The Structural Conditions of Consciousness I — Structural Knot Theory — Proof of Absence: Inferring the Locus of the Subject (Repositioning State-Based Theories of Consciousness: IIT, GNW, HOT, Predictive Processing, RPT, and Epiphenomenalism)

This paper reformulates the hard problem of consciousness—traditionally addressed within state-based frameworks such as Integrated Information Theory (IIT), Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW), Higher-Order Thought (HOT), Predictive Processing, Recurrent Processing Theory (RPT), and epiphenomenalism—from a problem of generation to one of structural placement.

Adopting a strictly subtractive method, we retain only unavoidable constraints on acting systems—irreversible action, viability pressure, and large-scale information discard—while eliminating all explanatory additions. Under these conditions, a causally complete description cannot be achieved: a positional gap necessarily remains at the point where multiple effective possibilities must be reduced to a single realized outcome.

We then show that, given these same constraints, such a system must contain a point of irreversible convergence at which multiple effective future trajectories are exclusively and irreversibly reduced to one. This convergence is not contingent but structurally forced by the joint requirements of viability, exclusivity, and a single irreversible temporal history.

Finally, we demonstrate that this convergence point uniquely satisfies all structural conditions required of subjectivity: singular realization, irreversible exclusion of alternatives, and embedding within a non-branching temporal sequence. No alternative position satisfies these constraints simultaneously.

Therefore, subjectivity is not a generated state or an additional property, but the minimal positional term that is unavoidably required to close a causally singularized irreversible temporal series.

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Primary DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/KCFM8