Civilization LeapResearch for the AGI era
CL-ACA-008 · Cognitive science and philosophy of mind

What separates advanced functional performance from subjective experience, an embodied self and first-person continuity?

Disciplinary inquiry | Competing models of experience, continuity and the embodied self

All disciplines Cross-disciplinary scrutiny

Full manuscripts and versions

Author-authorized full-text publication. Downloads below are separately verified files; website summaries are not manuscript translations. Publication restrictions printed in older source manuscripts are superseded by the author’s release decision of 16 October 2026; the academic text itself is unchanged.

The available Chinese independent-publication edition is V1.3. The earlier registered Canonical version V1.1 remains a historical identity, not the version of this new PDF. The professional web explanation retains its own source version.

No full English translation of the new Chinese edition has been verified. English pages remain English reading and continuation entries.

Current submission or peer-review status is not established by these publication files. Historical preparation and routing records do not establish an active review.

DISCIPLINE-INTERNAL CHAIN

First pursue the question within this discipline

Behavioral and capability performance → different consciousness theories make different mechanistic commitments → separate dimensions such as E/C/O → examine embodiment, self-models and continuity separately → cross-implementation evidence requires construct validity → low-harm adversarial research accumulates evidence

THIS PAPER CAN ESTABLISH

What this work can establish

  • Competing consciousness theories, cross-implementation evidence, construct validity, clinical and no-report paradigms, and low-harm experiments
THIS PAPER CANNOT ESTABLISH

What this work cannot establish on its own

  • Neither confirms subjective experience in current AI nor permanently excludes non-carbon-based subjects
  • Does not confer legal or political standing
BOUNDARY BREAK

Where the discipline reaches its limit

Fluent language, self-description, long-term memory and role consistency cannot directly establish experience or non-transferable continuity of a subject.

NEXT DISCIPLINES

Who must take up the next responsibility for evidence

Philosophy; epistemology; life sciences; AI and computer science; ethics and law

CIVILIZATIONAL ASCENT

What the wider view reveals

Capability, experience, subjecthood, protection, personhood and power must be separated. Otherwise, questions of future subjects are distorted by both denial and premature conferral.

M1—M8 · S/L/I/R

How this changes the Civilization Leap causal map

S = professional support; L = limits; I = interfaces; R = refutation or revision triggers. This is not a “list of proofs.”

M1 · I IM2 · S/L High capability ≠ experience or subjecthoodM3 · L Copying, migration and branching stress tests change judgments of continuityM4 · I Evidence of subjecthood informs direction but does not directly generate itM5 · L Protection, personhood and power must be kept distinctM6 · S/R Preregistered adversarial tests, causal interventions, low-harm measures and failure conditionsM7 · I Real relationships require further evidence from sociology and educationM8 · S/R Unfamiliar subjects may enlarge the range of subjects of meaning
COMPETING EXPLANATIONS · REVISION

What alternative explanations remain? What findings would change this judgment?

An academic page does not endorse Civilization Leap. Professional evidence can support it, limit it, refute it or require upstream theory to be rewritten.

Alternative explanations

Functionalism may hold that sufficient functional organization grounds attribution of mind; biological naturalism and other accounts demand stronger biological or embodied foundations.

What to revise first if evidence does not support the account

Reproducible evidence of experience or continuity that converges across methods and excludes alternatives should expand the range of supported claims. Persistent failure of existing indicators should narrow it further.

What is still needed before practical application

Personhood, rights and real-world authorization still require separate ethical, legal and political judgment; functional performance cannot directly establish them.

REVISION GATE

What would change this work

Failure of E/C/O dimensions, inability to distinguish embodiment and self-models, stronger branching models, or new evidence overturning negative judgments all trigger revision.

Return to the real world

Bring this discipline’s conclusions back into organizations, institutions, resources and consequences across domains.

CL-ACA-022

Civilizational direction

Discuss direction, methods and goals openly after establishing the facts.

CL-ACA-023
Historical publication and routing record (superseded publication policy)

Historical baseline only; it does not describe current submission status or restrict this authorized release.

Publication and version information · not evidence of academic correctness

A submission route exists | review status has not been established

Historically evidenced state: ROUTED / NO_ACTIVE_SUBMISSION_EVIDENCED

Portal action: NO PORTAL SUBMISSION EVIDENCED

Website publication mode: KEEP_EXISTING_PUBLIC_HISTORY + ABSTRACT_PLUS_CAUSAL_ROLE

Publication and submission boundaries: Recheck publication history, first-publication requirements, preprint rules and AI policies for each target journal. Do not newly publish submission-derived full texts.

Evidence date: 2026-08-27 governance baseline Confidence in publication-state evidence: MEDIUM

Current version: V1.1

Exact state: DIRECT CURRENT｜V1.1

View the nineteen-work Canonical Register

Translation scope

This is a translation of the existing public web page. A description of a work is not its full manuscript. Source publication and version labels describe the Chinese work; they do not claim an English full-text edition is available. Unavailable English texts and downloads are marked explicitly.