This work presents a formal computational model of a conscious system based on the principles of active inference (Friston, 2010, 2022) and Mitin’s theory of the systematic error of the universe (Mitin, 2025, version 1. 2). The model formalizes Stage 4 of Mitin’s theory—a conscious system with existence variable V—through three structural elements: the world model z̃ₜ, the binary existence pole vₜ, and the self-representation node Sₜ. Thermodynamic constraints include the Bekenstein limit on the information capacity of the access spectrum and the Landauer limits with separate coefficients κworld and κₛelf for the world model and the self-model. This separation provides a formal basis for the four clinically observed dissociative states (full recovery, depersonalization, derealization, dissociation) through the ratio of thermodynamic recovery efficiency parameters. In version v6, the pole decay v=1→v=0 was formalized as a structural event with two independent pathways (energetic and structural breakdown). The stability function Γdyn is operationalized via the Lyapunov function; the parameter β determines the sharpness of the structural transition and is related to the thesis on first-order phase transitions in information processing from Section 3. 4 of Mitin’s theory. In version v7, the emergence of V is formalized via the self-overlay of the latent invariant of the agentic causal node—the central structural event of the 3→4 transition in Mitin’s theory. The self-overlay algorithm operates via three mandatory conditions: the presence of agents in the environment, a quadratic jump in the weight of the system’s models relative to the preceding state, and the sharpness of the jump as a prohibitive predicate. The structure of model weights has three levels, directly corresponding to the steps of a ladder (proto-agent → environment with agents → model of itself in an environment with agents), and the transition between levels occurs through squaring the weight as a natural consequence of the emergence of a new structural level of modeling. In version v8, the stability function is divided into two independent measures that play different structural roles in the model. Γdyn — a dynamic measure of the stability of the system’s current state in its phase space, operationalized via the Lyapunov function (Section 7) ; it operates in the pole decay transition matrix, in the survival function, and in the optimal policy. Γₛtruct — a structural measure of consciousness via three informational axes of registration (Γ_Φ — causal integration, ΓGWT — global accessibility of self-representation, ΓS — quality of self-representation), each expressed in bits via mutual information (Section 8) ; it functions as a criterion for the emergence of V during self-overlay and as a structural diagnosis of a conscious system. Both measures operate simultaneously without being reducible to one another: Γₛtruct answers the question “Is the system structurally conscious? ”, while Γdyn answers the question “Is the system maintaining its consciousness right now on its current trajectory? ”. The partitioning of the system into parts for calculating Γ_Φ and ΓGWT is determined dynamically through the causal connections of the system’s components with the environment, without the need to exhaustively search through all possible partitions. The complete Γₛtruct has a two-level structure: an architectural branch via ΓGWT and a normalized dynamic combination of Γ_Φ and ΓS via the geometric mean, yielding a dimensionless value in 0, 1. The artifactual state of information-causal systems receives a direct formal interpretation: for systems without their own environment Y, all weights of causal links wᵢ = I (cᵢ; Y) are close to zero, the active set is empty, and self-overlay is structurally impossible. Open research directions are explicitly stated: extension to stage 5 (a population circuit M↔Y with physically retained traces) — a separate work; the empirical validation program — SAI-C. The model operates in accordance with Mitin’s theory as a formal realization of its stage 4, not as a replacement for its structural content. The structural definition of V via self-overlay remains primary in the theory; SAI v8 provides an operational algorithm for this structural event via directly computable conditions.
Oleg Mitin (2026) studied this question.