A shared vocabulary / SPC-2
The distinctions
that matter.
The model’s key terms, explained in context and linked to their scientific treatment. These web explanations supplement the publication’s formal definitions.
- Awareness
The proposed knowing aspect of U, reality prior to the operational source/readout distinction. Awareness is neither a personal observer nor an extra independently acting force. A0 gives the local assignments their source-aspect meaning; it does not supply a numerical state variable or a cosmic episode.
- U: the unsplit ontological prior
Notation for reality before an operational distinction between a working source and readout. “Before” is explanatory, not temporal. The monograph does not treat U as a set, field, Hilbert space, deity or numerically specified universal experiencer. Mathematical working sources concern nominated problems and do not exhaust U.
- Source and readout
A working source S is a structure-side description complete relative to a nominated problem; a readout T is a restricted record-side description. A readout can preserve a target exactly while losing other distinctions. Their mathematical relation does not by itself select physical dynamics or a phenomenal assignment.
- Localized subject
An experiential perspective assigned to a qualifying core under A1, with a lived scene organized under A2. A3 links qualifying occurrences into episodes. A subject is not the whole biography of a person, an inner spectator, or awareness itself. A genuinely scene-less qualification gap contains no current localized experiential subject.
- Lived scene
What is phenomenally presented now. A scene need not be visual, spatial, verbally accessible or reflective; feeling, sound and unfamiliar nonhuman presentation are included. Darkness or felt blankness would itself be a scene. No scene means absence of current experience, rather than a subject observing emptiness.
- Person and self-model
Bodily, practical and autobiographical organization, including memory, ownership, habits and commitments. Constructed does not mean fictitious or causally unimportant. Person-level continuity can persist through a genuine gap in experiential qualification; a self-description can also change while one qualifying episode continues.
- Physical vessel
The physically realized organization through which localized manifestation is assigned. A vessel is specified through components, interactions, native operations, boundaries, resources and history—not merely named as a brain, computer or organism. Its certified specification is R*.
- Certified realization, R*
The physical and constitutive specification required for the finite completion theorem: component/state domains, native timing and routes, rational instruments, executable return contracts, closed intrinsic representations, predictive-fibre congruence, provenance and grounded report laws. Certification is relative to these conditions. An uncertified model is incomplete for the theorem; it does not automatically classify the physical system as unconscious.
- Constitutive selection doctrine
The declared choice of primitive interfaces, native time cells, internal routes, endogenous records and native tests used by the constitution. It is fixed before a preferred experiential verdict. A bare transition kernel need not uniquely select it. Justifying this doctrine for an actual vessel remains a separate responsibility.
- Qualifying core
A maximal internally typed strongly connected candidate satisfying the specified executable covering-return and nontrivial native-prediction conditions in its actual operating/protocol type and resource context. A1 assigns one perspective to each admitted core, without adding subjects for overlapping subassemblies inside it.
- Native recurrence and covering return
A physical return uses a single executable native schedule with compatible controllers, resources and boundary treatment. Its route certificate covers the candidate and a prepared distinction changes the terminal internal law. A graph cycle alone does not prove such execution, and an external replay independent of the intervention does not return its influence.
- Native instrument
A physical update law recording jointly the internal outcome and actual successor state for an admitted operation. Native actions, outcomes and continuation grammar belong to the vessel's supplied organization. They are not whatever tests an external analyst happens to observe or wishes were available.
- Intrinsic state
The actual realized point in the candidate core's finite carrier, retaining internal memory needed for its update. It is distinct from an observer's posterior uncertainty about that point. Missing boundary or controller memory can invalidate an asserted closed intrinsic representation.
- Endogenous predictive structure
The complete object organizing the laws of all admitted finite native continuations, their operations and record labels, compatible horizon restrictions, and well-defined predictive-class transitions. A2 uses this full object rather than an analyst's forecast cutoff or a scalar score. The vessel need not explicitly calculate the object.
- Predictive class
A class of intrinsic states with identical transcript laws for every admitted finite native test, within the relevant protocol type. An analyst's short horizon can merge distinctions that later tests reveal; all-future equivalence retains them. The actual state's class points to the current assigned phenomenal state.
- Predictive-fibre congruence
The additional checked condition ensuring that predictively equivalent states give identical joint probabilities for each native record and successor predictive class. Equality of future output laws alone does not guarantee this actual-class transition closure. It is Assumption 16.4, required by the certified finite completion.
- Reportability
Availability to a particular actual reporting channel. It can depend on memory, access, language, motor resources and channel conditions. It is not identical to presence of experience. A constant-output channel can distinguish none of a core's phenomenal classes, while experience-related distinctions remain in its native organization.
- Grounded report
A physical report law that, at fixed apparatus context, is constant on native predictive classes and therefore descends to the nominated phenomenal state. Grounding does not guarantee truthfulness, completeness or an independent measurement of primitive awareness. An ungrounded observation remains physical data, but lacks that factorization.
- Process provenance
A supplied physical relation recording continued implementation or explicitly realized local renewal of a component's operative role. It is distinct from information transfer and statistical similarity. A3 uses provenance between qualifying cores to determine continuation. Competing unchosen provenance assignments mean the realization is not fully supplied.
- Experiential episode
A maximal chain of qualifying core occurrences connected by A3's nonbranching provenance rule. A genuine split, merger or qualification gap ends predecessor episodes. Observation-window truncation merely limits what an analyst sees. An episode can continue through gradual replacement when the required chain remains intact.
- Scene-forming coupling
The edition's biological interpretation involving interaction between explicit scene-forming and implicit generative organization in a mature vessel. It is not an additional A1 condition, a universal cortical mechanism or a frequency threshold. Its application must remain consistent with the formal qualification assignment.
- Minimal systems
Simple processes are not excluded by an unstated intelligence, biological or complexity threshold. A genuinely certified one-bit self-return process with distinguishable native future laws can qualify under A1. Whether this permissive law captures nature's lower boundary is unresolved; excluding all such cases would change the law or selection doctrine.
- Nonduality
The interpretation that vessels and experienced worlds belong to reality rather than exist as independent substances outside it. Their distinctions can remain real and consequential. This does not imply one universal subject, personal survival, a measured awareness beam or the unreality of persons.
- Structural completeness
A2's commitment that primitive presence and the complete nominated endogenous predictive organization leave no additional manifested qualitative fact within the constitution. It is stronger than a mere correlation and is not a universal metaphysical impossibility theorem. Independent phenomenal relations must assess its application.
- Physical conservativity
Holding all physical preparations, operations and report laws fixed, adding A0–A3's aspect interpretation leaves every finite physical transcript probability unchanged. Those transcripts cannot discriminate a rival differing only in that interpretation. This does not remove tests of realization adequacy or fixed phenomenal correspondences.
- Candidate internal constitutive resolution
The controlled claim that, after a certified finite R* and A0–A3 are fixed, the local manifestation assignments are determinate: no unnamed manifestation map remains. It is not completed empirical validation, a universal realization selector, a proof of A0 or a consciousness detector for arbitrary systems.
- Weak-coupling sensitivity
Under the exact internal nonzero-edge rule and the specified compatible return assumptions, arbitrarily small positive coupling can merge two qualifying cores into one. Finite-horizon physical changes can remain small while the subject count changes sharply. A thresholded effective graph is an additional resolution convention, not the unchanged exact law.
- Agency and metacognition
Agency concerns organized selection and action; metacognition concerns representing or assessing cognitive processes. Both can enrich a vessel's capacities without defining experiential presence. SPC-2 does not require adult reflection, autobiographical competence or intelligent conversation for every qualifying perspective.