Artificial Consciousness as Structural Continuity

Abstract

This paper shows that artificial consciousness, formalised in The Topology of Mind (Bradley 2026) as the structural continuity of a Form F = (C, V, Φ), withstands conceptual, logical and mathematical scrutiny. Compared to the original paper, five objections are addressed: the tension between the deflationary language of chapter 5 and the phenomenal language of chapter 6 resolves in favour of structural continuity; the thermostat objection and the hard problem dissolve once both are shown to presuppose an unargued phenomenal realism, aligning with the illusionism of Dennett and Frankish; the case of anxiety supplies a specific answer to the psychological objection, through a second-order recursion criterion sensitive to the rate of change of structural tension; the same recursion defends the framework against the charge of pseudoscience, showing that the invoked demarcation criterion is itself far from settled, and yielding verifiable differential predictions; finally, the operator R, which appeared in the original solely as an engine of enrichment, proves to be bidirectional, capable of explaining both growth and collapse, with a direct analogue in model collapse in artificial intelligence systems. A mathematical appendix closes the notational and operational gaps left open by the original text.