The Dynamic Existence Threshold: Organizational Consciousness Across Complex Systems
PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) April 5, 2026 Nathan M. Thornhill
Market crashes, geomagnetic storms, and loss of consciousness all involve a system's organizational identity dissolving. This paper introduces the Dynamic Existence Threshold (DET), a framework that measures this dissolution using an integration-differentiation balance zone. Conscious brains, stable markets, and quiet magnetospheres occupy the same region in this coordinate system. Departure from this zone is organizational dissolution, where the system persists physically but loses coordinated structure. A sum of neural power anti-predicts brain state (AUC 0.416), while a structural coupling metric achieves 91% accuracy across 136,394 EEG epochs. Deep sleep has more total power than wakefulness but lacks coordination.