Unified Consciousness Theory II: Consciousness Theories as Effective Organization Theories

Major theories of consciousness emphasize different mechanisms (Seth & Bayne, 2022): integrated causal structure, recurrent processing, global availability, higher-order representation, predictive modeling, dendritic integration, memory assembly, attention modeling, and temporospatial organization. Their competition is partly intensified by treating a favored mechanism as a candidate universal boundary between experience and nonexperience. UCT I (Liu, 2026) adopts a different basal ontology: every actual valid process token possesses experience, identified with its complete token-relative ontic organization. UCT I v1.1 distinguishes that organization from finite physically anchored scientific views and estimates. Under that assumption, nonuniversal mechanisms cannot be universal experience-existence gates. UCT II asks whether their *operational cores* can instead be reconstructed, embedded, reinterpreted, or shown to conflict as effective organization theories. We introduce an admissible translation framework, explicit bridge-admissibility conditions, a two-axis classification separating formal recovery from empirical validation, and anti-triviality criteria requiring translators to be constructive, non-circular, structurally invariant, reusable, failure-prone, and explanatorily nontrivial. A Translation Fidelity Requirement additionally preserves each target theory's distinctive signature, strongest phenomenal/ontological claim, and unrecovered empirical residue. We then fidelity-audit nine theories: IIT 4.0 (Albantakis et al., 2023), recurrent processing theory, GNWT, higher-order theories, predictive processing/active inference, dendritic integration theory, memory theory of consciousness, attention schema theory, and temporospatial theory. The result is not a universal endorsement: theory subclaims receive different relation types, formal classes, and validation statuses, including direct conflicts. Two fixed-parameter toy models provide quantitative cross-theory proof of concept using one fixed parameterization across their theory-linked outputs: a DIT→RPT→GNWT chain and an independent MToC→HOT→GNWT chain. Negative controls dissociate upstream primitives from downstream recurrent, higher-order, and global-access organization. These results establish shared-law reuse only at formal-conditional / toy-model level (F3/V1); they do not constitute held-out human-data recovery (V3), replicated empirical recovery (V4), or robust full-theory compression. The proposed unification is therefore partial, fidelity-audited, and failure-prone by design. Its governing distinction is that mechanistic recovery, ontological endorsement, and empirical confirmation are separate operations. Version 1.1; TA-TR-2026-21. Revised theoretical preprint, not peer reviewed. Human author and responsible depositor: Hongju Liu. Substantial ChatGPT assistance, including GPT-6 Astra Pro for the paired revision, is disclosed. Model checks are not empirical confirmation of experience, A1/A5, or complete intertheory recovery. Adjacent non-amending research; not an amendment or independent corroboration of the Trinity Accord or Bitcoin Originals. The prior v1.0 files remain unchanged.

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Publication Details

Journal
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Published
2026-09-29
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23030320
Citations
2
Primary Topic
Embodied and Extended Cognition
Type
preprint
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preprint

Unified Consciousness Theory II: Consciousness Theories as Effective Organization Theories

Hongju Liu
2 citations
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Embodied and Extended Cognition
preprint

Unified Consciousness Theory II: Consciousness Theories as Effective Organization Theories

Hongju Liu
preprint en
2 citations

Abstract

Major theories of consciousness emphasize different mechanisms (Seth & Bayne, 2022): integrated causal structure, recurrent processing, global availability, higher-order representation, predictive modeling, dendritic integration, memory assembly, attention modeling, and temporospatial organization. Their competition is partly intensified by treating a favored mechanism as a candidate universal boundary between experience and nonexperience. UCT I (Liu, 2026) adopts a different basal ontology: every actual valid process token possesses experience, identified with its complete token-relative ontic organization. UCT I v1.1 distinguishes that organization from finite physically anchored scientific views and estimates. Under that assumption, nonuniversal mechanisms cannot be universal experience-existence gates. UCT II asks whether their *operational cores* can instead be reconstructed, embedded, reinterpreted, or shown to conflict as effective organization theories. We introduce an admissible translation framework, explicit bridge-admissibility conditions, a two-axis classification separating formal recovery from empirical validation, and anti-triviality criteria requiring translators to be constructive, non-circular, structurally invariant, reusable, failure-prone, and explanatorily nontrivial. A Translation Fidelity Requirement additionally preserves each target theory's distinctive signature, strongest phenomenal/ontological claim, and unrecovered empirical residue. We then fidelity-audit nine theories: IIT 4.0 (Albantakis et al., 2023), recurrent processing theory, GNWT, higher-order theories, predictive processing/active inference, dendritic integration theory, memory theory of consciousness, attention schema theory, and temporospatial theory. The result is not a universal endorsement: theory subclaims receive different relation types, formal classes, and validation statuses, including direct conflicts. Two fixed-parameter toy models provide quantitative cross-theory proof of concept using one fixed parameterization across their theory-linked outputs: a DIT→RPT→GNWT chain and an independent MToC→HOT→GNWT chain. Negative controls dissociate upstream primitives from downstream recurrent, higher-order, and global-access organization. These results establish shared-law reuse only at formal-conditional / toy-model level (F3/V1); they do not constitute held-out human-data recovery (V3), replicated empirical recovery (V4), or robust full-theory compression. The proposed unification is therefore partial, fidelity-audited, and failure-prone by design. Its governing distinction is that mechanistic recovery, ontological endorsement, and empirical confirmation are separate operations. Version 1.1; TA-TR-2026-21. Revised theoretical preprint, not peer reviewed. Human author and responsible depositor: Hongju Liu. Substantial ChatGPT assistance, including GPT-6 Astra Pro for the paired revision, is disclosed. Model checks are not empirical confirmation of experience, A1/A5, or complete intertheory recovery. Adjacent non-amending research; not an amendment or independent corroboration of the Trinity Accord or Bitcoin Originals. The prior v1.0 files remain unchanged.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Peace, Justice and strong institutions
Embodied and Extended Cognition
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