This paper proposes that consciousness is the product of two binary conditions expressed as a single equation: C = CM × EA. The choosing mechanism is the core thalamic reticular nucleus, specifically Spp1+ neurons projecting to first-order thalamic relay nuclei operating in tonic discrimination mode. External awareness is the presence of signals arriving at the chooser without pre-assigned automatic responses, demanding genuine selection. Both variables are binary. The product is binary. A living person is conscious or they are not. The framework separates three independent axes that the field has collapsed into one: consciousness, experience, and agency. Consciousness is binary and determined by the equation. Experience is continuous, defined as the accumulation of what the gate selected, those selections producing consequences in the world and body, those consequences returning as new signals feeding back as new external awareness across time. Agency is continuous, defined as the degree to which prefrontal signal amplitude determines gate competition outcomes. Separating these three axes resolves the hard problem without philosophical residue and explains contradictions that have persisted in the consciousness literature for decades. The framework redefines real death as irreversible discontinuity of the choosing mechanism rather than cardiac or cortical cessation, explains vegetative state as chooser intact with severed external signal pathway, and proposes a distinct clinical profile for shell TRN damage separate from core TRN damage. Four falsifiable experiments are proposed using existing technology: selective optogenetic silencing of Spp1+ neurons in animal models, reanalysis of cardiac arrest sequence data through core TRN cessation timing, reanalysis of anesthetic recovery sequences through thalamic reactivation precedence, and direct electrophysiology of the relay nucleus release event as the physical instantiation of external awareness. Each generates a specific result that would confirm or falsify the framework.
M. Mustafa Akdemir (Wed,) studied this question.