Lars Sandved-Smith
Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science, Department of Informatics, University of Sussex
Functionalist What matters is the organisation of the processing, not the material
Lars Sandved-Smith is a cognitive scientist and computational philosopher at the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex, working under Anil Seth. His research focuses on computational phenomenology, using the mathematical tools of active inference and predictive processing to formalize the structural features of conscious experience.
Alongside Lancelot Da Costa, Anil Seth, Karl Friston, and Maxwell Ramstead, Sandved-Smith co-authored the 2026 paper “A Rosetta Stone hypothesis for neurophenomenology” (Neuroscience of Consciousness). The work formulates the hypothesis that phenomenal experience is a function of posterior beliefs in hierarchical generative models, deriving quantitative predictions regarding subjective cognitive effort, temporal dilation, and phenomenal similarity judgments from variational free energy dynamics.
Sandved-Smith’s theoretical contributions address the formalization of self-consciousness and temporal experience. By framing the lived sense of selfhood as an inferred hidden cause within an agent’s predictive model, his research bridges the phenomenological traditions of Edmund Husserl and Francisco Varela with the quantitative machinery of Bayesian brain theories.
Known for. Computational phenomenology, active inference models of the self, temporal thickness, predictive processing
Coverage on this site
- Anil Seth and Karl Friston Build a Predictive Processing Bridge to Neurophenomenology September 2026
Related researchers
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Anil SethSussex Centre for Consciousness Science, University of SussexThe beast machine hypothesis, and controlled hallucination as an account of perception
- Karl FristonUniversity College London. Chief Scientist, VERSES AIThe free energy principle and active inference
- Lancelot Da CostaDepartment of Mathematics, Imperial College London; Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, University College LondonMathematical foundations of active inference, Bayesian mechanics, computational neurophenomenology, continuous-time variational inference
- Maxwell J. D. RamsteadVERSES AI Research Lab, Los Angeles; Department of Philosophy, McGill UniversityMultiscale active inference, cultural affordances, computational neurophenomenology, shared intentionality
- Hedayat AbedijooACE Conscious Studio / IndependentACE.await (2026), the ACE decision framework (Agency, Connection, Exchange)
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Blaise Agüera y ArcasGoogle VP and Fellow, CTO of Technology & SocietyComputational functionalism, active inference, on-device neural computing, What Is Intelligence? (2025), and Who Are We Now? (2023)
Lars Sandved-Smith is listed with the other functionalists and computationalists, who hold that what matters is the organisation of the processing, not the material. The theory family behind that position is set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.