Abstract I argue that consciousness is an evolutionarily formed regime of the organization of matter and, at the present stage, its culmination: a regime in which a multilevel hierarchy of self-contained parts of matter (SCPM) can be reproducibly held as a phenomenal scene, that is, as a causally integrated configuration of content reproduced across a succession of temporal windows, Δt. SCPM is introduced as an operational language for describing levels of the organization of matter, from the physicochemical to the neurocognitive. At a given scale and within a given temporal window, Δt, an SCPM is defined by a boundary, channels of exchange, and relative causal autonomy. A phenomenal scene is defined as a coalition of relevant SCPMs linked by a network of strong and weak connections and centered on a dominant image-anchor. Phenomenality is thus identified neither with report or access nor with any privileged marker. Consciousness is defined as a regime for holding a phenomenal scene in which the coalition of relevant SCPMs reproducibly preserves causally integrated coherence, stable patterns of routing, and characteristic discharge profiles despite internal and external perturbations. In this framework, consciousness is specified not by a single indicator but by a vector of regime parameters, r(Δt), including anchoring, bodily indexation, routing, the organization of RIDD / nested RIDD, output profile, and coordination lags. These components do not presuppose obligatory direct registration in a single step, but they do permit partial operationalization through sets of proxies, signature-based indicators, and locked protocols for causal discrimination. The centeredness of the scene is secured by bodily indexation, that is, by privileged routing through interoception, proprioception, and possibilities for action, while the mechanism of its reproducible holding is formulated as RIDD (recurrent integration with directed discharge) and nested RIDD, that is, as a multilevel dynamic of recurrent integration and directed discharge that sustains the holding of the scene over the window Δt. Exit from this regime manifests itself in characteristic trajectories of degradation or reorganization of scene coherence. The article’s contribution lies in a discipline of distinctions (anchor ≠ object of attention ≠ mechanism of attention; phenomenality ≠ reportability), in a map of regimes and a typology of “breakdowns,” and in discriminating predictions together with a testing program, including quantitative locked protocols D0-D4 designed to distinguish SCPM/RIDD from alternative theories by the effects of targeted interventions in anchoring, bodily channels, and discharge loops.
Armen Markarian (Sat,) studied this question.