A Bidirectional Two-Particle Model of Conscious Identity: Theoretical Development and a Falsifiable Research Agenda

Current theories of consciousness explain how physical activity gives rise to consciousexperience. They do not explain why a particular first-person perspective remains attachedto one physical system rather than another. Thought experiments involving brainreactivation, reconstruction, and replication expose this gap: physical and psychologicalduplication does not specify which resulting system, if any, carries forward the originalsubjective viewpoint. This article treats that gap as a distinct explanatory target anddevelops a candidate account, the two-particle model, built from two functionally distincthypothetical entities: X-UQUPC, proposed to confer identity persistence, and X-UQGPC,proposed to mediate bidirectional interaction between mental states and neural activity. Istate the logical constraints the model must satisfy and give the strongest availablealternative accounts a fair hearing, including deflationary, functionalist, andpredictive-processing views. I then propose two experiments designed to discriminate themodel from theories that treat consciousness as fully constituted by current computationalor informational organization (Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, Integrated InformationTheory, Higher-Order Theory, and predictive processing), and state plainly that noexperiment can discriminate the model from Orchestrated Objective Reduction or test itscore claim about which of several structurally identical systems, if any, continues a givenperspective, since that claim is unobservable by construction rather than merely difficult tomeasure. For each remaining prediction I specify the expected observation, the leadingconventional alternative explanation, the controls needed to distinguish them, and thecriteria for support or falsification, without assigning numerical values the model cannotjustify. The model’s value does not depend on it being correct; it depends on whether it canbe tested and, if tested, shown to be wrong