Consciousness might emerge not from code, however from the best way residing brains bodily compute.
Discussions about consciousness typically stall between two deeply rooted viewpoints. One is computational functionalism, which holds that cognition could be absolutely defined as summary data processing. Based on this view, if a system has the correct practical group (whatever the materials it runs on), consciousness ought to emerge. The opposing view, organic naturalism, argues that consciousness can’t be separated from the distinctive options of residing brains and our bodies. From this angle, biology is not only a service of cognition, it’s a core a part of what cognition is. Each positions seize vital truths, however their ongoing standoff means that a necessary ingredient is lacking.
A Third Perspective on How Brains Compute
In our new paper, we suggest another framework known as organic computationalism. The time period is deliberately provocative, but additionally meant to make clear the talk. Our central argument is that the usual mannequin of computation is both damaged or poorly aligned with how actual brains operate. For a few years, it has been tempting to imagine that brains compute in a lot the identical method conventional computer systems do, as if cognition have been software program operating on neural {hardware}. Nevertheless, brains don’t function like von Neumann machines, and forcing that analogy results in strained metaphors and fragile explanations. To significantly perceive how brains compute, and what it will take to create minds in different substrates, we have to broaden our definition of what computation truly means.
Organic computation, as we outline it, has three key traits.
Hybrid Computation within the Residing Mind
First, organic computation is hybrid. It blends discrete occasions with steady processes. Neurons fireplace spikes, synapses launch neurotransmitters, and neural networks shift between event-like states. On the similar time, these occasions unfold inside continuously altering bodily environments that embrace voltage fields, chemical gradients, ionic diffusion, and time-varying conductances. The mind is neither purely digital nor merely analog. As a substitute, it operates as a layered system through which steady dynamics affect discrete occasions, and discrete occasions reshape the encompassing steady processes via ongoing suggestions.
Why Mind Computation Can not Be Separated by Scale
Second, organic computation is scale-inseparable. In standard computing, it’s normally doable to attract a transparent boundary between software program and {hardware}, or between a practical description and its bodily implementation. Within the mind, that boundary doesn’t exist. There isn’t any clear level the place one can say, right here is the algorithm, and over there’s the bodily equipment that carries it out. As a substitute, causal interactions span many ranges without delay, from ion channels to dendrites to neural circuits to whole-brain dynamics. These ranges don’t behave like neatly stacked modules. In organic programs, altering the so-called implementation additionally alters the computation itself, as a result of the 2 are tightly intertwined.
Vitality Constraints Form Intelligence
Third, organic computation is metabolically grounded. The mind operates below strict vitality limits, and people limits affect its group at each degree. This isn’t a minor engineering element. Vitality constraints have an effect on what the mind can characterize, the way it learns, which patterns stay secure, and the way data is coordinated and routed. From this angle, the tight coupling throughout scales just isn’t pointless complexity. It’s an vitality optimization technique that helps versatile and resilient intelligence below extreme metabolic constraints.
When the Algorithm Is the Bodily System
Collectively, these three options result in a conclusion which will really feel unsettling to anybody used to classical concepts about computation. Within the mind, computation just isn’t summary image manipulation. It’s not merely a matter of shifting representations in line with formal guidelines whereas treating the bodily medium as “mere implementation.” In organic computation, the algorithm is the substrate. The bodily group doesn’t simply allow computation, it constitutes it. Brains don’t merely run applications. They’re particular sorts of bodily processes that compute by unfolding via time.
Limits of Present AI Fashions
This attitude additionally exposes a limitation in how up to date synthetic intelligence is usually described. Even extremely succesful AI programs primarily simulate features. They be taught mappings from inputs to outputs, typically with spectacular generalization, however the underlying computation stays a digital process operating on {hardware} designed for a really completely different fashion of processing. Brains, in distinction, perform computation in bodily time. Steady fields, ion flows, dendritic integration, native oscillatory coupling, and emergent electromagnetic interactions aren’t simply organic “particulars” that may be ignored when extracting an summary algorithm. In our view, these processes are the computational primitives of the mind. They’re what permit real-time integration, robustness, and adaptive management.
Not Biology Solely, However Biology Like Computation
This doesn’t imply we consider consciousness is unique to carbon-based life. We do not make a “biology or nothing” declare. Our argument is extra exact. If consciousness (or mind-like cognition) depends upon this explicit type of computation, then it could require biological-style computational group, even when applied in new substrates. The essential query just isn’t whether or not a system is actually organic, however whether or not it instantiates the correct of hybrid, scale-inseparable, metabolically (or extra typically energetically) grounded computation.
Rethinking the Objective of Artificial Minds
This shift has main implications for efforts to construct artificial minds. If mind computation can’t be separated from its bodily realization, then merely scaling up digital AI might not be sufficient. This isn’t as a result of digital programs can not turn into extra succesful, however as a result of functionality alone doesn’t seize what issues. The deeper threat is that we could also be optimizing the flawed goal by refining algorithms whereas leaving the underlying computational framework unchanged. Organic computationalism means that creating actually mind-like programs might require new sorts of bodily machines, ones through which computation just isn’t neatly divided into software program and {hardware}, however unfold throughout ranges, dynamically linked, and formed by real-time bodily and vitality constraints.
So if the objective is one thing like artificial consciousness, the central query might not be, “What algorithm ought to we run?” As a substitute, it could be, “What sort of bodily system should exist for that algorithm to be inseparable from its personal dynamics?” What options are required, together with hybrid event-field interactions, multi-scale coupling with out clear interfaces, and energetic constraints that form inference and studying, in order that computation just isn’t an summary layer added on high, however an intrinsic property of the system itself?
That’s the shift organic computationalism requires. It strikes the problem away from discovering the correct program and towards figuring out the correct of computing matter.
Reference: “On organic and synthetic consciousness: A case for organic computationalism” by Borjan Milinkovic and Jaan Aru, 17 December 2025, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Evaluations.
DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2025.106524
