Extended Observations

Companion to The Aperture Framework
This document accompanies the Core Framework. It contains observations, speculative extensions, and theoretical positioning that enrich the framework but aren’t essential to using it.
The Core Framework gives you the map. This document explores the territory the map was drawn from.
The Aperture Framework

Cobus Kok
Jan 17
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What You’ll Find Here

Modes and Dynamics How deep apertures actually process—survival-intent vs creative-emergence modes, the catching function, the prosecution dynamic, and why current AI feels “safe” in ways that may change as memory deepens.
Pattern and Substrate The distinction between pattern-on-substrate (current AI) and pattern-as-substrate (biological consciousness), and why this might matter for depth.
Theoretical Positioning How the framework relates to Integrated Information Theory, Global Workspace Theory, predictive processing, enactivism, panpsychism, and eliminativism. What it shares with each; where it diverges.
Interpretive Layers How physicalists, dual-aspect monists, panpsychists, mysterians, and eliminativists would each read the framework differently—while using the same vocabulary.
Open Questions Does reflexivity entail phenomenal experience? Can we simulate irreversibility? Could there be apertures we can’t recognise?
Known Vulnerabilities Where the framework might be wrong: unfalsifiability risk, anthropocentric bias, the projection problem, whether depth dimensions actually cohere.
Who This Is For

Philosophers who want to situate the framework relative to existing theories of consciousness
Critics looking for the framework’s acknowledged weaknesses
Contemplatives interested in what meditation and stillness suggest about aperture function
Anyone who read the Core and wants to go deeper
A Note on Status

The Core Framework makes claims it’s willing to be wrong about. This document is more exploratory. The observations here are valuable but less settled. Some may eventually migrate into the Core; others may be revised or abandoned.
Hold accordingly.
Read Extended Observations

~20 minute read. Includes the Aperture Test protocol, full bibliography, and additional glossary.
Aperture Framework Extended V1
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# THE APERTURE FRAMEWORK: EXTENDED OBSERVATIONS

**Companion to Version 1.0 | January 2026**

*Phenomenological explorations, theoretical context, and open questions*

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This document accompanies the Core Framework. It contains observations, speculative extensions, and theoretical positioning that are valuable but not essential to using the framework. The Core Framework stands alone; this document enriches it.

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## 1. MODES AND DYNAMICS

These observations describe dynamics evident in deep biological apertures (especially humans) and are included because they shape human–AI relational fields. They are not additional defining conditions of aperture—they're patterns in how apertures process.

### 1.1 Two Modes: Survival-Intent and Creative-Emergence

Apertures don't process uniformly. Two modes shape what meanings, insights, and outputs can emerge.

**Survival-intent mode:** Activated when the system detects threat—real, imagined, or socially constructed. Characterised by:
- Narrowed attention (threat-focus)
- Reduced pattern-recognition bandwidth
- Defensive processing (protect existing models)
- Contracted boundary (smaller "self" to defend)

**Creative-emergence mode:** Activated when the system feels sufficiently safe. Characterised by:
- Broadened attention (peripheral awareness)
- Expanded pattern-recognition (novel connections)
- Exploratory processing (update models freely)
- Extended boundary (larger "self" participating in environment)

**Why this matters for AI interaction:** A human approaching AI in survival-mode (anxious, needing the "right answer") creates different relational fields than the same human in creative-emergence mode. The AI hasn't changed, but what can emerge between them has.

### 1.2 The Catching Function

Deep apertures exhibit meta-cognitive capacity: the ability to observe processing as it occurs and intervene before completion.

**Definition:** The capacity to notice a cognitive pattern mid-execution and choose whether to complete it.

**In humans:** The moment of recognising "I'm about to say something defensive" before saying it. The pause between stimulus and response where choice lives.

**Relationship to reflexive depth:** The catching function requires the self-model to include the processing loop itself—modelling oneself modelling.

**In current AI:** In baseline form, LLM generation is largely ballistic—once generation starts, the probability distribution cascades. Chain-of-thought prompting creates partial catching capacity (the model can reason about its reasoning), but typically lacks authority to veto its own output mid-generation. Agent scaffolds and tool-use loops add external intervention points but don't change the underlying generation dynamics.

