Three Theoretical Pathways to Consciousness and Agentic Causation

Abstract

Contemporary consciousness science can characterize many neural, physiological, and behavioral correlates of conscious experience, intention, and voluntary action, yet it still lacks a unified comparative framework for deciding whether subject-level states are merely higher-level descriptions of brain-body dynamics or whether they contribute causal structure that cannot be absorbed by weaker models. This theoretical study compares Florin Gaiseanu’s Universal Triangle of Reality (UTR) , Pang Heming’s three-layer theory of matter, and the Unified Complex Systems Theory (UCST) through primary-text analysis, conceptual reconstruction, structural comparison, and falsifiability analysis. UTR is cautiously treated as a matterenergy- information ternary-constituent model; the three-layer theory is more appropriately characterized as a tri-aspect, tri-layer extended material monism; and UCST adopts a Mind-Matter dualist framework. All three frameworks can be mapped onto a comparable causal architecture linking information acquisition or formation, selection/decision, control, bodily interface, and observable outcomes. However, they treat consciousness differently: UTR and the three-layer theory mainly treat consciousness as an overall functional system or an overall subject-structure, whereas UCST further argues that to explain the attributes of consciousness and its agentic causal role, a finer-grained decomposition of consciousness is required, with the eight-consciousness structure serving as one proposed scheme for differentiating subject-level states. This article further elevates the paired-concept axiom to a methodological perspective for comparing ontological theories of consciousness: human-defined basic concepts normally acquire their boundaries through complementary counter-concepts, and one-sided expansion of a single concept may mistake a partial description for the whole of reality. On this basis, the article analyzes how the three frameworks treat matter/non-matter, information/subject, and body/consciousness relations, and proposes a graded comparative sequence consisting of M0 (a physicalism-compatible baseline) , MI (an informational bridge benchmark) , M1 (a three-layer subject model) , and M2 (a UCST model) . This framework does not presume that any theory has already been established; instead, it requires competing ontological hypotheses to face scientific comparison through explicit variables, intervention-sensitive designs, competing predictions, and independent replication.