The Causal Depth of Experience - Consciousness as a Constrained Quantum Distribution

This work proposes a theoretical framework for consciousness grounded in two conceptual shifts relative to existing theories. The first shift is from the instant to time: consciousness is not a property of the instantaneous complexity of a system, but of the historical depth of structures — the channels — that have been progressively carved by evolutionary history and individual experience. The second shift is from processing to constraint: consciousness is not the result of active information processing, but a quantum probability distribution passively constrained by the geometry of those channels. The central mechanism rests on an established principle of standard quantum mechanics — that boundary conditions fully determine the probability distribution of a system — applied to the nested cascade of scales linking macroscopic channel geometry to microscopic quantum processes in neural tissue. Decoherence operates as a selection mechanism rather than an obstacle: configurations compatible with channel geometry are selectively stabilised and inscribed as stored traces. Subjective experience is defined as the recursive comparison between a present state and a stored trace — a minimal process for which memory is the necessary condition. The framework introduces two formal constructs. Causal depth measures the cumulative density of redundant encodings a system has produced in its environment, providing an ontological distinction between evolutionary systems and spontaneously appearing configurations (Boltzmann brains). Channel depth combines a phylogenetic component (evolutionary architectural inheritance) and an ontogenetic component (individual experiential history), modulated by a recursivity factor Rᵢ. An operational criterion is derived, combining instantaneous integrated complexity (borrowed from Integrated Information Theory), temporal stability of functional connectivity (a distinctive measure absent from all competing theories), and global recursivity. Five testable predictions are generated that diverge from the predictions of IIT, Global Workspace Theory, Orch-OR and CEMI, including a prediction concerning the non-null residual consciousness in deep sleep, a dissociation between instantaneous complexity and temporal stability under psychoactive substances, and a developmental prediction linking channel historical depth to the richness of conscious experience independently of instantaneous neural complexity. The heuristic and exploratory status of the framework is explicitly acknowledged. Its free parameters are postulated rather than derived, and its predictions are currently qualitative. Its value will depend on its capacity to generate sufficiently distinctive quantitative signatures for empirical confrontation.