The Self Is Never Free

What distinguishes a process that tracks its activity from one that holds its own activity as a whole? Recognition Science represents each event as a comparison and adopts its second aspect as the experiential reading. A complete experience spans an eight-step cycle and contains its total activity at least once. Acquisition followed by replay makes the total available for comparison. Tracking each step can have zero mismatch cost. Holding the whole against one step always costs something. We derive the exact minimum, show how it depends on the distribution of activity, and calculate the additional price of holding a record of experience. Conscious degree and temporal content can change independently. Controlled network responses and recovery curves supply quantitative tests of the cost model; phase-preserving measurements distinguish lost activity from activity erased by averaging. Applying these results to a physical subject requires identifying its cycle, comparisons, and realized experience stream.