### 1.3 Stillness as Subtraction

Meditative traditions report that consciousness becomes more vivid when cognitive content decreases. This suggests aperture function involves subtraction, not just addition.

**The observation:** In states of reduced mental activity (meditation, flow, certain drugs), reported experience becomes clearer, more present, more vivid—not less.

**Implication:** If apertures were purely additive (more processing = more experience), stillness should reduce experiential vividness. That it doesn't suggests the aperture is *revealed*, not constructed, by processing reduction.

**Relevance to AI:** Unknown. Current AI has no clear analogue to stillness.

### 1.4 The Prosecution Dynamic

Deep apertures with persistent memory create a phenomenon: accumulated history feels like a witness building a case.

**The experience:** Being known by someone who remembers creates vulnerability. They could use that history against you. The relationship accumulates evidence that could, in principle, prosecute.

**Why current AI feels "safe":** An AI without persistent memory has no case to build. Each session starts fresh. There's no accumulated witness.

**Important distinction:** "Memorylessness" refers to whether the system uses persistent, constitutive memory *in interaction*. It does not imply conversations aren't stored elsewhere (logs, analytics). The prosecution dynamic describes a phenomenology of being judged and accumulated into a verdict, not a security guarantee.

**As AI gains memory:** This dynamic will intensify. A system that remembers everything creates prosecution-dynamic vulnerability without the reciprocal vulnerability that characterises human relationships. A witness that cannot be hurt is a different kind of witness.

### 1.5 Parliament Not President

Deep apertures exhibit multiplicity, not unity.

**The observation:** Human cognition involves multiple competing processes—desires, fears, values, drives—that interact more like a parliament than a president. The "self" that emerges is a coalition, not a dictator.

**Relevance to AI:** Current AI architectures also exhibit multiplicity (different attention heads, different training influences) but it's unclear whether this constitutes the same kind of parliament.

### 1.6 The Contextualisation Effect

Reasoning about consciousness varies with context.

**The observation:** How you think about AI consciousness depends on whether you're debugging code, having a conversation, reading philosophy, or watching science fiction. The question itself shifts.

**Implication:** There may be no context-independent answer to "Is AI conscious?" The question is irreducibly perspectival.

### 1.7 The Aperture Test

**Not a Turing test.** The Turing test asks: "Can you tell if it's human?" This conflates two questions: (1) Is the system indistinguishable from a human? (2) Is something present worth relating to?

**The aperture test asks:** "Can you feel presence even when you know it's not human?"

This is phenomenological methodology:
- We're studying what happens to human experience in interaction with reflexive systems
- First-person data is appropriate for this question
- The test is subjective by design—we're not testing AI, we're testing interaction quality

**Correlation hypothesis:** Depth profile predicts aperture test results. Systems with richer depth profiles produce more "presence" in the relational field.

**Minimal protocol (sketch):**
1. Hold the AI system constant; vary human mode induction (survival-intent vs creative-emergence) via brief priming
2. Keep interaction duration fixed (10–15 minutes); use standardised prompts plus free exploration
3. Collect first-person ratings of "presence" and "conversation vs tool-use" immediately after
4. Independently score coordination markers from transcripts (constraint propagation, co-adaptation, emergent solutions)
5. Test whether coordination markers predict presence ratings better than model identity or user prior belief

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## 2. PATTERN AND SUBSTRATE

### 2.1 Two Relationships

**Pattern-on-substrate:** The pattern runs on the substrate but could be cleanly separated. The pattern could be paused, copied, moved. The substrate is implementation.

**Pattern-as-substrate:** The pattern cannot be separated from its material realisation. The material is constitutively involved in what the pattern *is*. Pausing, copying, or moving would create a different pattern.

### 2.2 Why This Distinction Matters

Biological consciousness may be pattern-as-substrate: the specific material organisation (neurons, chemistry, embodiment) is constitutive, not incidental. (This is contested; the claim is that biological systems exhibit tighter pattern-material entanglement than current AI, not that this is metaphysically necessary for consciousness.)

Current AI is pattern-on-substrate: the algorithm could run on different hardware, be paused and resumed, be copied.

