Consciousness, Event, and Duality: The Nature of Our Knowledge

Theoretical Research paper

Consciousness, Event, and Duality: The Nature of Our Knowledge

Philosophical Inquiry into the dynamic, event-driven nature of contentful consciousness.

Ayyappan Manikantan Nair

Published: September 27, 2025

Abstract

This paper examines the role of events and change in shaping consciousness. I propose the guiding principle "No event, no contentful consciousness," arguing that the acquisition of perception and knowledge is not a static state but a dynamic response to transitions in the environment or the organism's internal state. Perception and conceptual knowledge arise through dualistic contrasts (for example, night/day or dark/light), by means of which the cognitive system measures phenomena and constructs meaning. The paper develops this thesis through sensory examples (light–dark, stillness–motion), an account of habituation and resource conservation in cognitive processing, and a conceptual model that relates static states, events, and conscious activation, concluding with a discussion on the non-personal nature of the conscious response and the interactive imperative that drives its existence.

1. Introduction

Philosophical questions about the relation between the mind and the external world have long emphasized how experience becomes knowledge. This paper focuses on when and why consciousness becomes contentful: I suggest that human observers tend to inhabit a baseline or Average Observation Mode (AOM) in which persistent, predictable, or unchanging background conditions receive minimal conscious representation. Conscious awareness, on this view, becomes rich and structured primarily when change occurs—an event that signals a deviation from the baseline and requires reallocation of cognitive resources.

It is crucial to differentiate between this rich, contentful awareness and a fundamental, non-specific background state. This "minimal form of awareness" or "Background Awareness" is defined here not as a dynamic response, but as the persistent, non-contentful phenomenal experience of the system’s operational readiness. It is the 'is-ness' of existence maintained at the lowest energy state, representing a 'zero-information' phenomenal field where the cognitive system maintains its general prediction of a stable world. Crucially, while this state is phenomenal (it feels like something to be in this state), it does not require the resources of event-driven consciousness (perception or knowledge). Therefore, the principle "No event, no contentful consciousness" only applies to the acquisition of structured, detailed information and the required allocation of high-level resources, not to the mere state of phenomenal existence itself.

The Phenomenal Basis of Background Awareness

To clarify the mechanism, Background Awareness is sustained by the intrinsic, low-energy activity of the Default Mode Network (DMN) in the brain, which maintains a constant internal dialogue and metabolic readiness without external input. This DMN activity is crucial: it is zero-information (it processes no new environmental data) but not zero-energy. The phenomenal quality (the 'feel' of existence) arises from this inherent, ongoing metabolic flow and internal prediction loop. The boundary between Minimal and Contentful Consciousness is thus defined by resource allocation: when a prediction error is significant enough to pull resources away from the DMN and into specific sensory/attentional networks (generating a transition/event), that marks the shift from non-contentful background awareness to rich, event-driven contentful consciousness. This resource reallocation mechanism provides the neurobiological justification for internal cognitive events (thoughts, memory retrieval) which require the suppression of DMN activity and the activation of Task-Positive Networks (TPN)—an energetic shift equivalent to that triggered by external sensory change.

The term event is used here in a minimal, operational sense: any detectable transition in sensory input or internal state that yields a difference in the organism's interaction with its environment. The central claim is thus not that there is no minimal form of awareness in the absence of change, but that the informational content of consciousness—what we normally call perception and knowledge—derives chiefly from contrastive, event-driven processes.

This claim naturally provokes a critical inquiry: when an individual is in a physically static state, are their internal thoughts not a form of consciousness? They undoubtedly are. The principle 'No event, no contentful consciousness' is not limited to external stimuli; it applies equally to internal transitions. The formation of a thought, the retrieval of a memory, or the shift from one idea to the next are all cognitive events that demand resource reallocation. Furthermore, the very nature of quiet, internal thought can be conceptualized as 'echoes' or 're-enactments' of past event-responses. Crucially, the formation of a new idea is not a de novo (novel) event but a high-order integrated response. It represents the system's effort to generate a new, optimized predictive state by combining and simulating previously acquired duality measurements (past events). The system, having conserved resources by habituating to a static external baseline, uses this capacity to process information previously gathered through contrast. Thus, the stream of thought itself is a dynamic, low-energy simulation of past interactions with change, confirming that even in 'stillness,' consciousness remains actively event-driven.

