Operationalizing Organized Physical Interiority: A Proxy, Perturbation, Recovery, and Cross-Substrate Framework
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 23, 2026 Matthew A Pender
Claims about organized interiority and consciousness often rely on features like integration or synchrony, but these do not by themselves establish an organizational role. This paper presents an operational framework for evaluating Organized Physical Interiority (OPI) using six revisable criteria: load-bearing integration, boundedness, temporal stability, governed regime maintenance, asymmetric interior organization, and perturbation recovery. It distinguishes weak, moderate, and strong evidence, and separates substrate, state-transition, organization, and consciousness relevance. The framework requires criterion-specific links among proxies, controls, perturbations, and recovery outcomes. It cautions against mistaking covariance for reciprocal constraint, ordinary memory for organizational continuity, or matched performance for cross-substrate equivalence. The framework is intended as a reversible research program, not a consciousness detector.