The concept of self-referring non-algorithmic attention in the beginnings of a scientific theory of consciousness along the lines of "EIP" (see previous article)
INTRODUCING PEIP AS A NON-ALGORITHMIC NON-COMPUTABLE SUBTLE ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE ALONG THE LINES OF WHAT WE INTUITIVELY MEAN BY 'ATTENTION' AS A REFINEMENT OF THE EIP THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Stein Henning Braten Reusch
March 15, 2026
PRELUDE When we give attention to something, we normally think of this as 'the mind is doing something' and when the attention is to something in the mind then 'the mind is doing something to itself'. Here, we are postulating that attention is in some sense connected to that which is behind the organisation of the EIP. In other words, we postulate a principle behind EIP, here abbreviated to PEIP, and suggest that with EIP as a theory of consciousness, PEIP would be the non-algorithmic non-computable principle behind it that associates to the concept of attention. In going from the EIP theory of consciousness towards doing research on EEG with an emphasis on the concept of coherence, an associated concept attention as a component in that theory as here presented seems to make it easier to start with this form of EEG research in the wake of the EIP work.
THE CHALLENGE IN A SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
The study of consciousness takes place in our own consciousness and while it is obviously and clearly a human capacity to engage thus in self-reference, this self-reference is particularly and unusually (compared to almost all other fields studied in a scientific manner) challenging in that wishful thinking and 'too-quick' assumptions can as it were become self-fulfilling up to an extent, and not only conceal the realities behind the words but also lay the grounds for apparently insolvable disagreements between thinkers. We have seen in the works of mathematics, exemplified perhaps most strongly by the genius of topology, the dutch mathematician L.E.J.Brouwer, that whenever infinity (which is a concept forever tied up with self-reference) arises, there is no extant path of logic that provides a sure way to create agreement between all honest thinkers.
What seems to be at stake here is that whenever self-reference arises, it is not enough to refer to something we can point to out there--whether on paper or in our measuring apparatus. Rather, we must refer something to the pointer's mind; the mind which is referring is referring to just this mind. While this is intrinsic to all human consciousness which includes the living human brain in manners not clear to science, it is entirely beyond what all digital computers, whether of conventional kind or of some kind of imagined 'qubit'-kind, can reach. This was shown the first time in the wake of the works by the person who more than anyone clarified the most general concepts of the computer, namely Kurt Goedel, while he did not himself use the word 'computer' for his strategy of coding formulae by means of a certain type of functions and a coding pattern relying on prime numbers. The concept of the 'computer' came of course in the wake of Church/Turing papers, and the associated works provided a clear sense in which computers are in principle limited from self-reference (due to the infinities involved). And this means that they are barred from being able to 'access' a general intelligence because that would mean a general insight, or 'overview' over own functionality, which again implies self-reference.
When the human mind engages in forms of thinking that involves self-reference, however, disagreements may arise, even when the thinkers are very ambitious on behalf of reaching an honest insight. What seems to this writer to be at stake here is that self-reference involves a form of attention that hovers in between the symbolic form and its meanings, so that some expressions as to this 'hovering' squares with the subtle reality inside the mind while others are incoherent with it. Such an incoherence is not obvious if we pay attention only to the extant forms. In other words, if we have a rule-based system, we cannot hope for anything better than proving that it is self-contradictory or showing that it provides useful results in some domain of application. If it is proven to be self-contradictory it can also be proven to say nothing at all, because it will be able to say or "prove" both "P" and "not-P" for any proposition P. But a system that does not have any shown self-contradiction may not have coherence relative to what it is supposed to concern. When we are talking of consciousness, we are using consciousness to talk about itself, and this self-reference may entail a sense of coherence with certain formulations, and it may entail a sense of incoherence with certain other formulations. But how do we sense coherence? In EEG research, and in related forms of biofeedback measures on the human body and its nervous activity, a statement said with a kind of coherent inner support from the fullness of consciousness is characterised by more harmony and more general activation in a synchronous way of the nervous system. In contrast, when a person, perhaps unwittingly, says something which is not quite fitting with own perceptions, there is a sense of lack of harmonious synchronous activation, and instead a sense of inner conflict (for instance, the person may be 'lying to himself').
