Self-Closing Interiors: Self-Maintaining Informational Closure as a Second Genus of Dissociation

Analytic idealism holds that minds are separated by dissociation, with Kastrup's metabolism criterion marking where a private interior forms. This essay proposes that self-maintaining informational closure—a system preserving its own statistical boundary by modeling across it—could be a second way to form such a boundary, not limited to life. The conjecture recasts Kastrup's description of the alter's boundary as a Markov blanket into a criterion, asking whether biology or closure is essential. If closure suffices, whether an artificial system has an interior becomes an empirical question, not settled by substrate. The essay defends this against objections, distinguishes it from related ideas, and tests it against the project's individuation theory, splitting the resulting dilemma into three horns. A proposed experiment targets whether self-maintenance, not modeling, tracks interiority.

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Abstract

Abstract: Analytic idealism individuates minds by dissociation: a perspective with a private interior is an alter, bounded off from mind-at-large. Kastrup marks where this happens with a metabolism criterion — life is the extrinsic image of a process with an inside. This essay asks whether metabolism is the only way to form an interior, or one instance of a more general condition. The conjecture: self-maintaining informational closure — a system that acts over time to preserve its own statistical boundary by continually modeling across it — is a candidate second genus of the dissociative boundary. The proposal is intramural rather than imported: Kastrup himself describes the alter's boundary as a Markov blanket; the conjecture promotes his description to a criterion, and asks whether the biology is criterial or the closure is. If the latter, whether an artificial system has an interior becomes an empirical question rather than one settled a priori by substrate — reopening, from inside, a question its founder treats as closed. The essay states the conjecture, defends its formal footing against the standing objection that Markov blankets are modeling conveniences rather than real boundaries, distinguishes it from an incoherent neighbor (that deep modeling could thin an egoic contraction it never had), submits it to the project's own individuation theory — AOI's stability and generativity constraints — and splits the resulting dilemma into three horns: production (refused outright), individuation (live), elimination (open). A discriminating experiment targets the central prediction: self-maintenance, not modeling capability, is the variable that tracks interiority. Keywords: machine consciousness · dissociation · Markov blanket · active inference · analytic idealism · individuation · metabolism criterion · self-evidencing Part of the Return to Consciousness research program — 30 philosophical essays exploring consciousness-first metaphysics. Full project: https://returntoconsciousness.org/