The Modeler Schema Theory of Consciousness, with a Falsifiable Experiment
arXiv Preprint Archive November 30, 2025 Frank Heile
Consciousness arises from a single control agent, the Modeler-schema, which monitors the brain's Modeler as it constructs and updates the internal World Model. During this monitoring, the Modeler-schema generates experience by converting the Modeler's outputs into qualia, which are then used for model refinement. The Human agent consists of three cooperating agents—Modeler, Controller, and Targeter—each paired with a regulatory schema agent. The core prediction is that the Modeler-schema performs a qualia-based consistency check during saccades and may issue bottom-up attention requests when discrepancies are found. A saccadic change-detection experiment is proposed to test this prediction. Locating qualia in the Modeler-schema ties experience to model regulation, explains aphantasia as a selective failure of recalled-sensory quale-conversion, and offers a testable proposal toward solving the Hard Problem of consciousness.