Consciousness Through Play: The Fabulator Ludus Hypothesis of Conscious Evolution
Stephen E. Dinehart
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) September 5, 2026 preprint DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22378471 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Proposes the Fabulator Ludus hypothesis, in which conscious modeling develops and may evolve through recursive cycles of play and its observance, following a PLAY → OBSERVANCE → MODEL → ACTION → CONSEQUENCE → RETELLING circuit. The author argues that play generates structured variation under recoverable conditions and that observance allows acquisition from another organism's actions and consequences without duplicating every original cost. Consciousness is used operationally for temporally integrated world modeling, and the hypothesis does not claim play alone creates subjective awareness. |
Abstract
This theoretical white paper develops the Fabulator Ludus hypothesis: conscious modeling develops, and may evolve, through recursive cycles of play and its observance. Play generates structured variation under recoverable conditions; observance enables acquisition from another organism’s actions and consequences without duplicating every original cost. Fabulation transmits models, action tests them, consequence prompts revision, and inheritance carries changed conditions into later cycles. The proposed circuit is PLAY → OBSERVANCE → MODEL → ACTION → CONSEQUENCE → RETELLING. The paper relates this mechanism to comparative animal play, observational and social learning, interspecies information exchange, cultural evolution, and the Cultural Brain Hypothesis. Consciousness is used operationally to refer to temporally integrated world modeling, possible action, consequence, and behavioral revision; the hypothesis does not claim that play alone creates subjective awareness or solves the hard problem of consciousness. The paper distinguishes developmental, cultural, and biological-evolutionary claims and outlines candidate experiments and falsification conditions. Three tables and two conceptual figures summarize the distinctions, proposed tests, and a four-group play–observance comparison design. These are research proposals and explanatory models, not new empirical results. This is the focused companion to Present Perceptual Reality: A Model of Fabulation, Play, Inheritance, and Conscious Evolution (reserved DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22377955).