{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,15]],"date-time":"2026-06-15T14:25:49Z","timestamp":1781533549237,"version":"3.54.5"},"reference-count":55,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,1]],"date-time":"2026-04-01T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1775001600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100009566","name":"Foundational Questions Institute","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","award":["FQXi-RFP-CPW-2015"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["FQXi-RFP-CPW-2015"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100009566","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"award":["FQXi-RFP-CPW-2015"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["FQXi-RFP-CPW-2015"]}],"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/016en1t86","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/100000925","name":"John Templeton Foundation","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","award":["63209"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["63209"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100000925","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"award":["63209"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["63209"]}],"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/035tnyy05","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100021745","name":"Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100021745","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/013m0ej23","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Entropy"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Could there be quantum superpositions of conscious states, as suggested by the Wigner\u2019s friend thought experiment? Mathematical theories of consciousness, notably integrated information theory (IIT), make this question more precise by associating physical systems with both quantitative amounts of consciousness and structural characterizations of conscious states. Motivated by a recent proposal that ties wave-function collapse to integrated information, we construct a simple quantum circuit that would, on that proposal, place a minimal system\u2014a feedback dyad\u2014into a superposition of states that differ in their associated conscious states. This \u201cSchr\u00f6dinger\u2019s dyad\u201d provides a controlled setting for evaluating a central desideratum of consciousness-based collapse models: that collapse rates depend on how different the experiences in the superposition are. We prove a structural constraint on collapse dynamics of a standard (Lindblad) type: if collapse is governed by too few collapse operators, collapse rates cannot in general be made to depend solely on qualitative differences between conscious states. Avoiding this limitation requires introducing many commuting operators, leading to a rapid proliferation of collapse terms even for very simple systems. This proliferation bears directly on claims that IIT-based collapse theories may be especially experimentally tractable, since the required dynamics becomes highly complex. More generally, the difficulty is not specific to IIT: any Wigner-style collapse theory that distinguishes experiences using rich internal organization (such as neural connectivity in addition to neural state) will face a comparable explosion in dynamical complexity.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/e28040394","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,2]],"date-time":"2026-04-02T07:57:55Z","timestamp":1775116675000},"page":"394","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Quantum Superpositions of Conscious States in a Minimal Integrated Information Model"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"28","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3157-5168","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Kelvin J.","family":"McQueen","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Philosophy Department, Chapman University, Orange, CA 92866, USA"},{"name":"Institute for Quantum Studies, Chapman University, Orange, CA 92866, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2054-7551","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ian T.","family":"Durham","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Physics, Saint Anselm College, Manchester, NH 03102, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8086-5586","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Markus P.","family":"M\u00fcller","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1090 Vienna, Austria"},{"name":"Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology, Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, 1090 Vienna, Austria"},{"name":"Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, 31 Caroline Street North, Waterloo, ON N2L 2Y5, Canada"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,1]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Good, I. 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