Relating Theories of Consciousness Across Explanatory Levels: The Field–Node–Cockpit Framework

Abstract

Contemporary theories of consciousness are often treated as competing accounts, yet they are frequently formulated at different explanatory levels and lack a common framework for relating them. This article argues that the central problem is not incompatibility alone, but the absence of a metatheoretical architecture for integrating theories that address epistemic, ontological, implementational, and phenomenological questions. I propose the Field–Node–Cockpit (FNC) framework: a research-programme proposal, not a first-order theory, that organizes a richer functional profile for perspectival organization and assigns each explanatory level a distinct analytic role, while carrying only a minimal ontological commitment. The framework introduces a perspectival criterion — a cluster of functional conditions on integration — and distinguishes this criterion from functionalism by treating recursive accessibility as an operational correlate of perspective rather than a reductive identity. It is acknowledged that the framework operationalizes only the functional side of this distinction; how the phenomenal side might be measured independently is an open question the framework flags rather than solves. FNC raises discriminating empirical questions, including a contrastive prediction concerning inter-agent coupling that faces an open experimental design problem, and reframes the question of machine consciousness from isolated computation to embodied, interactionally coupled integration. Intended submission target: Journal of Consciousness Studies (JCS).