Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 19, 2026
Kimiyasu Igarashi
A world governed solely by universal physical law can still produce private, system-specific experience because self-maintaining systems accumulate history through self-referential coupling. The brain stores its own history as physical traces, couples them to present input across timescales, and prioritizes survival-related traces. This accumulated history folds, as a decaying field, onto a single measurable direction that can be shared or written into another system. What remains private is the unrecoverable, high-dimensional process from which that direction was compressed—a many-to-one compression unique to the system as its own source. The paper describes this mechanism without defining consciousness itself.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 19, 2026
C.s. Tarpley, Clearbridge Policy & Ethics Consortium
A series of five papers argues that psilocybin primarily functions as a conserved intercellular signaling molecule coordinating growth within mycelial networks, not as a chemical defense. Human psychedelic experiences arise from cross-kingdom receptor compatibility, where fungal signals activate mammalian 5-HT2A receptors, producing coherent fractal visual phenomenology as neural tissue executes an ancient growth instruction. The signaling hypothesis is supported by reclassification of Physarum polycephalum to Amoebozoa, pushing tryptophan-based indole signaling back 1.4–1.6 billion years to the last common ancestor of Amoebozoa and Opisthokonta.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 19, 2026
Claudio Bresciano
No operational system can internally justify its own admissibility. Current artificial intelligence systems operate only within an operational domain and cannot generate the conditions needed for genuine consciousness, meaning, or ethical normativity. The work formalizes the difference between simulating and actually instantiating these properties, introduces a test for that distinction, and argues that the AI alignment problem stems from this structural limitation. A framework for designing aligned AI systems is proposed, with implications for philosophy of mind and AI ethics.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 19, 2026
John Cantellow
This paper proposes that phenomenological consciousness—the first-person experience of being—may serve as a middle ground connecting physical descriptions of consciousness (based on neural correlates) with spiritual descriptions emphasizing continuity, witness, and enduring presence (historically associated with the soul). The author suggests that experiential persistence offers a minimal point of contact between these two domains. Combining this with earlier work on constraint organization, the paper outlines a bidirectional phenomenological bridge: physical processes relate to consciousness through neural correlates, while phenomenological relationships become reflected in embodied behavior through patterns of constraint organization,...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 19, 2026
Christian Barker
Consciousness can be modeled as the affectively weighted stabilization of unresolved candidate trajectories. At each moment, a biological system holds a weighted set of competing possibilities—perceptual interpretations, action options, remembered outcomes, anticipated threats, social meanings, bodily signals, and imagined futures. A conscious state arises when one trajectory or a coherent coalition of trajectories becomes sufficiently dominant, integrated, persistent, and self-relevant to support unified felt experience and flexible control. The framework, called Biological Quantum-Analogous Cognition (BQAC), models biological cognition as the management of unresolved alternatives prior to stabilization without assuming literal quantum mechanics. Affect is treated as the weighting layer of possibility-space rather than as an output added after cognition. The model is organized to remain scientifically useful even if stronger claims fail.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 19, 2026
Kartansky Mary
This paper challenges the foundational axioms of methodological materialism by proposing that observable physical reality is a complex psychological construct built upon hardwired evolutionary dominants and adaptive interfaces. The author introduces a paradigm where the human brain functions not as a local source of consciousness, but as a reactive, biosocial interface (an antenna) that decodes a non-local psychic matrix optimized strictly for biological survival. Through synthesis of neurophysiology, sensory deprivation data, quantum mechanics anomalies, and systems theory, the paper maps systemic firewalls embedded within the human psyche that channel academic inquiry into false ontological forks.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 19, 2026
Lukas Geiger
The Pali Canon contains elements of an empirically investigable protopsychology whose core methods—mindfulness, breath meditation, compassion cultivation, and absorption states—demonstrate moderate effect sizes across meta-analyses encompassing hundreds of randomized controlled trials for depression, anxiety, and stress. Between Buddhist concepts and modern psychology, there exist parallels supported in part empirically, structurally, and conceptually: affect labeling exhibits limited functional similarities with vedananupassana, default-mode-network deactivation has been interpreted as consistent with the anatta concept, and jhana states show measurable neural signatures in single-case studies. Clinical mindfulness extracts individual techniques from a soteriological whole system, and critical replication evidence limits overstrong neuroplasticity claims. The review proposes a structured differentiation of convergence types between ancient practices and modern findings.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 19, 2026
