Attribution Transfer in Consciousness Research: A Local Bridge Restraint

Abstract

Consciousness research routinely moves between neural activity, representational content, conscious perception, phenomenal unity, and subject attribution. Yet evidence obtained for one of these analytical positions does not automatically warrant claims at another. This paper formulates this problem as the attribution-transfer problem and proposes the Local Bridge Restraint (LBR) as a methodological response. LBR requires that evidence first remain indexed to the analytical position for which it was obtained, and that any transfer to another position make its position-specific bridge warrant and conditions explicit. The framework distinguishes content attribution, conscious-manifestation attribution, phenomenal-unity attribution, and subject attribution, while treating bridge composition and retrospective projection as further operations requiring separate justification. For empirical application, the paper introduces a minimal dynamic formation configuration combining local neural states with currently effective relations and develops binocular rivalry as a worked case. Content-sensitive measures, evidence for conscious manifestation, and task-specific spatial perceptual coherence are treated as distinct outcomes; spatial perceptual coherence is not identified with phenomenal unity. LBR is not proposed as a new mechanism of consciousness or as an independent general principle. It is a domain-specific operationalization of a broader non-inheritance constraint, intended to preserve evidential scope while allowing stronger bridges when their warrants are explicitly supported.