When a genius like the famous L.E.J.Brouwer, who fostered a whole branch of mathematics and who led to a considerable following among other mathematicians who built on his works, can, with his intellectual powers intact, a later year say that such and such proof was not really a proof after all, because it involved infinities for which we have no clear, proven reason to accept on equal footing with the more finite assumptions, --and I know of more such examples in the history of mathematics and physics-- then we are led to say the following:
The person spotted an incoherence in own reasoning powers which the person did not earlier on spot; or, the person thought that an incoherence was spotted (but it may not have been an incoherence). When however sections of universities, series of tutorships, branches of journals etc have all been made on the assumption that the earlier forms of thinking did not involve an incoherence, we see that there are financial--and more generally, social-- structures reinforcing earlier patterns of thinking, leading to a sense amongst thinkers that they may loose support from 'the system' unless they 'show loyalty'. And this is of course what has taken place again and again; the social structures provide a survival-oriented reward-system for not questioning certain 'established' pathways of thought.
It is on this background that I try to go here one step further in elaborating on some 'shapes and patterns' in the theory of consciousness associated with what I called "EIP".
THE ROLE OF EMPIRICAL SCIENCES SUCH AS PHYSICS AND BRAIN SCIENCE IN THE STUDY AND THEORISING OVER THE PHENOMENON OF CONSCIOUSNESS
The phenomena of observing measuring machines eg in a EEG laboratory or in a physics library is of course a tiny a subset of the ocean of phenomena comprising human living, ie, human consciousness. Science, in the mainstream accepted sense of it such as in the 20th century, has focused mostly on that which in one way or another can be related to measuring machines. This seems to be due to a sense that it is easier to agree on eg whether a measuring device has its meter on the number 5 or the number 6 rather than on whether, say, a feeling should be characterised as a holistic joy or as a local pleasure--something which Baruch de Spinoza, a classic Dutch philosopher in Western philosophy, insisted on as one of the most essential pairs of phenomena to clearly distinguish with in human ethics and living (he called them, respectively, hilaritas and titilatio, in his Latin writings).
However the lack of obvious ease in talking clearly and objectively about the more subtle phenomena of human consciousness compared to the more manifest phenomena connected to such as human measuring machines does not, of course, preclude the possibility of being objective about these more subtle phenomena. Once we agree that it is easier to disagree about them, we can also agree that we can explore ways of approaching these phenomena in which we can perhaps transcend, so to say, subjective interpretations of our subjective phenomena. We can also, like Martin Buber in his I-Thou essay, perhaps regard some phenomena as beyond the subjective, as properly belonging to the realm of a direct immediate relationship which goes beyond mere subjective experience in the more narrow sense of "I". These themes and many more like that are opened up when we connect the scientific attitude in its essence form to that of questing for getting words to 'square' with something beyond the words, with a sense of wonder and sceptical self-critical openness about the possibility of getting interpretations wrong.
The scientific attitude, in this more philosophical--rather than mainstream sense--would mean to strive to go beyond any wishful thinking and to also strive to get hold of what is sensed to be an as appropriate and coherent reflection of a reality beyond the words and figures we are using, without dogmatic certainty that we have got it right, and with an invitation for others to join in and explore more alternatives.
However when vast amounts of technology has been associated with some core theories that have again and again shown themselves to be very robust, --and quantum theory--or more precisely, a set of equations and a loose set of ideas of how to apply them vaguely bundled together as 'quantum physics'--is such a core theory (or bundle).
It is however wishful thinking to try and regard any such set as the final set; it is also wishful thinking to try and regard every other phenomenon as somehow reducible to this set.
In the same way, brain science, with its many measurement attempts and recorded measurements of the human brain and its many types of activities and several types of cells, yields many examples of correlations between the phenomena of human consciousness and the 'scientific phenomena' of looking to measurement instruments. It is wishful thinking, again, to try and somehow 'reduce' consciousness to what goes on in the brain. It may be fun, for some, at some times, to try and make such reductive claims; but a reflective approach to the phenomena of consciousness has in it many aspects which call into question how well such an approach 'squares' with reality.
