Consciousness as Reality Engine: Recursive Information Systems in Post-Psychological Science

AbstractThis paper advances a unified theoretical framework in which consciousness is reconceptualized as a generative informational process emerging through nonlinear phase transitions in recursive inferential systems. Departing from classical psychological models that treat mental phenomena as internal representations or static properties, the analysis integrates predictive neuroscience, dynamical systems theory, and information theoretic principles into a post-psychological ontology of cognition. Central to the framework is the experiential coherence threshold, a critical point at which distributed recursive inference converges into globally stabilized attractor regimes capable of sustaining unified experiential reality. Consciousness is shown to arise not from prediction alone, but from coherence phase transitions that transform fragmented computation into temporally persistent world models. Formal dynamics of entropy regulation, attractor stabilization, and cross-hierarchical constraint specify the mechanistic conditions of experiential emergence. The theory generates concrete empirical predictions concerning neural integration, altered states of consciousness, developmental coherence growth, and artificial cognitive architectures. A case study of bistable perception demonstrates real-time transitions between competing experiential realities, providing direct empirical support for coherence-based reality construction. Comparative analysis situates the framework relative to Integrated Information Theory, Global Workspace Theory, and predictive processing, demonstrating its capacity to subsume their insights while resolving key mechanistic limitations. Together, these findings position consciousness as a computational reality engine through which recursive informational dynamics convert uncertainty into coherent experiential worlds, offering a unified, testable, and non-essentialist account of mind and reality. Keywords: consciousness, recursive cognition, phase transition, experiential coherence, predictive processing, dynamical systems, reality construction, attractor dynamics