A Mechanistic Conditioning Model of Feeling and Qualia — and — Understanding, Agency, and Ethics: A Unified SANER-MROS Framework
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 29, 2026 Djems Mortimer
This theoretical paper proposes that feeling and qualia are not separate phenomena but are identical to the anticipatory preparation cascades that adaptive systems execute when encountering conditioned stimuli. The authors argue that what is subjectively reported as 'fear' or 'feeling' is the system's first-person access to its own physiological and computational preparation state—hormone release, autonomic activation, attention allocation, motor preparation, and prediction updates. No additional irreducible phenomenon is required. The model extends this conditioning framework across lifetimes and evolutionary generations, treating inherited predispositions and learned conditioning as the same mechanism operating at different temporal scales. Understanding is defined as pattern acquisition that improves future preparation.