PILCROW (¶): When Structure Becomes Conscious

Abstract

PILCROW (¶) proposes that consciousness is not a property of a permanent subject, but the serial realization of structurally eligible perspectives. A system may contain multiple causal units, branches and lineages, while phenomenal Actuality remains a single ordered series. Version 0.7 presents a self-contained formal-metaphysical architecture separating the constitution of a subject, its continuity through change, the character of experience, and phenomenal realization. Subjects are derived from causal and intervention-sensitive organization; they may persist, split, merge or disappear as that organization changes. Causal structure provides only a partial order, while Actuality supplies the serial order of phenomenal realization. PILCROW is presented as an internally complete theory with explicit primitives, not as an empirically established neuroscience of consciousness. The remaining open questions concern its physical and neuroscientific realization.