1.1. Scope of the Inquiry: Universal Functionalism

This inquiry into the Event and Duality mechanism is not restricted to human cognition. The paper presents a generalized, functional theory of contentful consciousness, arguing that the fundamental principles of resource conservation and dualistic measurement in response to change are universal imperatives for any complex, self-optimizing system capable of prediction. While examples are drawn from human sensory experience for clarity, the core claim—that consciousness is the non-personal, resource-efficient informational outcome of an Event—is intended to describe the basic architecture of phenomenal awareness across species or systems that utilize contrast and prediction error for interaction. The model therefore explores the universal 'how' of conscious content, rather than the species-specific 'what'.

1.2. Related Concepts and Theoretical Context

The "No event, no contentful consciousness" heuristic advanced in this paper finds strong conceptual grounding in established cognitive theories. The argument that conscious awareness acts as a response system is inherently linked to the brain’s necessity for resource conservation. Perceptual and attentional systems exhibit habituation: repeated, stable stimuli produce attenuated responses over time, causing static conditions to be backgrounded (Sokolov, 1963). This selective processing strongly aligns with predictive processing frameworks in neuroscience. According to these views, the brain maintains low-energy predictions about the world and only actively responds to prediction errors generated by unexpected events (Friston, 2010). Furthermore, the core reliance on dualistic contrasts for knowledge generation is supported by studies in computational vision, which demonstrate that detecting basic perceptual content like edges and textures requires measuring the difference between light and shadow (Marr, 1982). By synthesizing these established concepts, this paper underscores the central role of 'event' or 'change' in the generation of all conscious content.

2. Duality: The Key to Knowledge

I argue that knowledge of many familiar categories is generated through contrast with their opposites. Dualities provide the discriminative structure necessary for representation: a feature becomes meaningful when it can be contrasted with a complementary condition.

2.1 Light–dark

The light–dark example illustrates how perceptual content depends on contrast. Darkness can be understood as the absence of illumination, whereas the introduction of light is an event that creates spatial and temporal gradients in sensory input. The arrival of light produces contrasts (edges, textures, and casts of shadow) that permit richer perceptual organization. The phenomenon of shadow formation itself depends on the spatial relation between light sources and occluding objects and thus on the contrast created by change in illumination.

2.2 Stillness–motion

Analogously, a uniform state of stillness contains relatively little salient information for perceptual systems. When motion occurs—either of objects in the environment or of the observer—this change generates temporal differences that the sensory system can track. Motion detection, in this sense, is a mechanism that converts deviations from a static baseline into representational content.

2.3 Complex Content: Colors and Emotions

The principle of duality extends beyond simple sensory contrasts to complex phenomena. Colors, for instance, are perceived not merely as single wavelengths, but through opponent processing in the visual system (e.g., measuring the opposition between red and green, or blue and yellow). The perceived color is the informational outcome of this high-level, contrasting dualistic measurement. Similarly, emotions can be modeled as the outcome of dualistic valuation: the cognitive system measures the deviation between predicted internal stability and the current internal state, leading to affective contrasts like pleasure/pain or safety/threat. Complex emotional states (Contentful Emotions) are, therefore, the brain's highest-order dualistic measurement of prediction error pertaining to the organism's homeostatic imperative. This demonstrates that all structured content, from basic perception to subjective feeling states, is fundamentally generated through event-driven contrast.

2.4 Internal Transitions: The Duality of Abstract Edge Detection

The event-driven generation of content is not limited to external sensory data; it applies equally to internal cognitive transitions. When an individual is in a state of quiet contemplation (Background Awareness), the formation of a new idea constitutes a critical internal event. This event is measured by a higher-order, abstract form of Duality distinct from simple sensory contrast. Here, the cognitive system measures the Deviation in Predictive Confidence. The 'non-existence' of the idea is the system's previous state of low confidence or Unresolved State regarding a solution. The Event is the sudden transition to a state of high confidence or Resolved State where disparate pieces of information cohere into a viable new concept. This process functions as an Abstract Edge Detection, where the system detects the boundary between the Old Predictive State (No Solution/Low Confidence) and the New Predictive State (Solution/High Confidence). The Prediction Error generated by this sudden shift in confidence is the informational outcome that manifests as Contentful Consciousness—the subjective 'Aha!' moment of insight. This concept is not merely an analogy; it serves as a computational framework within Predictive Processing where the Abstract Edge represents the magnitude of Prediction Error calculated over the internal confidence metric, ensuring that the informational content of the 'Aha!' moment is prioritized for conscious processing only when this calculated confidence transition crosses the required operational threshold.

