Unfolding functional brain geometry across scales: self-intending projection framework for phenomenal consciousness

Consciousness arises from physical and geometric constraints, yet the nature of phenomenality remains unresolved. A conceptual and mechanistic framework links self-intending projection to phenomenal consciousness. Based on Dynamic Organicity Theory, this materialist framework posits that quantum effects underlie phenomenality. Moving beyond representational models, Embedded Quantum Physicalism (EQP) offers a multiscale, non-reductive approach in which consciousness is naturalized through effective processes embedded within the brain’s functional geometry. This geometry evolves through functional interactions that constrain internal states, while its curvature organizes agential holons and intrinsic information into self-referential loops, enabling intentional closure via self-intending projections. Reflexivity alone is insufficient; intrinsic intentionality emerges from these loops and provides the necessary condition for consciousness. Under EQP, phenomenality is not an ontological primitive but a physically instantiated phenomenon. Unlike reductive accounts that reduce consciousness to neural correlates or dismiss it as epiphenomenal, EQP traces phenomenality to thermo-quantum fluctuations in the brain’s biochemistry, which reshape functional geometry. This geometry supports effective processes, including projections, holonomies, and projective closure. Toroidal-like neuropil microcavities enter coherent quasipolaritonic modes through quantum-optical effects, involving delocalized information systems that transform intrinsic information. Phenomenality arises when stable agential holons form self-intending projections with projective closure, embodied in a Weyl-like, non-Euclidean functional geometry shaped by effective quantum potentials acting as lensing mechanisms at small scales in the neuropil.