Tianming Yang
Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Integrated information Consciousness is intrinsic causal power, measured as integrated information
Tianming Yang is a neuroscientist at the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he studies the neural basis of perception, decision making, and conscious access. His 2026 preprint “Conscious Access as Continuous-to-Discrete Translation” (arXiv:2608.20723) proposes the Continuous/Discrete (C/D) framework, which holds that the brain implements two processing regimes, a distributed sensory-motor network operating over continuous high-dimensional manifolds, and a centralized engine structured around discrete scale-invariant symbols.
The framework argues that conscious access requires a structure-preserving translation between these regimes. A localized continuous state is mapped onto a discrete symbolic token, and an inverse projection grounds that token back into sensorimotor dynamics. The account derives testable predictions focused on representational geometry, specifically a measurable collapse from graded similarity structures to low-dimensional categorical equivalence classes.
Yang positions the C/D framework explicitly against Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, Integrated Information Theory, Predictive Processing, and Higher-Order Theories, shifting the focus from the ontological status of consciousness to the computational mechanism of conscious access. Beyond neuroscience, the framework proposes a principled architecture for neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence, in which conscious access is treated as translational computation that does not require resolving the hard problem of phenomenology.
Known for. Continuous-to-Discrete (C/D) framework of conscious access, representational geometry predictions, neuro-symbolic architecture
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Tianming Yang is listed with the other integrated information theorists, who hold that consciousness is intrinsic causal power, measured as integrated information. 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.