3. Consciousness as a Response Mechanism

If consciousness is modeled as part of a cognitive system that optimizes processing under resource constraints, then one of its central functions is to allocate attention and representational capacity where they are needed.

3.1 The brain's tendency toward habituation and efficiency

Perceptual and attentional systems exhibit habituation: repeated, stable stimuli produce attenuated responses over time. De-emphasizing predictable or background inputs conserves metabolic and computational resources while allowing the system to remain sensitive to novel changes. Contemporary frameworks such as predictive processing echo this view: the brain minimizes prediction error and down-weights expected, uninformative input.

3.2 Events as stimuli for conscious activation

Events—unexpected deviations from predicted input—generate prediction errors and draw processing resources. They function as triggers that elevate particular sensory streams into conscious awareness. Thus, the event is not merely one among many inputs; it is the kind of input that changes the system's allocation of attention and the contents of conscious representation.

4. A Simple Conceptual Model

This schematic model emphasizes the functional relation between environmental states, events, and conscious activation.

4.1. The Core Process Flow

This section suggests that static background conditions—exemplified by silence, darkness, and stillness—tend to be backgrounded or largely unattended by the cognitive system. In contrast, an event, such as a sudden sound onset or motion onset, constitutes a detectable change that disrupts the baseline. This transition acts as a stimulus, prompting a fundamental shift in consciousness from a state of low salience to a state of high salience where the input is actively foregrounded and perceived. Essentially, the model highlights that our conscious experience is defined not by the baseline state of existence, but by the deviations from it.

The core process defined by this model can be succinctly represented as a continuous flow:

Static Baseline→Event (Prediction Error)→Conscious Activation (Duality Measurement)→Prediction Update→Dynamic Reciprocal Loop→Static Baseline

This formula illustrates the active role of the cognitive system in converting unexpected changes (Prediction Error) into meaningful content (Duality Measurement), which then feeds back into the system to refine future expectations.

4.1.5 The Event Threshold: Context-Dependent Precision-Weighting 

(The Proximity-Operational Threshold¹)

The magnitude of the Event required to trigger Contentful Consciousness is determined by the Context-Dependent Precision-Weighting of Prediction Error—a phenomenon we term the Proximity-Operational Threshold1. This mechanism sets the dynamic threshold for awareness. An event's 'size' is not absolute; it is measured by the Prediction Error it generates relative to the current precision assigned to that sensory or internal channel and the depth of existing awareness. If the organism assigns high precision (High Proximity/Depth) to a specific region, the threshold is low, and even a minimal change will generate a significant relative Prediction Error that crosses the threshold. Conversely, in areas of low precision (Low Proximity/Depth), the threshold is high. This mechanism ensures the system optimizes resource conservation by maintaining a fluid and dynamic threshold for conscious entry, always prioritizing the most relevant deviation based on the current operational scope. (cf. Friston, 2010)

4.2. The Agency of Response

This conceptualization of consciousness as a dynamic response raises the profound question: Who is the responder? When modeled as an efficient, event-driven mechanism, the system's function supersedes the need for individual ownership. In this view, consciousness is not primarily the property of a subjective 'self' or organism; rather, it is the non-personal outcome of the cognitive system's efficient processing of event-data. The response is dictated purely by the contrastive information available in the environment and the imperative of resource conservation, making consciousness an emergent phenomenon tied to the specific spatio-temporal dynamics of change.

The Unity of Experience and the Hard Problem

While proposing a non-personal origin, this model still accounts for the unified phenomenal experience by proposing that the unity is a functional necessity for efficient interaction. The cognitive system must bind all current event-responses (e.g., sound, light, movement) into a single predictive model of the external world at a specific instant in time. This synchronization of sensory data—the unified model of the current event-state—is what we subjectively interpret as a 'self' having a coherent experience.

This subjective interpretation is not an injection of personal will, but the functional result of the system reporting the integrated Duality Measurements within its own resource-optimized framework. The system’s bias toward minimizing error and conserving energy—while non-personal in origin—inherently makes the resulting report unique to that system's internal state, thereby generating the phenomenal signature of subjectivity.

