This paper reframes consciousness as a dimensionality expansion event within the organism–environment relation, driven by a third structural term: generativity. Traditional biological, computational, and representational theories assume fixed experiential dimensions and therefore cannot explain the emergence of new perceptual, affective, symbolic, or reflective modes. The triadic model introduced here—coherence (organism), constraint (environment), and generativity (independent mode introduction)—provides the minimal structure capable of supporting conscious experience and its expansion. Consciousness is defined as the coherent stabilization of experiential dimensionality under generative pressure. This framework dissolves the hard problem, unifies biological and cognitive accounts, explains symbolic and cultural experience, and establishes the structural impossibility of artificial consciousness while allowing for non‑conscious artificial experiential architectures. The paper situates consciousness within the same generative architecture that drives evolution, cognition, culture, and technological experience.
Denis Bailey (Sat,) studied this question.