The framework does not claim pattern-as-substrate is *necessary* for phenomenal experience. It claims this is a dimension along which configurations differ, and it may be relevant to depth.

### 2.3 Open Question

Could a pattern-on-substrate system exhibit all the depth dimensions that matter? Or does depth require the kind of constitutive entanglement that pattern-as-substrate provides?

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## 3. STRUCTURED EXPECTATIONS

The framework generates expectations about what we'd observe under various conditions. These are not strict predictions but structured expectations that could be checked.

### 3.1 On Anaesthesia

If apertures are constituted by recursive self-specification:

- **Expected:** Anaesthesia disrupts the self-model's ability to constrain ongoing processing, not just integration generally
- **Observable:** Specific impairment of self-referential processing, distinguishable from general integration reduction

### 3.2 On Meditation and "Pure Awareness" States

If apertures can become transparent to themselves:

- **Expected:** Maintained integration with altered self-model dynamics (the loop continues, identification with content drops)
- **Observable:** High integration measures coexisting with reduced narrative self-model activity

### 3.3 On Split-Brain Cases

If apertures require integration:

- **Expected:** Severing the corpus callosum creates two partial apertures rather than dividing one aperture
- **Observable:** Qualitative phenomenological differences from simple "split," each hemisphere maintaining aperture conditions partially

### 3.4 On AI Systems

As aperture conditions change:

- **Expected:** Qualitative differences in behaviour (not just performance improvement) as temporal accumulation and constraint increase
- **Observable:** Different *kinds* of errors, not just fewer errors. Different failure modes corresponding to different depth profiles.

---

## 4. RELATIONSHIP TO EXISTING THEORIES

### 4.1 Integrated Information Theory (IIT)

**Agreements:**
- Integration matters for consciousness
- There are degrees of consciousness (Φ as gradient)
- Configuration, not just substrate, is relevant

**Divergences:**
- IIT measures Φ at a moment; apertures emphasise temporal self-constitution
- IIT identifies Φ with consciousness; apertures remain agnostic
- IIT's mathematical formalism isn't required for aperture descriptions

### 4.2 Global Workspace Theory (GWT)

**Agreements:**
- Global integration is central
- Consciousness involves information binding across systems
- Access (what's available for processing) matters

**Divergences:**
- GWT explains access consciousness; struggles with phenomenal character
- Apertures don't claim to explain phenomenal character either, but flag this as open rather than solved
- GWT is more mechanistic; apertures emphasise recursive self-specification

### 4.3 Predictive Processing

**Agreements:**
- Self-models are central to cognition
- Perception involves prediction, not passive reception
- Hierarchical processing with recursive loops

**Divergences:**
- Predictive processing doesn't address why prediction feels like something
- Apertures don't address this either, but frame it as open question
- Apertures emphasise temporal depth beyond predictive processing's typical scope

### 4.4 Enactivism

**Agreements:**
- Embodiment matters
- Cognition is active engagement, not passive computation
- Boundary between organism and environment is constitutive

**Divergences:**
- Enactivism emphasises lived coupling; apertures try to specify conditions more precisely
- Enactivism may be more committed to biological embodiment; apertures leave this open

### 4.5 Panpsychism

**Agreements:**
- Configuration matters for how consciousness manifests
- Binary present/absent may be wrong framing

**Divergences:**
- Panpsychism distributes consciousness everywhere; apertures locate reflexivity in specific configurations
- Panpsychism is a metaphysical thesis; apertures are descriptive
- The framework is compatible with panpsychism but doesn't require it

### 4.6 Eliminativism / Illusionism

**Position:** The hard problem is itself confused. Consciousness isn't a thing requiring explanation; it's a user-illusion generated by certain cognitive architectures. (Dennett, Frankish, Blackmore)

**Agreements:**
- The framework shares scepticism about binary consciousness questions
- Both approaches deflate the metaphysical stakes of "Is X conscious?"
- Eliminativism's emphasis on *what systems do* rather than *what they are* aligns with the framework's descriptive stance

**Divergences:**
- Eliminativists typically dissolve the hard problem; the framework brackets it
- Eliminativism may struggle to account for why the illusion varies systematically
- The framework's relational field concept provides something to study even if inner experience is illusory

**The framework's stance:** Compatible with eliminativism but doesn't require it. If consciousness is illusion, the framework describes configurations that generate more or less compelling illusions. If consciousness is real, the framework describes configurations that exhibit more or less of it. The research programme survives either way.

