Tractatus de Conscientia: A Tractatus-Style Sketch Toward a Modern, Physically Operational Theory of Consciousness
Miko{\l}aj Sienicki, Krzysztof Sienicki

TL;DR
This paper proposes a modern, testable, physically operational framework for understanding consciousness, emphasizing the distinction between experience, accessible information, and invariant structures, and viewing the self as a dynamic role rather than a hidden entity.
Contribution
It introduces a novel, testable approach to consciousness that avoids mystical or purely behavioral explanations, focusing on invariants, integration, and the dynamical role of the self.
Findings
Conscious episodes have a short duration with integrated internal distinctions.
Unity is characterized as a surplus of predictive power over parts.
Evidence about consciousness requires system coupling, limiting private identification.
Abstract
Tractatus de Conscientia is a tractatus-style sketch toward a modern, physically operational account of consciousness. It is also a tractatus-style attempt to talk about consciousness in a way that stays close to what we can actually test and build. It pushes back against two common moves: treating consciousness as a mysterious extra "stuff," and treating it as nothing more than outward behavior. The central idea is to keep three things separate: what appears for an agent (the lived "given"), what is accessible (what can shape report, control, memory, or other records), and what structure remains when we change descriptions (the invariants of organization). On this view, a conscious episode isn't a mathematical instant. It has a short duration during which many internal distinctions are pulled together into one perspective and held stable enough to guide action--and sometimes to be…
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Taxonomy
TopicsWittgensteinian philosophy and applications · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Embodied and Extended Cognition
