Before Asking What Consciousness Is: Evidence, Classification, and Common Structure

This paper develops a methodological framework for examining how claims about consciousness move across heterogeneous targets, grains, evidential roles, and classificatory contexts. Its governing non-inheritance principle holds that warrant established for one analytical target, grain, inferential role, or validated scope does not automatically transfer to another. Any such transition requires an independently specified bridge and scope. The framework distinguishes consciousness as a cross-case classificatory target from claims that the classified cases share a common underlying structure. It further separates evidence, target description, and consciousness classification, and introduces a practical audit in terms of Source, Target, Warrant, and Scope. The analysis is applied to color perception, pain, skilled action, dreaming, cognitive motor dissociation, unity, numerosity, boundary, conscious content, and artificial systems. A central issue is whether terms such as “experience,” “phenomenality,” or “what-it-is-like” identify a common structural remainder or merely rename what remains after functional and evidential decomposition. The paper does not deny that a common consciousness-property exists. Rather, it argues that shared predicates, convergent indicators, and stable classifications do not by themselves identify such a property. The framework is explicitly provisional: where independently validated bridges establish identity, cross-grain preservation, or a common experiential structure, its cautions should become unnecessary.