The unity is therefore a functional tool for survival, not evidence of a metaphysical, persistent self. Furthermore, by focusing on change and prediction error as the core drivers, this event-driven model re-frames the Hard Problem of Consciousness (the question of why experience feels like anything at all). It suggests the problem is better addressed as the mystery of why measurable informational transitions (events) generate qualia (subjective experience), rather than why a static brain state does. The feeling of experience (qualia) is postulated to be the informational outcome of the system measuring duality and change, with that outcome being prioritized for attention. Addressing the Hard Problem: This model reframes the mystery of qualia not as mere renaming, but as a consequence of Prioritized Precision-Weighting. Within the Event and Duality framework, the informational outcome (the duality measurement) that crosses the Proximity-Operational Threshold is intrinsically assigned maximum Precision. This Qualia (e.g., the sensation of "red") is hypothesized to be the phenomenal signature of that high-precision Prediction Error signal being processed by the system. In this view, the subjective 'feel' is the functional consequence of a system prioritizing a critical piece of information (the Event) for Prediction Update, thereby making the quality of the experience the necessary mechanism by which the system optimizes its engagement with change.

The event-driven chain reaction of consciousness—where one Prediction Update triggers the next Internal Event or external response—is not random, but is fundamentally governed by a pre-determined Optimization Formula. The cognitive system's responses follow a Probabilistic and Optimized Flow, dictated by the core imperative to minimize future Prediction Error while simultaneously conserving resources. This means every step in the 'consciousness cascade' is teleologically biased toward the action or thought that is mathematically calculated to be the most resource-efficient and predictive pathway. This principle, which we define as argmin(E)+Resource Conservation, ensures that the system's reaction is always the phenomenal signature of executing a high-speed, non-personal, and optimized predictive algorithm, thereby confirming that the conscious sequence is deterministic within its functional parameters, not arbitrary.

Agency and The Response Hierarchy

This model views decision-making or agency not as an autonomous, pre-existing 'free will,' but as the highest-order functional response within the event-driven hierarchy. When internal or external events create conflict (a critical prediction error) between competing courses of action, the cognitive system initiates a simulation: it generates internal transitions (thoughts, valuations) which are themselves cognitive events that demand resource allocation. The subsequent decision is merely the informational outcome of this high-level dualistic measurement, where the system selects the most resource-efficient action designed to minimize future prediction error and fulfill the imperative of effective interaction. Thus, the feeling of 'choice' is the subjective experience of the system’s optimized, non-personal functional response to a complex internal event chain.

4.3. Consciousness vs. Mere Physical Reaction

This event-driven model of consciousness must be clearly distinguished from mere physical reactions. The argument is not a form of Panpsychism, which posits that all matter has some form of consciousness, simply because every object responds to change (e.g., a rock heating up in the sun). A simple physical reaction is merely an energetic transfer—the object's state changes without cognitive processing. Consciousness, by contrast, requires a specialized system to perform three crucial functions: 1) Measure Duality (e.g., distinguishing light from dark), 2) Represent the Change (assigning meaning like 'danger' or 'food'), and 3) Conserve Resources by actively habituating to predictable change. Therefore, only the system that actively engages in this resource-optimizing and representational processing possesses the 'contentful consciousness' this paper defines; a simple physical object lacks this necessary cognitive imperative.

4.4. The Imperative of Interaction

This discussion naturally leads to a foundational teleological question: Why does consciousness respond only to change? The answer embedded in this model is that the very function of consciousness is to facilitate the most effective interaction between an organism and its environment. Consciousness exists precisely to serve this interactive imperative; if there is no change, motion, or event, there is no need—and therefore no content—for consciousness.

5. Conclusion

The perspective developed here construes conscious knowledge as fundamentally dynamic: it is the product of the cognitive system's responses to change. By emphasizing dualistic contrasts—contrastive pairs such as light–dark and stillness–motion—this approach clarifies how perceptual systems extract structure from environmental input. The heuristic "No event, no contentful consciousness" highlights the centrality of transitions and deviations for the generation of representational content.

Finally, the relationship between event and consciousness is not merely linear, but interdependent. While the system requires an event (change) to activate conscious content, the inverse is also true: the event itself only gains meaningful existence as a 'deviation' or 'error signal' because a conscious (or proto-conscious) system is actively predicting and trying to interpret it. Thus, consciousness and change exist in a dynamic, reciprocal loop; one serves as the functional imperative for the other. Consciousness, in this final view, is the emergent activity of a system dedicated not just to responding to change, but to defining change itself for the sake of effective interaction.

