – and the physical world is one of the greatest foundational problems in science. In the recent decades, researchers have begun to tackle this age-old question, and a number of major scientific theories of consciousness have been proposed. However, each of these theories is presented using very different mathematics and on the face of it they address different aspects of consciousness, making them difficult to compare and test. In this project, we aim to unify the major existing theories of consciousness using category theory, a highly powerful and general mathematical language for describing interacting processes. Our team comprises world experts in applications of category theory, which today is used in biology, physics, computer science and beyond. This work will greatly clarify each of these theories and their relation with fundamental physics such as quantum mechanics. Already we have successfully reformulated one of the leading theories of consciousness, Integrated Information Theory, and this work formed the cover story of a recent edition of New Scientist. More broadly, our project aims to foster an international community of mathematical consciousness scientists, having previously organized numerous workshops and even a major conference in Oxford devoted to this exciting new field.
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