From Matter to Observer, Not Yet to Subject. Recursive Self-Localisation as an Operational Information-Geometric Research Programme.

Abstract

The mind–body problem is often framed as a choice between substance dualism and the reduction of mind to brain activity. This paper argues that physics can contribute more precisely by separating two transitions that are commonly conflated: from matter to a physically situated observer, and from observer to phenomenal subject. The first may be amenable to physical and information-theoretic analysis; the second remains an open explanatory problem. Recursive Self-Localisation (RSL), originally developed within the Universal Model Framework, is therefore reformulated here as a deliberately restricted and operational proposal for observerhood, not as a theory or measure of consciousness. A bounded physical system qualifies as an RSL candidate only if it maintains temporally re-identifiable records, represents its own sensorimotor boundary, compresses relevant information, and uses that representation to improve held-out counterfactual prediction. The proposal replaces earlier informal self-isomorphism and complexity claims with explicit encoding and prediction maps, operational compression measures, self-model ablation, and capacity-matched memoryless, reactive, external-predictor, and predictive-processing controls. RSL is situated relative to decoherence, Quantum Darwinism, relational quantum mechanics, and Breuer’s limit on self-measurement. Breuer’s result is recast as a maximal-distinguishability problem over the quotient induced by an observer’s access map rather than as a scalar bound. A four-layer scheme—embodiment, observerhood, predictive organisation, and phenomenal report—also provides a cautious conceptual vocabulary for disturbances of agency, salience, temporal continuity, ipseity, and reality-testing in psychiatry without turning them into measures of consciousness. The conclusion is intentionally limited: physics may constrain how records, perspective, and self-location become organised, but it does not thereby explain why such organisation is experienced. RSL is presented as a falsifiable research programme for observerhood, not as a solution to the hard problem.