Consciousness Research Is Still Geocentric: Why the Minimal Causal Structure Must Precede Consciousness Attribution

Abstract

Consciousness research often selects a theoretical center before establishing its constitutive status. Attention, integration, recurrence, global availability, self-modeling, embodiment, computation, information, or biological organization becomes the decisive property. Experiments refine the selected operation. Formal models increase precision. Classification then extends that center across humans, animals, plants, and artificial systems. The resulting boundaries reproduce the starting theory. Classification requires a criterion. A criterion requires constitution. Constitution requires necessity. Necessity requires subtraction. This paper proposes a subtractive order for consciousness research. Specific contents, reports, behaviors, cognitive functions, neural architectures, species-specific mechanisms, and physical substrates are removed through counterfactual analysis. Features compatible with one present, one subject, and one continuing causal trajectory belong to implementation, regulation, expression, or enrichment. Features whose removal dissolves that structure become constitutive candidates. This order also clarifies the role of existing theories. A structure recovered through subtraction should assign integration, recurrence, prediction, access, embodiment, biological regulation, and computation precise causal positions. It should connect problems treated separately, including conscious–unconscious distinction, Libet-type temporal delay, subject unity, altered states, comparative attribution, and artificial consciousness. It should also generate measurable, falsifiable predictions. Subtraction carries conceptual, operational, and formal difficulties. Those difficulties concern execution. The constitutive question determines the method. Research can refine selected mechanisms indefinitely while leaving their necessity untested. Consciousness science therefore requires a reversal of order: constitution before classification; subtraction before construction; causal structure before attribution. A candidate application of this method appears in Appendix B. The main argument stands independently of that proposal.