A new preprint co-authored by Matteo Grasso and Giulio Tononi, who served as Faculty at Summer School 2025, together with Jeremiah Hendren, who served as TA, was posted to arXiv on 11 August 2026.

 Working within the framework of Integrated Information Theory (IIT), the paper treats an experience not as a bundle of phenomenal atoms but as a structured whole made up of distinctions and the relations that bind them, and it accounts for a given content of experience by showing a one-to-one correspondence with the causal distinctions and relations of the Φ-structure unfolded from a substrate. The authors apply this method to three pervasive contents that are partly open to introspection: spatial extendedness, temporal flow, and objects. They liken the undertaking to chemistry, which explains an endless variety of compounds from a limited set of elements and the ways they bond. The accounts are then assessed against seven criteria for a good explanation, and the authors sketch the prediction that follows: altering the structure specified by a substrate should alter the corresponding content, even when activity and behavior are held comparable.

Paper Information

Authors:  Matteo Grasso, Jeremiah Hendren, and Giulio Tononi

Title: Consciousness as Intrinsic Structure: Towards a Chemistry of Experience

ArXiv, (2026). Accessed August 26, 2026. 

https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.11398.

Abstract

 To be conscious is to have an experience - not a collection of phenomenal atoms, but a structured whole composed of distinctions and the relations that bind them. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) identifies the essential properties of every experience (axioms), formulates them operationally as postulates that a substrate must satisfy, and unfolds the cause-effect power of the resulting complex into a Φ-structure. Accounting for a content of experience is then a matter of identifying the phenomenal distinctions and relations that compose it, and showing them reflected one-to-one in the causal distinctions and relations of the corresponding Φ-structure. We apply that method to three pervasive contents whose structure is partly open to introspection. Spatial extendedness is composed of spots, whose elemental signature is reflexivity, bound by reflexive inclusion, connection, and fusion; temporal flow is composed of moments, whose signature is directedness, bound by directed inclusion, connection, and fusion; objects bind a particular configuration of features to a general concept through relations bearing the signature of hierarchy. The endeavor is akin to chemistry, which accounts for an endless variety of compounds from a limited set of elements and the ways they bond. We assess these accounts against seven criteria of a good explanation - scope, synthesis, specificity, self-consistency, system consistency, simplicity, and scientific validation - and sketch the prediction that follows: altering the structure specified by a substrate should alter the corresponding content, even when activity and behavior are held comparable. The same method may reach narrow qualia, which resist introspection, and the compound contents that bind many qualia together, though there it remains a proof of concept and an open research program.