Entropic Theories

Lugten's Entropic Theory of the Emergence of Consciousness

Independent researcher Peter Lugten proposes the Entropic Theory of the Emergence of Consciousness, which posits that the ‘explanatory gap’ between the brain’s generation of consciousness and our experience of it must remain unbridgeable due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics (and the Law of Conservation of Information) and requires that consciousness must be an evolutionary process (Lugten, 2024). The reason, he says, is that there is an entropy debt associated with the organizational capabilities consciousness confers, and that this is repaid by a Landauer-like mechanism that simultaneously deletes the computations involved in the emergence of consciousness (Landauer, 1961).

According to Lugten, the reason for this cloak of secrecy is found in a seeming contradiction in the behavior of information with respect to the first two laws of thermodynamics. Information, the microstate of particles within an isolated system’s macrostate, can, like first law energy, be neither created nor destroyed, yet the information in the system, like second law entropy, will inevitably increase. To explain information increasing without being created, Laplace’s demon is usually invoked, able to predict where each particle is destined. This doesn’t work for emerging events like consciousness, which are unpredictable. It can be understood in terms of a proposed Landauer-like principle that states that the increase in entropy in a time-irreversible, unpredictable (emergent) computational system, necessary to balance the decrease in entropy that results from the emergence, requires the simultaneous, permanent deletion of information concerning the steps involved in the computation. They must remain a mystery.

Therefore, consciousness is work, and it is warm. The local decrease in entropy is balanced by entropy radiated as heat. In quantum mechanical terms, this depends on Kastner’s Relativistic Transactional Interpretation (Kastner & Schlatter, 2024). Such a local decrease in entropy can only be used by individuals who would benefit from increasing their level of organization in exchange for work. Thus, consciousness is an evolutionary process restricted to evolving organisms.

Implications include that entropy, not panpsychism, is the universal principle generative of consciousness; that our being conscious proves that we are not predetermined; that free will is genuine; and that consciousness requires assuming an “entropy debt” that can only be repaid by living organisms, prohibiting the emergence of conscious machines (Lugten, 2025).

Van Hamme’s Consciousness from Entropy, Coherence: A Threshold Mechanism in Universal Emergence Dynamics

Independent physicist Carlos van Hamme presents an “entropy–coherence account of consciousness” grounded in what he calls a “Universal Emergence Dynamics (UED).” In this framework, “neuronal microtubules act as cylindrical resonators of the coherence field Φ, embedded within an entropic field S. Conscious awareness arises only when coherence surpasses a microtubular threshold, establishing stable projection episodes” (Van Hamme, 2025).

Van Hamme claims that this threshold mechanism provides a unified explanation for three central puzzles:

• Qualia emerge as coherence configurations stabilized above the microtubule threshold, not as metaphysical additions.
• Sleep and anesthesia correspond to systematic threshold modulations: natural cycling below the microtubule threshold.
• Agency is reframed as branch selection within the entropic–coherence field, deterministic yet adaptive, shaped by prior experience.

Van Hamme says his model is empirically anchored in EEG discontinuities, terahertz vibrational modes of microtubules, and selective anesthetic binding.

The missing substrate in other theories of consciousness, even those strikingly similar, is the Universal Emergence Dynamics. By grounding consciousness in the same entropic-coherence field that unifies cosmology and quantum mechanics,

Van Hamme says that UED allows us to reinterpret microtubules not as improbable quantum computers, but as biological resonators of coherence. Conscious awareness then emerges not from abstract information, but from a coherence threshold, a field that he says is both mathematically defined and empirically testable.

Van Hamme claims that within UED, the mystery of qualia— “the redness of red, the sting of pain, the calm of silence—dissolves. Neural correlates can be mapped, but why those correlates are accompanied by felt experience remains mysterious. Within UED, “qualia are not ‘extra ingredients’ added to neural activity, but distinct configurations of coherence that stabilize above the microtubule threshold.”

To Van Hamme, “Qualia are coherence configurations of the field Φ. They arise when microtubular resonances cross the threshold and stabilize as projection frames. Their irreducibility is not metaphysical but structural: they are the intrinsic resonance patterns of the field itself.”

• Color, sound, and pain are not ‘labels’ but stabilized attractors.
• The felt quality of experience is the coherence structure.
• “Consciousness is not an epiphenomenon, but a threshold-driven regime of the universal entropic–coherence substrate.”

In this way, Van Hamme argues, “UED anchors the mystery of qualia in precise field dynamics, bringing phenomenology into the same physical continuum as cosmology and quantum mechanics.”

Beyond neuroscience, Van Hamme envisions a larger role for UED, reframing the role of entropy: “rather than disorder, it is the measure of coherent possibilities. Consciousness, choice, and value thus appear as natural expressions of the entropic–coherence substrate, providing a testable bridge between physics, biology, and philosophy” (Van Hamme, 2025).

Chen and Sanders's Consciousness As Entropy Reduction

Computer scientist Yifeng Chen and researcher J. W. Sanders propose a model of consciousness that, “having a logical basis, lends itself to simulation using a simple mathematical model called Consciousness as Entropy Reduction (CER).” The authors credit well-known models such as Global Workspace Theory and Integrated Information Theory as inspiration, along with an earlier, less mainstream model called “Feature Map” in psychology (i.e., a topographic cortical map for each stimulus attribute). “CER considers the contents of consciousness and subconsciousness as scenarios: a vector of patterns (or features) on various ‘channels’ (or feature locations). In CER, a feature map itself is not consciousness but only the input scenario into a world of possible subconscious scenarios from which the conscious scenario (i.e., conscious experience) is chosen. Essentially, it creates an internal simulation of the outside world.” Chen and Sanders claim their model’s efficiency in support. “Solving problems in simulation internally as a ‘thought experiment’ is obviously more economical than doing experiments in a real environment and lends itself to adaptability and hence is a major evolutionary advantage” (Chen and Sanders, 2025).