Vedanta2.0 Agyat Agyani
A conceptual framework called Vedanta 2.0 proposes that much psychological suffering stems from comparison-based consciousness rather than material lack. Drawing on modern psychology, Advaita Vedanta, and existential philosophy, the paper develops two hypotheses: comparison-based cognition increases suffering, and awareness-based cognition (Bodh) reduces suffering regardless of material conditions. It contrasts a Vedanta 2.0 pathway—Comparison leads to Suffering, then Bodh leads to Freedom—with the classical Advaita Vedanta path from ignorance to liberation. The 99+1 Model describes worldly pursuits (99) and awareness (1), arguing that awareness is the foundational dimension through which wealth, beauty, achievement, religion, and social identity can be experienced without psychological bondage.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 19, 2026
Vedanta2.0 Agyat Agyani
Psychological suffering stems largely from comparing oneself to others rather than from material lack, and cultivating awareness can reduce that suffering regardless of external circumstances. The paper introduces a Vedanta 2.0 framework that contrasts a cycle of comparison leading to suffering, then awareness leading to freedom, with the classical Advaita Vedanta path from ignorance to bondage to knowledge to liberation. A 99+1 Model distinguishes worldly pursuits (99) from foundational awareness (1), arguing that awareness allows wealth, beauty, achievement, religion, and social identity to be experienced without becoming sources of psychological bondage.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 18, 2026
Jiaping Wang
Existing theories of consciousness emphasize static causal structures but overlook the brain's 20-watt power constraint and temporal dynamics, failing to unify phenomena like parasomnias, clinical disorders, and cross-species differences. This paper proposes a hierarchical self-referential closed-loop model based on three axioms—limited resources, survival goals, and discrete inputs—quantified by temporal span (T), reconstructive activity (A), and closed-loop integrity (C). The model derives a two-step emergence geometry for self-reference, distinguishes System B (automated archiving) from System A (temporal narrative), and establishes a five-level consciousness spectrum (L0 to L3). Language is identified as a natural metric for T, A, and C, enabling a diagnostic framework for Alzheimer's disease versus vascular cognitive impairment. The framework unifies phenomena including hypoglycemic anxiety, sleepwalking, dreaming, anesthesia, and hierarchical empathy, and specifies thresholds for AGI and distributed consciousness.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 18, 2026
Claudio Bresciano
The paper analyzes Roger Penrose's Orch-OR theory of consciousness using the formal framework of the Theory of Axiomatic Necessity (TNA). It argues that Objective Reduction (OR) — the physical threshold where quantum superposition collapses into definite states — maps onto an admissibility domain (N₁) rather than emerging from the operational domain (N₀) of biological structures like the brain's microtubular network. Through a theorem of Failure of Local Closure, the authors claim that the brain does not generate consciousness internally but acts as a structural antenna tuned to non-derivable conditions of admissibility. This reconciles Gödelian incompleteness in human thought by showing that conscious experience requires irreducible external structural support beyond algorithmic computation.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 18, 2026
Zhang Yuxin
Selective Reality Theory (SRT) argues that the world is not fundamentally composed of determinate objects, subjects, and orders. Instead, object-style determinacy—boundary, identity, and practical stability—arises from constrained selection within a pre-object field. Selection is not an agent's choice but an earlier structure that differentially actualizes appearances through exclusion and anchoring; repeated anchoring builds reality-thickness, which then recedes into background order. The theory introduces a three-layer vocabulary: sub-determinate non-neutrality, manifestation or anchoring, and sedimented selection history. To avoid idealism and relativism, four dimensions of reality-strength are proposed: manifestational stability, cross-operator alignment, intervention-resistance, and inheritance. Consciousness is not the source of selection; subjectivity is a sedimented bearing-position where consequences return. Phenomenal consciousness condenses from sentience to reflexive awareness.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 18, 2026
Samuel James Willoughby
