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Matthew A Pender

2 papers in the library · publishing 2026

Papers

Organized Physical Interiority: A Philosophical Perspective on the Curvature Adaptation Hypothesis

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 25, 2026 Matthew A Pender

Many physicalist theories of consciousness appeal to generic thresholds of complexity, computation, or global integration. The Curvature Adaptation Hypothesis (CAH) motivates a more selective candidate: Organized Physical Interiority (OPI). OPI is the active maintenance of a bounded, governed, and temporally renewed interior through which distributed processes are held together as one materially consequential regime. Rather than equating consciousness with wide broadcast or abstract information processing, this framework identifies governed, differentiated co-presence as the relevant candidate organization: a physical regime bounded between modular fragmentation and indiscriminate fusion.

Operationalizing Organized Physical Interiority: A Proxy, Perturbation, Recovery, and Cross-Substrate Framework

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 23, 2026 Matthew A Pender

Claims about organized interiority and consciousness often rely on features like integration or synchrony, but these do not by themselves establish an organizational role. This paper presents an operational framework for evaluating Organized Physical Interiority (OPI) using six revisable criteria: load-bearing integration, boundedness, temporal stability, governed regime maintenance, asymmetric interior organization, and perturbation recovery. It distinguishes weak, moderate, and strong evidence, and separates substrate, state-transition, organization, and consciousness relevance. The framework requires criterion-specific links among proxies, controls, perturbations, and recovery outcomes. It cautions against mistaking covariance for reciprocal constraint, ordinary memory for organizational continuity, or matched performance for cross-substrate equivalence. The framework is intended as a reversible research program, not a consciousness detector.