Organized Physical Interiority: A Philosophical Perspective on the Curvature Adaptation Hypothesis

Abstract Many physicalist theories of consciousness appeal to generic thresholds of complexity, computation, or global integration. The Curvature Adaptation Hypothesis (CAH) motivates a more selective candidate: Organized Physical Interiority (OPI). OPI is the active maintenance of a bounded, governed, and temporally renewed interior through which distributed processes are held together as one materially consequential regime. Rather than equating consciousness with wide broadcast or abstract information processing, this framework identifies governed, differentiated co-presence as the relevant candidate organization: a physical regime bounded between modular fragmentation and indiscriminate fusion. This paper clarifies OPI as a candidate bridge-principle, distinguishing it from more permissive accounts through provisional exclusion cases involving static geometry, simple homeostasis, conventional digital processing, and generic routing networks. CAH is presented as a mechanistic route toward OPI rather than a finished ontological solution. Whether an organized physical interior is constitutive of phenomenal experience, necessary for its local access, or insufficient without some further condition remains open. The aim is to specify a physical-organizational target clear enough to support serious philosophical evaluation and ground explicit rivalry among competing theories of mind. Overview This perspective paper develops Organized Physical Interiority (OPI) as a selective candidate for consciousness-relevant physical organization. Rather than identifying consciousness with complexity, computation, global broadcast, or integration in general, OPI concerns the active maintenance of a bounded, governed, differentiated, and temporally renewed interior through which distributed processes are held together as one materially consequential regime. The paper presents the Curvature Adaptation Hypothesis (CAH) as one proposed mechanistic route toward such organization. It briefly reconstructs CAH’s evolution from an earlier whole-network phase-transition framing toward a more selective account centered on controlled geometry, lower-tail routing structure, selective scaffold recruitment, burden distribution, and thermodynamic maintenance. This physical program motivates, but does not by itself establish, the broader philosophical target of organized physical interiority. The paper argues that the relevant candidate organization lies between two failure poles: fragmentation, in which local processes remain insufficiently mutually consequential within a shared regime, and fusion, in which indiscriminate coupling weakens differentiated organization. It develops inherited constraint as a source of temporal depth, examines provisional exclusion cases involving static geometry, simple homeostasis, conventional digital processing, and generic routing networks, and situates OPI in relation to Integrated Information Theory and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory. The aim is not to present CAH or OPI as a settled theory of consciousness. It is to specify a physical-organizational target sufficiently selective to support serious philosophical evaluation and explicit rivalry among generator, filter/access, and substrate-sensitive interpretations. Related Works OPI Framework: Operationalizing Organized Physical Interiority: A Proxy, Perturbation, Recovery, and Cross-Substrate Framework. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20813984 The Governed Inside: Emotion and Agency as Nested Interiority. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19498895 Sub-Governance in a Bounded Interior: Imposition, Evocation, and the Geometry of Inner Guidance. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19536825 Compressed Geometric Seeds: Reconstructive Access and Model Fit in a Bounded Interior. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19547996 Identity and the Bounded Interior. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19578281 Emotions as Computation Under Constrained Transport. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19600710 Scaffold-Sensitive Interiority: Development, Ritual, and LLM-Assisted Cognition in Curvature Adaptation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19700190 CAH Framework: The Curvature Adaptation Hypothesis: Dynamic Information Geometry as a Regulated Resource in Neural Computation. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19634691: Dynamic Curvature Adaptation: Geometric Regulation of Cortical State and Pathological Collapse. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19747442 A Control-Law Extension of the Curvature Adaptation Hypothesis in Hierarchical Transport Networks. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19270109 Beyond Mean Curvature: Lower-Tail Routing Structure in Controlled Hierarchical Networks. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19324675