Poznanski’s Dynamic Organicity Theory

[Note: Poznanski's Dynamic Organicity Theory is his original theory; it is now superseded by his "Processual Relational Geometry: Self-Intending Transscale Consciousness."]

Neuroscientist Roman Poznanski proposes a Dynamic Organicity Theory (DOT) of consciousness, a quantum biological theory based on a multiscale interpretation of type-B materialism.^[1] DOT utilizes a multiscalar temporal-topological framework to include quantum biological effects in the sense of what happens to macroscopic systems upon interaction with quantum potential energy that exists when a living negentropic^[2] state of the brain imposes thermodynamic constraints (Poznanski, 2024).

Poznanski states that DOT is 'biological naturalism' that is all the way based on 'panexperiental materialism,' which, he says, resists metaphysical absolutism by grounding its ontological commitments in epistemic practice, thereby adopting an onto-epistemological orientation. Rather than asserting that all matter possesses experience—a view bordering on panpsychism—DOT proposes that experience is an intrinsic aspect of matter as encountered under specific epistemic conditions (Poznanski, 2024, 2025).

Panexperiential Materialism and Intrinsic Information

According to DOT, these conditions manifest through functional relations interactions within a holarchical modularity, producing self-referential relation informational holons. These holons are not emergent phenomena but are built into the very structure of reality (information-based spacetime geometry). This framework grounds intentionality and agency not solely as emergent features, but as intrinsic aspects of how matter organizes itself into knowable, experiencing systems. It thereby challenges the dogma of 'sentience in, sentience out,' rejecting the notion that proto-consciousness must be externally introduced to account for experience and instead relies on quantum-delocalized information systems as the intrinsic basis of the structure of reality in the brain. 

In other words, intrinsic information systems must be embodied, enacted, and self-referential to become experience; otherwise it remains a description of a state, not the enactment of 'feeling' or understanding. So the bridge is functional interactions exposing the necessary conditions for experience to be grounded in agentility that is capable of affective self-relation—without which intrinsic information remains merely a structural description, not a medium of lived subjectivity (Poznanski, 2024, 2025).

Multiscale Complexity and Quantum Biology

DOT does not deal with quantum consciousness or assume quantum brain dynamics. However, according to Poznanski, a Schrödinger-like equation describes the quantum effects within the multiscale complexity, where multiscale complexity is both functional and structural through changeable boundary conditions (resulting in the topology being a holarchical modularity). This is made possible by treating time consciousness, i.e., “consciousness-in-the-moment,” on a nonlinear temporal scale and implicitly grounding space to the contingency of changing boundary conditions. The approach is based on the dynamics of functional relations (not to be confused with functionalist or relational theories of consciousness). It is a nonspatial topological framework (not the mathematical study of “space” in a general sense of topological spaces) associated with the temporal aspect of the functionality.

Here, functionality refers to the biological realization of the physical as those features of usefulness that exist subjectively. Therefore, Poznanski says, it rules out functionalism and focuses on the qualitativeness of brain functioning. As noted, the approach is type-B materialism (Chalmers, 2003), where consciousness is a physical process, but epistemic objectivism alone does not define physicalism (Shand, 2021). This means that functionality as the quality of usefulness only refers to physical properties assessed subjectively, which can be possible only through quantum biological effects.

Moreover, the functional capability of the negentropic state changing over time must satisfy the following necessary condition for consciousness to arise: the functionality of multiscale complexity must exceed the functionality of maximum complexity, i.e., FMultiComplexity > FMaxComplexity. This means that consciousness arises when the functionality of multiscale complexity reaches above the functionality of maximum complexity. This required increase in functionality of multiscale complexity is derived from an additional degree of freedom made possible by quantum biology^[3] beyond that of the functionality of maximum complexity as derived from brain structure, dynamics, and function.

FMaxComplexity is an insufficient measure of consciousness. FMultiComplexity provides an epistemically subjective approach to dynamic organicity, including self-referential dynamic pathways that give an extra quality of energy-negentropy exchange for path selection as realization relations. FMultiComplexity is not a step-function but a gradual ascendance to plateaus accounting for different degrees of consciousness. (Whether this condition is sufficient is beyond DOT to decipher; something with an equivalent topology could cause consciousness in other systems.) (Poznanski, 2024).

Self-Reference and Dynamic Organicity

Poznanski states that “the act of understanding uncertainty is the main qualifier of consciousness” and “the ‘act’ connotes the experienceable form, which is, in essence, a precursor of the experience of acting.” The process entails the potential for understanding “meaning” through self-referential dynamical pathways “instead of recognizing (cf. introspection) sensory information through perceptual channels, forming the basis of understanding uncertainty without relying on memory recall.” It is not, he says, “coming into existence” because “quantum-thermal fluctuations are irreducible, yet the process as a whole comes ‘to exist’ perhaps not instantaneously but appears spontaneously. Its output is intentionality as an instruction to act in path selection.”

The self-reference principle, which Poznanski says can replace emergence and self-organization when dealing with functionality rather than structure, “establishes dynamical pathways from the microscale to the macroscale (this includes nonlocal pathways), in which diachronic causation and how the disunity of causal order in the redundancy creates a weak unity of consciousness through its temporal structure,” the inferred purpose giving rise to “a sense of self.”

Poznanski avoids discussing phenomenological properties of consciousness, such as qualia, because, he says, they do “not apply to conscious reality when considered in the context of functional-structural realism, an offshoot of structuralism, without relying on introspection.” Phenomenological consciousness, he says, “appears like a black box of ‘being’ instead of ‘doing.’” However, functional interactions that entail self-referential dynamics “are uniquely fathomed and, hence, not phenomenally equivalent in other functional systems.”

Thus, Poznanski concludes, “a living negentropic state that supports biological function is a dynamic state of being organic representing an additional degree of freedom for intrinsic information to be structured, which makes it possible for a dynamic organicity theory of consciousness to take shape in the material brain” (Poznanski, 2024).

Footnotes

[1]. A type-B materialist “accepts that there is an unclosable epistemic gap, but denies that there is an ontological gap” (Chalmers, 2003).

[2]. “Negentropy” is a reduction in entropy and a corresponding increase in order.

[3]. Quantum biology does not imply that quantum mechanics applies here. It is a classical-to-quantum analog approach, based on wave mechanics, that is sufficient to illustrate the process.