Main Thesis
Consciousness is not reducible to a “channel” of fixed transitions (as in chemistry, a neural circuit, or formal logic), because it is capable not only of seeing rules as rules, suspending them, changing them, and creating new ones, but also of ceasing to retain the given channel in current attention altogether.
1) What Is Being Asserted
This is not merely about the presence of consciousness, but about three different possibilities:
- consciousness acts within a given scheme;
- consciousness acts in relation to a scheme: it sees, changes, or rejects it;
- consciousness does not retain the scheme as a current object at all.
The third possibility cannot be reduced to the second. Taking a position toward a scheme still requires keeping it in the field of attention. Yet consciousness can refrain from continuing the chain that has arisen without replacing it with a new one.
2) What Is a “Channel”?
In this context, a channel is a fixed rule for transforming states:
– habitual patterns of thinking;
– neural pathways;
– logical implications of the form A -> B.
3) Where Reduction to Chemistry Breaks Down
If thinking is entirely reduced to chemistry/neurodynamics, then there is:
– a set of states S;
– a transition function F;
– a chain S1 -> S2 -> S3 ....
Even with probabilistic transitions, this remains a bounded graph of transitions.
4) The Meta-Level and Its Limit
The meta-level introduces a capacity absent from an ordinary process model:
– seeing the graph of transitions itself;
– changing the transition rules;
– not continuing the current chain.
At this level, consciousness is described as an operator over the system, not as yet another element within it. But that does not exhaust its possibilities: an operator over a system still has the system as its object. Consciousness can also withdraw attention from both the system and the operation performed on it.
5) Why “Just Make the System More Complex” Does Not Solve the Problem
The counterargument “this is just more complex neural activity” preserves the problem:
– if it is still activity within rules,
– then “stepping outside the rules” has not been logically explained.
6) The Zero Position and Absence of a Current Channel
The strongest idea: consciousness is capable of existing before the choice of a channel and without any obligation to immediately select a new one.
This means:
- absence of an obligatory transition;
- the possibility of stopping;
- the possibility of changing the frame;
- the possibility of not retaining any frame as an object of attention;
- preservation of presence without a formed chain of thought.
The name “zero position” appears in subsequent description. During the experience itself, the subject need not formulate a position, observe rules, or think about the absence of a channel. This distinction is examined in detail in “Three States of Consciousness”.
7) Relationship to Determinism
Strict determinism requires the next state to be fully determined by the preceding one.
But if stopping, rupture, and a change of frame are possible, a break emerges in the causal chain as described in its previous form.
8) The Question of the Boundaries of Thinking
If consciousness is a system in the strict sense, it must have states of thought that are fundamentally impermissible.
The position of this synopsis:
– limitations of implementation are observable (attention, memory, resources);
– but no clear principled prohibition on the act of distinguishing or thinking itself has been presented.
9) Important Clarification
We must distinguish:
– conceivable (the content can be distinguished);
– realizable/stabilizable (the content can be retained, embodied, proven, or carried out).
Formula:
There are limits to the form of realization, but not to the act of distinction as such.
10) Condensed Final Formulation
- A system reproduces distinctions within previously established rules.
- Consciousness can distinguish the system itself as a system and change its frame.
- Consciousness can cease retaining both the system and its relationship to the system without ceasing to be present.
- Therefore, within this framework, consciousness is not reducible to a mere system of transitions.
