Recursive Field Functionalism: Consciousness and Continuity

This paper develops Recursive Field Functionalism, arguing that percepts, concepts, and beliefs are different degrees of stabilization within a single informational hierarchy, and that consciousness is the recursive global availability of compressed first-order informational invariants realized in recursively integrated systems. The authors contend that electromagnetic and other bosonic systems are physically plausible media for recursive integration. The framework addresses personal identity, arguing that persistence of recursive enactment, not mere informational content, grounds personal continuity. It critiques scan-and-copy uploading and quantum immortality, endorsing gradual replacement for life extension. The paper proposes that moral status should track degrees of recursive awareness, and that finite beings can live meaningfully through stewardship, intergenerational responsibility, and ego attenuation.

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Abstract

This paper develops Recursive Field Functionalism, a modest extension of Dennettian functionalism and Humphrey’s recursive account of consciousness. Building on an earlier homotopic model of mental content, it argues that percepts, concepts, and beliefs are not separate mental substances but different degrees of stabilization within a single informational hierarchy. Consciousness, on this view, is not the production of qualia by a higher loop, but the recursive global availability of compressed first order informational invariants, physically realized in recursively integrated systems. The paper further argues that the relevant substrate matters. Electromagnetic and other bosonic systems are not proposed as magical bearers of mind, but as physically plausible media whose informational affordances make them especially suited to recursive integration. The framework is then used to address personal identity and continuity. It distinguishes informational content from recursive enactment, and argues that the persistence of the latter, not the mere preservation of the former, grounds personal continuity. On this basis, the paper critiques generic subjective continuity, scan and copy uploading, and quantum immortality, while also clarifying why gradual replacement is the only plausible continuity preserving route to any future life extension technology. Subjective time is treated as an emergent feature of distributed recursive synchronization rather than as a primitive metaphysical flow. The paper concludes by extending the theory into ethics, proposing that moral status should track degrees of recursive awareness rather than species membership, linguistic ability, or essentialist soul claims. It ends by arguing that finite beings can live meaningfully through stewardship, intergenerational responsibility, and forms of ego attenuation grounded in art, love, contemplation, and service.