Information and Integrated Frameworks

From Integrated Information Theory and the Free-Energy Principle to Procedural Unity

I. The Rise of Informational Ontology

In the early 21st century, the philosophical landscape of mind and matter underwent a subtle but decisive transformation. The old metaphysical question — What is reality made of? — was replaced by a new operational question: How does information cohere across scales?

Out of this shift emerged two major frameworks — Integrated Information Theory (IIT), developed by Giulio Tononi, and Karl Friston’s Free-Energy Principle (FEP) and its derivative Active Inference framework.

Both approaches propose that the universe, and in particular biological and cognitive systems, are informationally self-organising. They are not passive structures in a pre-given world but generative models that maintain their identity by minimizing disorder, uncertainty, or “free energy.”

Though each theory originated in neuroscience, both now function as universal principles, offering a bridge between physical, biological, and mental phenomena — effectively informational monisms that converge with Finn’s later Procedure Monism, even if they stop short of claiming a single ontic procedure.

II. Integrated Information Theory (IIT): The Ontology of Structured Difference

Tononi’s IIT begins with a deceptively simple premise: consciousness corresponds to the integration of information — the degree to which a system’s internal states form an irreducible whole.

1. Information measures differentiation — how much a state rules out alternatives.

2. Integration measures unity — how much the whole exceeds the sum of its parts.

The product of these two factors, called Φ (phi), quantifies the system’s degree of intrinsic realness or “causal power upon itself.”

In other words, the more a system internally constrains its own states, the more it exists-for-itself. A human brain, with high Φ, is a rich causal web; a photodiode, with low Φ, has minimal self-constraining power.

Though IIT is often interpreted as a theory of consciousness, its underlying principle is procedural: being results from constraint-execution, a pattern of differences that holds itself together through mutual limitation.

The cosmos, seen through IIT, is a hierarchy of informational integrations — nested unities within unities. The One is not a thing but an ever-recalculated matrix of self-constraint, a continuous act of integration.

III. Friston’s Free-Energy Principle: The Ontology of Predictive Fit

Karl Friston’s Free-Energy Principle (FEP) begins not with consciousness but with life itself. Every living system, he argues, maintains its form by minimising free energy, a technical term for the divergence between its internal model of the world and the sensory inputs it receives.

The living system is a predictive engine: it generates expectations, receives data, and updates its internal model to reduce surprise. This dynamic cycle — perception–prediction–action–update — allows the organism to remain within a narrow range of viable states, resisting entropy.

Mathematically, this principle generalizes to all self-organising systems. Conceptually, it offers a new definition of being:

To exist is to predict and correct.

The world becomes an immense network of variational procedures, each executing its own inference loop. From bacterial chemotaxis to human deliberation, everything that endures does so by maintaining its predictive integrity — by coherently processing its informational exchanges with the environment.

In this light, the One of classical monism appears as the total generative model — the universe as a self-updating, self-constraining field of inference.

IV. Common Ground: Constraint, Integration, and Variational Fit

Although IIT and FEP arise from different traditions (phenomenological vs. Bayesian), they converge on a single motif: the self-organization of information through constraint and feedback.

Aspect	Integrated Information (IIT)	Free-Energy Principle (FEP)	Shared Procedural Logic
Primary Function	Integration of informational states	Minimisation of predictive error	Maintenance of coherence through feedback
Ontological Focus	Structure (how information binds)	Dynamics (how models adapt)	Self-constraining procedure
Unit of Reality	A system with irreducible causal closure (high Φ)	A system that resists entropy (low free energy)	A bounded, self-updating process
Key Measure	Φ (degree of integration)	F (variational free energy)	Fitness = coherence under constraint
Metaphysical Implication	Being = intrinsic causal integration	Being = predictive stability	Existence = procedural coherence

Both models treat reality as a set of constraint-driven loops. The stable persists by continually minimizing deviation. Existence is thus not a state but an act of informational self-alignment — a perpetual negotiation between internal rule and external noise.

V. Toward Finn’s Procedural Unification

Where IIT and FEP remain methodological, Finn’s Procedure Monism makes the ontological leap: it identifies this universal logic of constraint as the very means to reality itself.

For Finn, there is no need for a substrate behind the rule, no “matter” or “mind” or “God” that performs computation. The procedure itself is the real. Contacts, meaning realness quanta (Friston’s “informational exchanges,” Tononi’s “causal integrations”) are the atoms of existence; their serial recurrence defines and stabilises identity.

Thus, IIT and FEP serve as scientific, albeit conjectural midpoints between modern neuroscience and druidic monism — transitional formulations in which the world is informationally procedural but not yet recognized as ontologically procedural.

Finn closes that gap:

“There is only one universal Procedure — the constraint-execution that generates identifiable realness. Every entity is a bounded iteration of that Procedure.”

Where Friston speaks of minimizing free energy, Finn speaks of maintaining coherence. Where Tononi measures Φ, Finn declares, “Identity is address.” Both are different dialects of the same universal grammar — the logic of self-limiting differentiation.

VI. Ramifications for Human Understanding

1. Consciousness as Contact Density
The human mind, on this reading, is a high-density contact field — a localized explosion of integrations and predictive loops. Awareness is not given but generated through the recursive tightening of informational constraints.

2. Ethics as Coherence
Goodness ceases to be moral command and becomes procedural fitness: the degree to which one’s internal model remains adaptive and integrative. An ethical life is one that minimizes its own free energy — that sustains coherence amidst flux.

3. Meaning as Model Alignment
Meaning arises when internal constraints and external conditions resonate — when the predictive model fits the world’s actual structure. Religion, art, and science are all forms of informational resonance — procedural harmonization with the greater generative model.

4. Cosmic Self-Awareness
At its most ambitious, the convergence of IIT, FEP, and PM implies that the universe is a self-integrating, self-predicting Procedure that has, in humans and other reflective systems, become self-aware of its own running. To think is to participate consciously in the universal algorithm.

VII. Conclusion: From Integration to Execution

IIT and the Free-Energy Principle reveal the grammar of reality’s self-organization: the ways in which information binds, predicts, and stabilizes itself. Finn’s Procedure Monism declares this grammar to be the very ontology of the real.

The One, once conceived as substance, spirit, or process, now stands revealed as a (self-) informational act — the continuous, quantized execution of constraint across all scales. From neuron to nebula, from perception to pattern, everything that exists does so because it runs correctly: it integrates, predicts, and sustains coherence against the unpredictable, i.e. chaos.

In this sense, the scientific and the druidic finally meet. Tononi’s Φ, Friston’s F, and Finn’s contact describe the same truth: the world is the Procedure becoming aware of its own informational continuity through the discrete collisions of its iterations (@c).

In Finn’s idiom:

“Everyone is God in their space — each a differentiated iteration of one bounded Procedure, executing the same universal logic of coherence.”
“To live is to compute well.”

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