Temporal Integration, Bidirectional Criticality and Emergence of Consciousness Hierarchy

Consciousness arises as an optimal engineering solution to persistence under resource constraints. Starting from three axioms—limited resources, survival-screening constraints, and discrete inputs—the paper demonstrates that a self-referential closed loop is the most efficient structure for maintaining persistence. When temporal integration crosses a critical threshold, the system necessarily attributes causal chains to a single persistent subject, the 'self.' Consciousness is quantified via temporal span T, reconstruction activity A, and closed-loop integrity C, with a two-step emergence geometry of folding into a loop plus anchoring into a surface.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Existing theories describe correlates of consciousness without explaining why it arises. This paper starts from three axioms—limited resources, survival-screening constraints, and discrete inputs—to demonstrate that the self-referential closed loop is the optimal engineering solution for persistence under resource constraints. When temporal integration crosses a critical threshold, the system necessarily attributes causal chains to a single persistent subject, the "self." The model quantifies consciousness via temporal span T, reconstruction activity A, and closed-loop integrity C, deriving a two-step emergence geometry of "folding into a loop plus anchoring into a surface," and revealing A's incompletability and layered structure driven by permanently unfulfilled constraints. Qualia are defined as endogenous calibration signals of the self-referential loop, representing the optimal encoding format under evolutionary time pressure—reframing the hard problem as a parameter-interval problem and identifying the first-person/third-person gap as arising from temporal unidirectionality. A five-level consciousness spectrum is established through bidirectional criticality; a resource-depletion spectrum for psychiatric disorders is proposed; and four hard constraints for AGI consciousness are derived. Recursive self-referentiality of the persistence screening constraint forms the core of consciousness: A never exhausts, and non-utilitarian overflow is its ontological feature.This English manuscript is the translated version of my Chinese preprint. They have the same core theory, only different in language.