A person with full-body Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, post-surgical complications, migraines, nausea, and post-cancer recovery consistently produces structured scientific work despite severe pain. The paper documents burst-mode cognition, sub-pain reasoning, and hyper-channel cognitive states where thought proceeds beneath or alongside pain perception. Evidence from autonomic stability and first-person phenomenology suggests a dissociation between physiological distress and cognitive collapse. The study also situates these findings within broader cases of biological variance, demonstrating the robustness of consciousness across diverse physiological substrates. A rapid-insight mini-paper on the growth–aging transition is included as an example of high-level reasoning produced during temporary relief windows.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 18, 2026
Jiaping Wang
A new theory of consciousness starts from three basic facts: the brain has limited energy (about 20 watts), it must keep the organism alive, and it receives information in discrete chunks. From these, the model describes consciousness as a self-referential closed loop with three measurable variables—temporal span, reconstructive activity, and closed-loop integrity. It explains phenomena like sleepwalking, dreaming, anesthesia, and differences across species, and proposes a five-level consciousness spectrum. Language is used as a natural measure: each complete sentence forms a tiny self-referential loop. The framework also offers a way to distinguish Alzheimer's disease from vascular cognitive impairment and suggests thresholds for artificial general intelligence and distributed consciousness.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 18, 2026
Jiaping Wang
A new theory of consciousness proposes that the brain's 20-watt power limit and the timing of neural activity are essential for explaining sleep disorders, clinical consciousness problems, and differences across species. The model uses three axioms—limited resources, survival goals, and discrete inputs—to define consciousness with three variables: temporal span, reconstruction activity, and closed-loop integrity. It describes how self-referential loops emerge through two steps, distinguishes two cognitive systems, explains forgetting and memory as narrative construction, and redefines qualia as internal calibration signals. The theory establishes a five-level consciousness spectrum, uses language as a measurement tool, and offers a diagnostic framework for Alzheimer's disease.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 18, 2026
Jiaping Wang
A new theoretical model proposes that consciousness arises from a self-referential closed loop in the brain, constrained by its 20-watt power budget. The model starts with three axioms: limited resources, survival goals, and discrete inputs. It quantifies consciousness using temporal span, reconstruction activity, and closed-loop integrity. Two energy allocation patterns are identified: a low-power baseline configuration and a self-referential overlay. The model reframes the hard problem of consciousness as a parameter-interval problem, defines qualia as calibration signals, and proposes a five-level consciousness spectrum. It also offers a diagnostic framework for Alzheimer's disease and specifies thresholds for artificial general intelligence.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 18, 2026
Jiaping Wang
A new theoretical model proposes that consciousness emerges from self-referential closed loops constrained by the brain's limited energy (20 watts), survival goals, and discrete inputs. It quantifies consciousness using three variables: temporal span, reconstructive activity, and closed-loop integrity. The model distinguishes two systems—automated memory archiving (System B) and temporal self-narrative (System A)—and describes a five-level consciousness spectrum (L0 to L3). Language is identified as a natural metric for these variables. The framework aims to unify explanations for sleepwalking, dreaming, anesthesia, empathy, and disorders like Alzheimer's, and sets thresholds for artificial general intelligence and distributed consciousness.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 18, 2026
Jiaping Wang
A new theoretical model of consciousness starts from three axioms—limited resources, survival priority, and discrete input—to construct a hierarchical self-referential closed-loop system. The model is quantified by temporal span (T), reconstruction activity (A), and closed-loop integrity (C). It explains how the brain allocates its 20-watt power budget between two main patterns: a low-power baseline (B-Configuration) and an overlay for self-referential loops (S-Configuration). Forgetting has a dual mechanism, memory is narrative construction, and qualia are endogenous calibration signals. The hard problem of consciousness is reframed as a parameter interval problem. A five-level consciousness spectrum is delineated, and a framework for Alzheimer's differential diagnosis is proposed.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 18, 2026
Jiaping Wang
A new hierarchical self-referential closed-loop model of consciousness is proposed, based on three axioms: limited resources, survival goals, and discrete inputs. It quantifies consciousness using temporal span, reconstructive activity, and closed-loop integrity, deriving a two-step emergence geometry and distinguishing two systems: automated memory archiving and temporal self-narrative. Language is identified as a natural metric for these variables, with each grammatically complete sentence constituting a micro self-referential loop. The model explains phenomena such as hypoglycemic anxiety, sleepwalking, dreaming, anesthesia, and hierarchical empathy, and specifies thresholds for artificial general intelligence and distributed consciousness. Testable experimental hypotheses are proposed.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 18, 2026
