Consciousness as an Identity-Preserving Process A Formal State-Space Theory of Self, Anesthesia, and Recovery
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) February 9, 2026 Christopher Keel
This paper presents a formal, dynamical definition of consciousness as an identity-preserving process rather than a phenomenological state, behavioral capacity, or scalar quantity. Using the Recursive Harmonic Collapse Matrix (RHCM), consciousness is defined in terms of the persistence of identity-stabilizing attractor dynamics under native system evolution. The framework separates identity...