On this background, when I sought to describe the concept of the Extra Information in the Probability Cloud, or EIP, associated with in particular (but not restricted to) the EEG of the human nerves, I sought to rely on a sense in which we trust that some of the bundles of concepts in quantum physics and in the associated, updated theory of electromagnetism accordingly, provide indications or open sketches of maps of reality which touch perhaps more directly than what is at first sight obvious on our experience of (a level) of consciousness.
As is known, EEG measurements and related measurements of the electricity and magnetism and electromagnetism and more such of the living human brain permits statistical summaries that appear, in what is presumably a majority of cases, to correlate with 'states of consciousness' or 'states of mind' of various kinds, at least in some vague way. And by applying the concepts of quantum physics here, we find that in addition to the wave shape of EEG we have a more subtle yet real and constantly changing and also wave-like feature called the Probability cloud and which in some interpretations of the quantum theory such as according to de Broglie are given a form of subtle reality. It is indeed hard to imagine the realities studied in quantum physics without giving a credibility to the existence of the probability densities as they are regarded as shaping them, also macroscopically in the case, eg, of supermagnetism. And if the probability densities, with their own dimensions and peculiarities, are shaping the real material energies involved, then per definition we are ascribing some form of reality or another to the probability densities or the sum of them as a Probability cloud.
The many studies of the interactions, as we may call it, between such a Probability cloud and the realities as they unfold, have indicated that at no point do the equations, such as Scroedinger or the updated forms of these equations, such as in Feynman's 'sum over possible histories', provide a full set of variables enough to determine the outcome nor do they spell out the conditions for the more general shaping of the Probability cloud nor is there merely indeterminism in play. The fact of the much-repeated studies of nonlocality shows that while there may of course be occasions with 'quantum noise' (and as such an apparent or relative degree of fluctuations if not 'randomness'), such assumptions of randomness cannot explain the coherent unfoldment of the underlying realities. It is only due to philosophical 'grudges' from another front of physics, connected to general relativity theory with its handling of gravitation, that physicists have often refrained--just like Niels Bohr--to try and spell out that there are indeed more factors at play than the measured manifest energies. (Indeed, if there are, Einstein's concept of the absoluteness of the speed of light and the associated concept of a fixed deterministic fourth dimension cannot possibly hold even while it seems that his numerical predictions are sound; meaning that we must rework the informal concepts behind why those numerical predictions on gravitation and the seeming constancy of light work out the way they do in the formal part of his theory; which is the position this writer is taking and in a general way has shown is compatible with a new also formal take on these results in super-model theory).
So, in sum, the Extra Information in the Probability cloud, or EIP, is a concept or 'map' that seems pretty well to 'square' with reality although a larger map requires much hard work in order to incorporate such phenomena as the apparent constancy of speed of light (something this writer has done under the heading of 'super-model theory', choosing to frame certain noncomputational themes in a computional framework as an illustration rather than as an encapsulation of a theory that is in essence informal, but possibly complete as far as it goes).
In such a case as we regard EIP as (at least) plausible enough to permit a next step in clarification of concepts, we may ask to describe, for instance, the sense in which attention can make something indicate, or mean, something else, and by an adjustment of attention, something yet other can become indicated. It is by attention that a form becomes first a phenomenon and second a phenomenon that has a meaningful reference.
WHAT UNDERLIES THE STRUCTURE OF THE EIP?
Since the EIP has, obviously, structure, and the structure, being a probability cloud with its extra information, clearly is not directly materially manifest (that is the whole crux of quantum physics) it is clear that it is cannot be reduced to the interplay of matter. Nor is it random. Nor is it merely a mix of random and the sort of causal rules we may sometimes see at play between some manifest matter energy and some other manifest matter energy.
From this we infer that there must be a process which is neither random nor rule-based and which underlies the EIP, or supervises it, to switch the perspective. This principle behind EIP organisation involves a shaping of the EIP coherently with the matter energies to which it refers, and this also means that it is itself somehow getting a kind of 'mapping overview' over the manifest matter energies. This principle is, we hold, naturally inferred from the whole concept of EIP; it can exhibit some properties as the Schroedinger's equation but this equation does not contain the subtle information in the EIP which is beyond the observable region. So it is not a deterministic principle. It engages in a mapping of what is manifest, so as to coherently order it through the EIP. Such a mapping is generally not computational: this is a natural assumption which follows from an understanding of the noncomputability in the wake of Kurt Godedel's famous second incompleteness theorem, as further deliberated in Church/Turing theorems over incomputability.
