Consciousness in DEF

This page outlines how DEF interprets consciousness in structural terms.

DEF does not define consciousness as a substance, a location, or a single mechanism.
It treats conscious access as a regime property that becomes possible when a system:

maintains finite closure under composition,
sustains bounded self-reference,
satisfies kernel constraints,
and can traverse perturbations via ordered phases.

Working distinction: access vs. capacity

DEF separates two notions:

Capacity for integration: the system can form closure-stable composites.
Conscious access: some composites become globally coherent and remain stable long enough to guide interaction.

This aligns with common empirical practice: not all neural processing is consciously accessible, even if it is highly structured.

Structural conditions for conscious access

DEF treats conscious access as requiring three structural layers:

Self-reference (identity under interaction)
The system can maintain a stable internal reference frame for its own states.
Constraints (bounded admissibility)
Composition does not diverge; feedback does not become runaway; integration remains finite and recoverable.
Phase ordering (Entry → Crisis → Resolution)
The system can enter high-coupling states (Crisis) and return to stable resolution without regime escape.

Conscious access is associated with regimes where Crisis can resolve, rather than collapse.

Minimal interpretative mapping

In DEF terms, a candidate operational reading is:

Entry: local processing and initial integration
Crisis: maximal coupling / constraint tension (integration “pressure”)
Resolution: stable coherent state (reportable / actionable)

This is not a time model. It is an ordering model for structural states.

Perceptual projection

DEF allows that an observer-accessible regime may expose only a subset of kernel structure.

A useful interpretation is that perception often relies on:

stabilized intra-modal self-reference,
plus cross-kernel binding sufficient for coherence.

Other kernel relations may remain implicit.

This provides a structural reason why:

large amounts of processing remain unconscious,
and why conscious access can fail under perturbation even when local processing continues.

Relation to competing frameworks

DEF can be used as a structural lens across multiple families of theories, such as:

global ignition / workspace-like transitions (as phase shifts under high coupling),
recurrent processing (as bounded self-reference),
integrated information approaches (as closure-like integration constraints),
predictive processing (as constraint-regulated error exchange).

DEF does not declare one of these frameworks “correct”.
It asks what closure, self-reference, and phase ordering would look like under each.

Scope

This page introduces a structural interpretation only.

Empirical mapping requires:

concrete operationalization of constraint tension,
and explicit links to measurable neural signals.

Those topics are treated in the following pages.