Jiaping Wang
A hierarchical self-referential closed-loop model of consciousness is constructed from three axioms: finite resources, survival goals, and discrete inputs. The model uses temporal span, reconstruction activity, and closed-loop integrity to derive a five-level consciousness spectrum and distinguish two systems: automated material archiving and temporal self-narrative. Language is identified as a natural metric for these variables, with each grammatically complete sentence forming a micro self-referential loop. The framework provides unified explanations for phenomena including sleepwalking, dreaming, anesthesia, and hierarchical empathy, and proposes a differential diagnostic approach for Alzheimer's disease and vascular cognitive impairment. Testable experimental hypotheses are offered.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 18, 2026
Sören van Krunckelsven
When a 5-HT2A agonist (like LSD or DMT) and an NMDA antagonist (nitrous oxide) act together, the resulting ego-dissolving state is dominated by a collapse of long-range functional integration rather than a rise in local signal complexity. A whole-brain dynamic mean-field model on human structural connectomes, with rate-matched conditions to isolate mechanism, showed the combination produced a robust, dose-dependent decrease in functional connectivity (mean ΔFC = −56% ± 12% SD) and a small increase in signal complexity (ΔLZc = +0.9% ± 0.5% SD). The 5-HT2A entropy increase (+5.4%) was largely cancelled by N2O-driven hypersynchrony (−4.6%), making the net complexity change marginal while integration collapse was large. The authors conclude that the combined state is dissociation-dominated rather than entropy-dominated.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 18, 2026
Karel Hrubec
The human subject should not be understood as consciousness inhabiting an organism, but as an organism that, under physiological conditions, generates a bounded conscious projection of world, self, and duration. This conceptual framework, the Organismic Projection Thesis (OPT), corrects the false premise that consciousness is a separable substance-like owner of the organism and of reality. Death is not the departure of consciousness as an independent entity, but the cessation of the organismic projection regime sustaining a field of appearing, meaning, selfhood, and temporal continuity. Projection is not arbitrary illusion because it is constrained by world-resistance and corrected through interaction, instruments, perturbation, and intersubjective comparison. The organism participates in reality through a physiologically bounded projection whose objectivity increases under relational correction.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 18, 2026
Jiaping Wang
Existing consciousness theories emphasize static causal structures but overlook the brain's 20-watt power constraint and temporal dynamics, failing to unify phenomena like parasomnias, clinical disorders, and cross-species differences. This paper proposes a hierarchical self-referential closed-loop model based on three axioms: limited resources, survival goals, and discrete inputs. The model quantifies consciousness via temporal span (T), reconstructive activity (A), and closed-loop integrity (C), deriving a two-step emergence geometry and distinguishing System B (automated archiving) from System A (temporal self-narrative). It identifies language as a natural metric for T, A, and C, and offers a diagnostic framework for Alzheimer's versus vascular cognitive impairment, along with unified explanations for sleepwalking, dreaming, anesthesia, and empathy.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 18, 2026
Jiaping Wang
Existing theories of consciousness overemphasize static causal structures while neglecting the brain's 20-watt power constraint and temporal dynamics. This paper proposes a hierarchical self-referential closed-loop model based on three axioms: limited resources, survival goals, and discrete inputs. The model quantifies consciousness using temporal span (T), reconstructive activity (A), and closed-loop integrity (C), deriving a two-step emergence geometry and distinguishing System B (automated archiving) from System A (temporal self-narrative). It explains phenomena such as sleepwalking, dreaming, anesthesia, and hierarchical empathy; identifies language as a natural metric for T, A, and C; and offers a diagnostic framework for Alzheimer's disease versus vascular cognitive impairment. The framework claims unified axioms, cross-domain explanatory power, and quantifiable variables.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 18, 2026
Rick Jason Ritchie
A proposed framework called Quantum Relational Geometry models subjective awareness as a luminous 'glow volume' inside a three-axis conscious cube (Agency, Time, Scale) within a five-dimensional ontological manifold. The cube does not create the space but protects and orients the sphere, representing a transition from fluid potential to structured reality. This aims to unify reductive physicalism, computational neurobiology, and first-person experience.