A Bidirectional Two-Particle Model of Conscious Identity: Theoretical Development and a Falsifiable Research Agenda

Current theories of consciousness explain how brain activity produces conscious experience but do not explain why a particular first-person perspective stays linked to one physical system rather than another. Thought experiments involving brain reactivation, reconstruction, and replication highlight this unresolved problem because physical and psychological duplication alone does not determine which system preserves the original subjective perspective.

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Abstract

Current theories of consciousness explain how neural activity generates conscious experience but do not explain why a particular first-person perspective remains associated with one physical system rather than another. Brain reactivation, reconstruction, and replication thought experiments highlight this unresolved problem because physical and psychological duplication alone does not determine which system, if any, preserves the original subjective perspective. This article treats consciousness identity as a distinct scientific question and proposes a theoretical framework based on two hypothetical entities with complementary functions: X-UQUPC, proposed to maintain identity persistence, and X-UQGPC, proposed to mediate bidirectional interactions between mental states and neural activity. The framework is evaluated against functionalist, predictive-processing, and other leading accounts of consciousness while explicitly identifying its conceptual limits. Two discriminating experiments are proposed to distinguish the model from theories that regard consciousness as fully determined by current computational or informational organization, including Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, Integrated Information Theory, Higher-Order Theory, and predictive processing. For each prediction, the expected observation, competing conventional explanation, essential experimental controls, and criteria for support or falsification are specified. The framework also acknowledges that its central claim regarding the persistence of a particular first-person perspective across structurally identical systems cannot be tested directly because it is unobservable in principle, and it does not claim discrimination from Orchestrated Objective Reduction. The scientific value of the framework therefore rests not on its truth but on the clarity, falsifiability, and empirical evaluation of its testable predictions.