Conceptual Framework for the Knower Centred Model of Consciousness (KCM)

Version note: Version 2.0, released 5 September 2026, is a substantive revision of the original conceptual framework. It corrects the triadic notation, clarifies foundational claims, strengthens the distinction between KCM and neighbouring traditions, and aligns the founding paper with the subsequent KCM research programme. Version 1 remains permanently accessible through Zenodo’s version history. Abstract:The science of consciousness continues to confront the explanatory gap between physical processes and subjective experience, what Chalmers (1995) termed the hard problem. Prevailing paradigms, whether identifying consciousness with informational integration, global broadcast, or predictive inference, characterize with increasing precision how experience is organized and made available, yet leave a prior question unaddressed: for whom does any such organization appear? This paper introduces the Knower Centred Model of Consciousness (KCM), a subject-first framework that treats the knower, the invariant condition under which any content or process appears, as ontologically prior to the structures that appear within experience. KCM formalizes this claim through the K–N–C triad: Knower (the irreducible subject), Knowing (the relational act through which content is disclosed), and Known or Content (C) (the structured contents of experience, including neural, physical, and computational descriptions). The paper develops the core ideas of the model, distinguishes it from traditions and views with which it shares certain affinities, including Advaita Vedānta, phenomenology, panpsychism, and observer-dependent interpretations of physics, and clarifies why a subject-first ontology is not merely a restatement of any one philosophical or contemplative tradition but a distinct claim amenable to typed, testable articulation. This paper serves as the founding statement of the problem that later work in this programme formalizes into axioms, interpretive rules, and empirical predictions.