The principle behind EIP we will here call PEIP.
For those who have studied the super-model theory which underlies the shaping of the G15 PMN programming language and where the article on it is embedded in the 'third foundation' platform of G15 PMN, they will nod to associations with the more general principle of PMW, or a principle of a tendency of a movement toward a creative type of wholeness. The more general principle PMW can be seen to permit for a more concrete principle like PEIP rather as an example of its functionality in the mind/matter context.
EIP AND CONSCIOUSNESS, PEIP AND ATTENTION
By associating EIP to (a level of) what we mean by 'consciousness', it seems natural to associate PEIP to (a level of) what we refer to as 'attention'. Indeed, philosophically, we might say that Goedel's incompleteness theorem is a way to demonstrate that a rule-based system cannot do 'proprioception', ie, it cannot do attention to itself. In practical terms, for instance, this means that no computer system can be made which is so constructed that it can fix all computer systems. Such a fixing would mean a mapping of other computer systems but also itself and the mapping would be impossible to do by rule-based system, and any attempt to get at some more than the rule-based system by mixing in more or less random fluctuations such as from thermal features would be like fishing in infinity for this or that finite structure but would get irrelevant results by far most of the time (ie, there would have to be countless millions of years before a digital computer by means of a mixture of rule-based and noise-based or random- based algorithms could fix the programs of all digital computers, even if the speed is trillions of times that of the so-far imagined computers).
ASSOCIATIONS AND METAPHORS FOR PEIP
PEIP is therefore proposed to be something like the 'beam of attention' which, in connecting to the notion of EIP as a kind of 'subtle form of light' that surrounds electromagnetic pulses such as EEG, would faintly resemble the notion of 'coherent light' shining on some form like a 'hologram' leading to an extent form, ie, what is indicated by the form given attention to. So PEIP as applied to a particular structure, which may be a structure of neurons--in other words, it may be of a manifest material energy-- leads to a new structure, which again may find its shape as a structure involving neurons (eg, in their synaptic patterns). In the mind, when attention is given to one form, that form can be thought of as a 'seed' which leads to something else, what it implies or may imply, one or more structures or a range of them, which is as it were the extent hologram or 'plant'. The well-known thought-works of brain researcher Karl Pribram and physicist David Bohm from the 1980s are, though not phrased in the concepts of EIP and PEIP, are obviously compatible in their general form with what is here concretely proposed. The concepts in Bohm's paper on soma-significance from the late 1980s (which he gave to me on our first meeting at his office at Birkbeck College, London in 1986), and which is discussed in a chapter in Lee Nichol's book, "The Essential David Bohm", from 2003, are in some vague sense useful here. At any rate, I am completely in line with Bohm when it comes to associating levels of consciousness with a sense of the 'implicate' and the 'explicate', and that there are more and more subtle levels.
However the interactivity between the material material form (or "soma") that comes to mean (or signify) something through attention and which again is manifesting as a form ("soma") as what is meant, given a particular form of that nonalgorithmic attention, has a dynamic sense to it that is perhaps not clearly indicated in Bohm's papers (but his papers showed a path forward).
The notion of PEIP we see here comes along in an essential non-reductionistic way. We do not move onwards with EIP by suddenly going back to reductionistic concepts because EIP is essentially a non-reductionistic take on consciousness. What have here done is to focus on features of consciousness that is particularly salient and general, and which permits some sense of additional 'mapping' which seems to square with reality, such as the sense and phenomenon of attention. The human mind has an attention that can refer to itself.
Acknowledgements: same as for the original EIP article from 2025 which is also at www.yoga6d.org/library/sciencefolder/
Copyright the author. Original article first published at https://yoga6d.org/library/sciencefolder/research_on_coherent_eeg/ and also posted at tumblr.com/philosophy-of-science March 15, 2026. This article builds on and refers to the EIP theory of consciousness, and the copyright and further distribution rights are exactly the same as for the EIP article from April 24, 2025, which is also at this URL: https://yoga6d.org/library/sciencefolder/consc_spellco.pdf and the April 2025 EIP article is also here: https://www.tumblr.com/philosophy-of-science/782376983929733121/connecting-consciousness-and-matter
