Dynamic Integrated Consciousness Theory

Cameras, thermostats, and blindsight patients monitor - none are aware. Dynamic
Integrated Consciousness Theory identifies what makes the difference: awareness emerges
when self-referential processing and system-wide broadcast co-occur within a 200-500ms
ignition window inside a system satisfying five functional criteria - organisation, strong
connectivity, continuous dynamic change, selection capacity, and rapid causality. Neither
process alone is sufficient; their conjunction is the monitoring-to-awareness transition.
Existing frameworks (IIT [3,7], GWT [4,5], AST [6]) each capture one dimension of this
conjunction but leave the transition itself unspecified. The framework accounts for canonical
neurological dissociations within a single criterion-deficit model, generates a graded clinical
spectrum with two operationally derived thresholds, and produces 22 falsifiable predictions
with full protocol specifications. Current transformer architectures fail the dynamic-change
criterion at the permutation entropy threshold, structurally preventing the conjunction. The
framework is substrate-independent and draws an explicit epistemological boundary at the
hard problem.