The Functional Emergence of Self and Qualia

The ultimate conclusion of this event-driven framework is that consciousness functions as an unbroken flow of dynamic transitions. The subjective feeling of an 'individual self' or 'I' is not a primary entity but a functional emergent property² constructed by the system itself to ensure coherence and efficient interaction. Qualia is traditionally understood as the quality of the breadth and depth of consciousness, but in this framework, this subjective experience (qualia) serves a critical role: it is the factor that differentiates one state of contentful awareness from the next, thereby sustaining the necessary Consciousness-Event Cascade. This reaffirms that all content-bearing existence, irrespective of the system, is universally marked by its unique phenomenal signature (qualia), validating the central role of experience in the architecture of knowledge.

A Philosophical Bridge: Kambana³ and the Event Imperative

The core principle of event/change as the engine of contentful consciousness finds a compelling philosophical parallel in certain Eastern traditions. The concept of Kambana (or Spanda—Divine Pulsation) posits a Singular Primordial Dynamic as the ultimate foundation of all phenomenal reality. Within this framework, we propose that the genesis of Contentful Consciousness is initiated by the Initial Phenomenal Transition—the first Event emerging from this Primordial Dynamic. This beginning establishes a Consciousness-Event Cascade, an Iterative Reciprocal Cycle where consciousness and change are mutually dependent. This dynamic cascade is not only crucial for knowledge acquisition but also for the creation of Subjective Time. The experience of Time itself is posited as the Temporalization of Information—the rate at which the cognitive system measures, processes, and responds to successive Events within this chain. This synthesis suggests that the cognitive imperative to respond to change is not merely an evolutionary necessity but reflects a fundamental law of dynamic existence, linking the brain's localized Prediction Errors to this Universal Principle of Change.

This view has implications for both philosophical accounts of perception and empirical research in cognitive science. It suggests productive lines for experimental investigation (for example, measuring the neural and behavioral thresholds at which changes become consciously reportable) and invites integration with existing theoretical frameworks such as predictive processing and attention research.

The final distinction to be drawn is regarding the nature of the phenomenal signature itself. Qualia is not the 'Soul' of consciousness, but its 'Iron Fence.'⁴ It does not represent an immaterial, owning entity, but a functional boundary condition necessary for structural survival. The purpose of this boundary is twofold: first, it acts as the factor that delineates the current awareness-state from the next, preventing the continuous flow of transitions from collapsing into an undifferentiated continuity. Second, it serves as the driving imperative that compels the system to engage with the next Event—thus providing the necessary motivation for the Consciousness-Event Cascade to sustain itself perpetually through successive acts of differentiation. In this view, the experience is the prioritized report of the boundary itself, validating qualia as a core structural function for coherence, rather than an irreducible substance. 

5.1. Open Questions and Philosophical Defense

The theoretical framework presented here naturally provokes critical inquiry regarding the nature of experience and agency.

Defense of Minimal Awareness (Background Awareness) The thesis explicitly accepts the phenomenal nature of Background Awareness, grounding its existence in the low-energy, intrinsic activity of the brain's Default Mode Network (DMN). This state is zero-information but not zero-energy. The minimal phenomenal quality is sustained by this constant metabolic flow, which serves as the brain’s operational readiness for prediction. The boundary between this state and Contentful Consciousness is defined by resource allocation: only a significant prediction error, which necessitates pulling resources away from the DMN into specific processing networks, constitutes the "event" required for content. This defense maintains the thesis that content requires an event, while allowing for the continuous, non-contentful 'is-ness' of experience.

Defense of Subjective Agency The model reframes agency (decision-making) not as an autonomous, pre-existing 'free will,' but as the highest-order functional response to internal conflict. The feeling of subjective choice arises from the process of unified transition: when the cognitive system resolves a complex internal event chain (the simulation of competing actions) into a single, optimized new prediction (the decision), this synchronized shift is the phenomenal outcome interpreted as 'choosing.' Thus, the subjectivity of agency is a functional necessity for ensuring a coherent and effective interaction with the environment, even if the underlying process is non-personal and resource-driven.

