Value saturation: Architecture of subjective necessity.

Summary

The paper proposes that phenomenal consciousness is a form of explicit recursive self-modeling influenced by homeostatic significance and perspectival entrapment. It distinguishes between sentience, which involves implicit recursion for survival, and subjective consciousness, which allows for manipulable self-models. Key components include interoceptive binding, homeostatic saturation, and perspectival entrapment. Predictions suggest a developmental progression to subjective consciousness by ages 3-5 and highlight the importance of various cognitive processes in understanding consciousness.

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Abstract

Consciousness requires explanation for how biological architectures reliably generate it. This paper introduces Value Saturation, advancing an identity claim: phenomenal consciousness IS explicit recursive self-modeling saturated by homeostatic significance under perspectival entrapment. Building on the Reaction to Reflection framework, the theory distinguishes sentience (implicit recursion under survival stakes, Level 2) from subjective consciousness (explicit recursion where self-models become manipulable, Levels 4-5). Three integrated components prove necessary: interoceptive binding, homeostatic saturation, and perspectival entrapment. Testable predictions include developmental progression from birth sentience to subjective consciousness around ages 3-5, awareness-manipulation asymmetry, and clinical dissociations producing aberrant rather than absent phenomenology. Converging evidence from prediction error processing, homeostatic feelings, metacognitive hierarchies, and biological computing's thermodynamic advantages supports these requirements. The framework specifies falsification criteria and transforms consciousness into an empirically tractable investigation of organizational transitions in biological systems under thermodynamic constraints.

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