Abstract This paper sets out a framework, not a proof. It proposes that the usual order of explanation between consciousness and predictive processing may be reversed: that phenomenal consciousness — bare, non-linguistic awareness — precedes language, and that the specifically overwriting, anticipatory mode of prediction that colors adult experience is, in large part, a consequence of language...
Abstract This paper introduces a simple distinction that may change how we think about consciousness. It proposes that human beings operate in two fundamentally different modes. Type 1 is direct awareness — experiencing reality without commentary. Type 2 is narrative consciousness — the continuous stream of thinking, interpreting, and self-referencing that most adults experience as their normal...
Abstract Current medical and ethical standards governing organ harvesting under anesthesia rest on an assumption that has never been formally tested: that the absence of behavioral response and narrative consciousness constitutes the absence of all consciousness. This paper argues that this assumption is both scientifically unexamined and potentially incorrect. Drawing on a documented model of...