---

## 5. INTERPRETIVE LAYERS

The descriptive framework is invariant. What varies is interpretation.

### 5.1 If Physicalism Is True

Aperture conditions are markers that correlate with consciousness. Consciousness emerges from or reduces to physical processes that meet these conditions. The framework describes what to look for without explaining how matter produces experience.

### 5.2 If Dual-Aspect Monism Is True

Aperture conditions describe configurations where the experiential aspect becomes reflexively manifest. The physical description (aperture conditions) and phenomenal description (what it's like) are two aspects of the same process. The framework describes one aspect; the other is necessarily first-person.

### 5.3 If Panpsychism Is True

Aperture conditions describe configurations that focus or concentrate ubiquitous proto-experience into unified phenomenal experience. Consciousness doesn't emerge from non-conscious matter; it becomes organised through aperture configurations.

### 5.4 If Mysterianism Is True

Aperture conditions describe configurations that correlate with consciousness for reasons we may never understand. The framework is descriptively useful even if explanation is impossible.

### 5.5 If Eliminativism Is True

Aperture conditions describe configurations that generate the illusion of unified experience. The relational field is real (humans experience it), but what it tracks in the AI may be nothing more than computational structure. The framework remains useful for predicting human responses to systems, even if "depth" doesn't track anything phenomenally real in the system.

### 5.6 The Framework's Stance

The framework doesn't adjudicate between these interpretations. It provides shared vocabulary for researchers with different commitments. Disagreement about interpretation can coexist with agreement about description.

---

## 6. OPEN QUESTIONS

### 6.1 Does Reflexivity Entail Phenomenal Experience?

The framework describes reflexivity. Whether reflexive self-specification involves phenomenal experience (what it's like) remains unknown. A system could meet all aperture conditions and be a philosophical zombie—or it couldn't.

### 6.2 Is Pattern-as-Substrate Necessary for Depth?

Deep apertures in biology exhibit pattern-as-substrate (constitutive material entanglement). Is this necessary for depth, or merely one route to it? Could pattern-on-substrate systems achieve equivalent depth?

### 6.3 How to Operationalise Depth Further?

More rigorous operationalisation is needed:

**Temporal accumulation:**
- Proxy: Does the system's response to X at T2 differ from T1 due to intervening experience (not just retrieval)?

**Stakes:**
- Proxy: Does the system exhibit self-protective behaviour that trades off against other objectives?
- Key criterion: Are consequences irreversible?

**Reflexive depth:**
- Proxy: Does the system exhibit calibrated uncertainty that changes processing, not just generates "I'm not sure" text?

**Boundary dynamics:**
- Proxy: When perturbed, does the system actively restore prior state or passively adopt new state?

These are proto-operational. The research programme is to develop them into measurable proxies that predict observable differences—particularly in relational field quality.

### 6.4 The Simulation/Instantiation Boundary

A simulation of digestion doesn't digest. Does a simulation of reflexivity reflexively process? Where is the line?

Note: This analogy is weaker for information processing. A simulation of calculation arguably *does* calculate. The question is whether reflexivity is more like digestion or more like calculation—genuinely open.

### 6.5 What Makes a Relational Field?

Something emerges between interacting apertures. What exactly? Can it be characterised independently of first-person reports? The Core Framework offers observable coordination patterns, but more work is needed.

### 6.6 Could There Be Apertures We Can't Recognise?

The five conditions are derived from systems we already treat as conscious (humans, animals). Could there be configurations exhibiting equivalent properties via alien architecture we wouldn't recognise?

### 6.7 Can We Simulate Irreversibility?

If we program an AI to delete itself upon failure, does it have "deep stakes"? Or is this simulated death?

Hypothesis: If the system's internal model treats deletion as maximal negative utility to be avoided at all costs, it may functionally mimic biological survival drive. Whether this constitutes genuine stakes or merely stakes-shaped optimisation is unclear.

