Simulation study demonstrates emergent organizational divergence across identical artificial agents, indicating that multi-level top-down selection drives functional adaptability.
This preprint proposes the Selective Self-Organization Hypothesis (GSS) — an operational architecture of functional subjectivity based on selective self-organization, temporally stratified causal contours, and recursive top-down influence of higher levels on lower ones. Core mechanism: The cycle E → C → M → S → Ω (Expected state → Conflict → Variability → Selection → Possibility space) binds selection into a single dynamics. Architectural primitive: The trichronic selector (TS) with three temporal slots (past, now, future), parallel execution, and asymmetric destruction of the past slot. Parallelism is a critical condition: without it, hierarchy becomes an artifact of computation order. Temporal stratification: Levels are discoverable organizational regimes (L0–L4), not pre-given entities. Contour density, stability s, influence V(Lk→L0), body autonomy ρ, and the candidate index A are introduced as operational metrics. Experiment: A simulation with eight bodies, shared environment, and identical selector parameters (SEED = 12345) demonstrates substantial organizational differences. Body 1 consumed 26 food units with A = 6.86 and V(L2→L0) = 0.418; Body 5 consumed 1 unit with A = 4.20 and V(L2→L0) = 0.040. The cyclic organization is accompanied by stronger higher-level influence on the body and better adaptability. Status: The experiment demonstrates differences in dynamical organization but does not validate subjectivity. The hard problem of phenomenal consciousness is left open. Control conditions and falsifiable predictions are proposed.
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Lenar Masalimov (2026) studied this question.
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