The Inward Closure Hypothesis: Experience as a World Held from Within

Summary

The Inward Closure Hypothesis is proposed as a condition for understanding consciousness, suggesting that it should be seen as information held within a self-maintaining identity rather than just raw data or processed information. The paper emphasizes the transition from usable information to a subjective world and distinguishes between local self-environment interactions and human symbolic experiences. It does not aim to solve the hard problem of consciousness but highlights the need for coherence in how external information becomes internalized.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This working paper proposes the Inward Closure Hypothesis as a coherence-based bridge condition for conscious experience. It argues that consciousness should not be understood as raw information entering awareness, nor merely as information processed by a system, but as information internally held within a self-maintaining field of identity, distinction, binding, self-reference, and repair. The paper develops a structural account of inward holding as the transition from information usable by a system to information present as a world for a subject. It distinguishes local, action-oriented forms of self-in-environment from human symbolic worldhood, connects the proposal to the author’s Self-Verification Argument concerning absolute nothingness, and positions the hypothesis alongside global workspace theory, integrated information theory, predictive/free-energy approaches, autopoiesis, enactivism, and self-model theory. The claim is deliberately bounded: the paper does not claim to solve the hard problem of consciousness or deduce phenomenal experience from organization alone. Instead, it identifies a proposed bridge condition that any adequate coherence-based account of consciousness must address: how externally describable information becomes self-in-reality held from within.

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