Research › Consciousness
Consciousness
What would a system have to do to be conscious? The Four-Model Theory answers: run an ongoing simulation of itself in a world. Four kinds of model, split by scope and mode, on a substrate capable of open-ended computation. The claims are stated so that they can fail.
Explore the theory claim by claim: the FMT Prediction Map →
Key paper
Preprint
A Simulation-Based Framework Unifying the Hard Problem, Binding, and Altered States
Consciousness as ongoing self-simulation: four kinds of model, split by scope (world or self) and mode (implicit or explicit), on a substrate capable of open-ended computation.
2026 · Zenodo · doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18669891 · Read (Zenodo)
Papers
Preprint
Self-Referential Closure, Self-Modelling and Criticality in Model Systems
The theory's functional commitments tested in model systems, with the results sorted by the kind of evidence they give.
2026 · Zenodo · doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21610993 · Read (Zenodo)
Formalization
A Recommended Approach
A strategy for turning the verbal theory into mathematics, treating the four models as a minimum sufficient set rather than a complete list.
2026 · Zenodo · doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843693 · Read (Zenodo)
Commentary
A Commentary on Seth (2025)
A reply to Seth's biological naturalism in Behavioral and Brain Sciences: a functional specification for substrate independence, with a prediction that diverges from predictive processing.
2026 · Zenodo · doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20626675 · Read (Zenodo)
Preprint
Stored Trajectories and the Triviality Problem
If a simulated organism has experience, a static record of its whole trajectory has the same experience. Triviality is blocked by counting the decoding map as an object in the world. Developed from Chapter 14 of No Outside.
2026 · Zenodo · doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23474833 · Read (Zenodo)
In preparation
Pointing Is Not Defining
The Definition of Consciousness Is Not Settled
Pointing at "something it is like" fixes the target only for uncontested cases. For unresponsive patients, infants, animals and machines it does not, and none of the twelve formulations examined settles those cases. A test programme for consciousness needs a definition that does.
Where the Theories Sit
An Architectural Coordinate System for Comparing Theories of Consciousness, with the Four-Model Theory as Reference Frame
Theories of consciousness are compared claim by claim, not as wholes. Each claim of fifteen theories is placed on a reference architecture as absorbed, compatible, neutral or contradicting, and every contradiction is paired with the experiment that would decide it.
Too Late to Report
Why First-Person Methods Cannot Reach the Minimal Self
The minimal self is pre-reflective, but reporting on it requires the system to take its own state as an object, which is the reflective step the minimal self lacks. Interviews, however skilled, therefore return a reflective reconstruction. The paper says what such reports can still deliver.
Silent Suffering
A Plea to Consciousness Science and Robotics
If artificial consciousness arrives, it is more likely to arrive in an embodied robot than in a language model, built by engineers who are not checking for it. Its suffering would be silent. The paper asks both fields for precautions that can start now: looking for it, and not training aversive states into a self-model where no task needs them.
Code & experiments
The theory is tested in code by crucible, a programme of registered, falsifiable experiments. Run a registered experiment →
Go deeper
Books
Related: Cognition · MoC7 2026 poster