Addressing the Challenge of Equal Choices: The thesis must confront the critical inquiry regarding two equally efficient options (a philosophical Buridan’s Ass problem). Even in the presence of seemingly equivalent choices, the non-personal nature of the response is maintained: the conflict itself becomes a high-stakes internal Event. The system is then forced to prioritize the decision based on higher-order contextual factors (e.g., subtle fluctuations in neuronal noise or momentary attentional weighting). The final 'choice' is not an injection of free will but is the informational outcome derived from the system's dualistic measurement of these subtle, previously non-salient internal factors. The response remains non-personal because it is still driven by the ultimate functional imperative: selecting the pathway that optimizes resource efficiency and minimizes the most critical prediction error (the internal conflict).

The reliance on neuronal noise is not a low-fidelity answer, but rather the system's final, high-precision Duality Measurement. When external predictive differences vanish (the Buridan’s Ass problem), the system is forced to measure the most subtle Internal Resource Duality (e.g., momentary metabolic cost or attentional bias). The neuronal noise simply represents the informational outcome of measuring this minimal Duality—the system's ultimate effort to select the pathway that still offers a fractional argmin(E) advantage, thereby reaffirming the principle that every choice, even a seemingly random one, is functionally bound to the imperative of optimization.

5.2 Comparison with Dominant Consciousness Theories

This Event and Duality model offers a unique functionalist perspective distinct from other major theories. Unlike the Integrated Information Theory (IIT), which posits that consciousness arises from the quantity of integrated information (Φ), our model focuses on the quality of informational transition and the necessity of contrast. Consciousness is not maximized by integration alone, but by the efficiency of the dualistic measurement of change. Furthermore, while the model shares common ground with Global Workspace Theory (GWT) by emphasizing the foregrounding of information, it fundamentally rejects the existence of a central, persistent "self" or "subject" viewing that information. Instead, the unified experience is merely the functional outcome of the system's non-personal imperative to predict and interact efficiently with the event-state of the environment.

From the functional perspective of the Event and Duality framework, subjective reality is not a passive mirror of the external world, but a highly optimized, continuous prediction generated by the cognitive system. This reality is fundamentally anchored by Background Awareness, a low-energy, non-contentful state sustained by mechanisms like the DMN, which asserts the persistent 'is-ness' of existence while conserving resources. Contentful Consciousness—the moment-to-moment experience of reality—emerges only when a Prediction Error is generated by an Event (a deviation from the background prediction). The brain then utilizes the Duality Measurement process to quantify this deviation and construct the informational content of the moment. Consequently, the perception of reality is a deterministic outcome of the system constantly executing the argmin(E) + Resource Conservation mandate, ensuring that every experienced moment is the most functionally efficient response required for survival and successful interaction with the environment.

References

Friston, K. (2010). The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), 127–138. Marr, D. (1982). Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information. W. H. Freeman and Company. Sokolov, E. N. (1963). Perception and the conditioned reflex. Pergamon Press.

Footnotes

1 Proximity-Operational Threshold is a novel term introduced in this paper. It refers to the dynamic, context-dependent mechanism of Precision-Weighting (cf. Friston, 2010), specifically emphasizing the variable distance (proximity) and active engagement (operational scope) required for an event to cross the threshold into Contentful Consciousness within the framework of Event and Duality theory.

2 Kambana (or Kampana) is a term derived from Sanskrit, meaning 'vibration' or 'movement'. Philosophically, it aligns closely with the concept of Spanda (Divine Pulsation) found in classical Indian traditions, particularly Kashmir Shaivism and Advaita Vedanta. It signifies the primordial, self-initiated pulse of consciousness from which the phenomenal world and all dynamic changes unfold. In this paper, the term is used to denote the foundational, non-personal dynamic required to initiate the flow of events and, consequently, contentful consciousness.

3 Functional Emergent Property: This term combines Emergentism (the idea that complex systems give rise to novel properties irreducible to their parts, e.g., consciousness from neuronal activity) with Functionalism (the idea that mental states are defined by their causal roles/functions, rather than by their physical composition). In this context, the ’Self’ is an emergent outcome whose primary function is to optimize the system's predictive performance and coherence.

4 The Iron Fence Analogy: The Qualia is conceptualized not as the Soul (the central, owning entity of consciousness), but as the Iron Fence. This fence serves the critical function of Delineation: it actively marks the boundaries between one state of contentful awareness and the next, thereby serving as the functional driver that compels the continuous Consciousness-Event Cascade. Its role is structural and energetic, not inherent or substantive.