The Organism-Level Condition for Consciousness: Persistent Organismic Existence as a Necessary Background for Subjective Experience

Summary

The article proposes the Organism-Level Condition for Consciousness, suggesting that persistent organismic existence is necessary for subjective experience. It argues that while many biological candidates for consciousness are self-maintaining systems, current artificial systems lack this intrinsic organization. The work maps candidate systems for consciousness, compares various frameworks regarding their focus on organismic existence, and outlines predictions not covered by existing theories. Ultimately, it shifts the discussion from brain or computation alone to the necessity of self-maintaining organizations for consciousness.

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Abstract

Abstract Consciousness science has produced increasingly sophisticated accounts of neural ignition, information integration, recurrent processing, predictive regulation, higher-order representation, interoception, and embodied cognition. Yet a common condition shared by virtually every serious biological candidate for consciousness has not been treated with equal explicitness: the candidate is an organism whose own existence must be continuously maintained. Mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, cephalopods, decapod crustaceans, and the most debated invertebrate cases such as insects are all bounded, metabolizing, self-maintaining, vulnerable systems with developmental histories and organismic stakes. By contrast, current artificial systems are primarily information-processing artifacts whose goals, energy supply, repair, and persistence are externally arranged. This article develops the Organism-Level Condition for Consciousness: the hypothesis that persistent organismic existence may be a necessary background condition for subjective experience. The hypothesis does not claim that all organisms are conscious, that biological material is sufficient for consciousness, or that artificial consciousness is impossible in principle. It proposes instead that information processing may become consciousness-relevant only when embedded within a system that must preserve its own boundary, regulate its internal conditions, maintain organizational integrity, allocate energy, repair damage, and adapt across time in order to continue existing. The article offers three contributions. First, it maps the current candidate systems for consciousness and shows that the strongest biological candidates all instantiate persistent organismic existence. Second, it compares major consciousness frameworks--global workspace theory, integrated information theory, recurrent processing theory, higher-order theories, predictive processing, active inference, interoceptive accounts, homeostasis, allostasis, enactivism, embodied cognition, ecological psychology, attention schema theory, self-model theories, and unlimited associative learning--with respect to whether they explicitly place the organismic level at the center of explanation. Third, it identifies predictions that do not follow directly from these existing frameworks, including predictions concerning organismic state-dependence, viability-relevance, cross-species comparison by regulatory organization, artificial systems without intrinsic stakes, and disorders of organismic integration. The resulting proposal is not a completed theory of consciousness but a constrained research program. It reframes the central question from how brains or computations alone generate consciousness to what kind of self-maintaining organization makes subjective experience possible.

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