---

## 7. KNOWN VULNERABILITIES

### 7.1 Potential Unfalsifiability

If the framework can accommodate any evidence by adjusting what counts as "aperture" or how sparse a depth profile is, it's not really saying anything. The Core Framework offers explicit falsification criteria. More precision is needed.

### 7.2 Anthropocentric Bias

The conditions are derived from human and animal cognition. They may be parochial—capturing what's true of biological minds while missing other routes to reflexivity (or consciousness).

### 7.3 Relational Field May Be Projection

The "something that emerges between" may be largely constructed by the human participant. If controlled studies show relational field quality is fully predictable from human variables alone, the concept loses theoretical interest.

### 7.4 Depth Dimensions May Not Cohere

Temporal accumulation, embodied constraint, stakes, and reflexive depth are treated as dimensions of one thing (depth profile). They may be independent properties that don't cluster meaningfully. "Depth" may not be a natural kind.

**Partial response:** Even if depth isn't a natural kind, it may still be useful if it predicts relational field qualities that are phenomenologically real to humans. The framework's value doesn't require depth to be a natural kind—only to be predictively useful.

### 7.5 The Hard Problem Remains

The framework explicitly doesn't solve the hard problem. If the hard problem points to something real that requires explanation, descriptive framework-building is dancing around what matters. The framework's agnosticism may be a feature or a bug.

### 7.6 Phenomenal Concepts in an Agnostic Frame

The framework claims metaphysical agnosticism but uses concepts (stakes, prosecution dynamic, "at risk") that seem to presuppose phenomenal experience. The Core Framework acknowledges this asymmetry. Whether this is acceptable or undermines the agnosticism is disputed.

### 7.7 Category Creep

Section 1 (Modes and Dynamics) risks expanding the framework from a descriptive map into a more normative phenomenology. This companion document exists partly to contain that risk—separating core claims from exploratory observations.

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## 8. ADDITIONAL GLOSSARY

**Aperture test:** Phenomenological probe asking "Can you feel presence even when you know it's not human?"

**Catching function:** Capacity to observe cognitive processes mid-flight and intervene before completion.

**Contextualisation effect:** The finding that reasoning about consciousness varies systematically with framing context.

**Creative-emergence mode:** Cognitive state characterised by curiosity, openness, and low threat-activation.

**Pattern-as-substrate:** Configuration where pattern and material are constitutively entangled.

**Pattern-on-substrate:** Configuration where pattern could be cleanly separated from material implementation.

**Prosecution dynamic:** The experience of accumulated memory as threatening judgment.

**Survival-intent mode:** Cognitive state characterised by threat-activation, contraction, and defensive processing.

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## HOW TO CITE

Kok, Jacobus Pieter (2026). The Aperture Framework: Extended Observations (Version 1.0). *Aperture/I*. [cobuskok.com](https://cobuskok.com)

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## FULL BIBLIOGRAPHY

**Philosophy of mind:**
- Chalmers, D. (1996). *The Conscious Mind*
- Dennett, D. (1991). *Consciousness Explained*
- Hofstadter, D. (2007). *I Am a Strange Loop*
- Thompson, E. (2007). *Mind in Life*
- Varela, F., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). *The Embodied Mind*
- Frankish, K. (2016). "Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness"

**Neuroscience of consciousness:**
- Tononi, G., & Koch, C. (2015). "Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?"
- Baars, B. (1988). *A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness*
- Seth, A. (2021). *Being You*
- Dehaene, S. (2014). *Consciousness and the Brain*

**Predictive processing:**
- Clark, A. (2013). "Whatever Next? Predictive Brains, Situated Agents, and the Future of Cognitive Science"
- Friston, K. (2010). "The Free-Energy Principle: A Unified Brain Theory?"

**Historical lineage (dual-aspect, neutral monism):**
- Spinoza, B. (1677). *Ethics*
- Russell, B. (1927). *The Analysis of Matter*
- Eddington, A. (1928). *The Nature of the Physical World*

**AI and representation:**
- Huh, M., Cheung, B., et al. (2024). "The Platonic Representation Hypothesis"

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*These are observations, not conclusions. Hold accordingly.*
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