Performative Self-Reference and the Metalogical Impossibility of Computational Consciousness: A Formal Axiomatic Development

This work supersedes and radically extends the author’s earlier publication [DOI Link-1]. This paper introduces a minimal formal axiomatic system that strictly distinguishes a subject‑type S (the experiencing consciousness) from an object‑type O (all computable, objective states). Within this framework, it shows: (T1) It is logically impossible to identify consciousness with a purely computational structure. (T2) The subject‑type S is unavoidable: every attempt to deny or explain it away already presupposes S in the very act of critique. (T3) S is ontologically prior to all objective manifestations O: whatever is described as an “object” already assumes a subject that does the describing. This reframes the question of “artificial” or “computational” consciousness: machines are not excluded because they are too simple, but because any wholly computational description can only model consciousness as an object, and thereby can never logically capture the subjective standpoint that is required for such modeling in the first place.