Consciousness in Biological Organisms and Artificial Intelligence: The CRPBCE Theory of Accepted Object-Bound Complexity Reduction
Consciousness requires an organism to reduce a high-dimensional field of sensory complexity, decide that the reduction is good enough, bind the result to an internal object, accept that object as linked to the world, and compare it with memory. This process, formalized within the CRPBCE framework, defines consciousness as accepted representational reduction. The theory grounds consciousness in Boltzmann's W, the number of distinguishable alternatives, a primitive in statistical mechanics and quantum theory. Heat serves as a canonical example; bumblebee studies provide empirical support for parts of the acceptance cycle. The framework specifies minimal architectural conditions for artificial systems to sustain perceived consciousness.