A Tension Is All You Need: The Biomemetic Complex as a Unified Computational Theory of Consciousness
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) February 22, 2026 Aleksey Zhuravlev
A formal framework called the Biomemetic Complex (BMC) models consciousness as emerging from dynamic tension between a fixed genetic layer and a dynamic memetic layer, mediated by an immune filter. It computes a Consciousness Level metric in O(N log N) time, subsumes five competing theories (IIT, GNW, HOT, AST, PP) as special cases, and retrodicts all nine results from the COGITATE adversarial study. The framework generates 56 testable predictions and was validated by computational scaling analysis from N=100 to N=10,000 nodes.