Consciousness is an operator that minimizes constraint violations in our mental models. Rather than being a mysterious emergent phenomenon, consciousness may serve as a practical mechanism that helps maintain coherent representations in our minds.
Consider how our brain processes a simple visual scene: When we see a nose, our perceptual system automatically infers there must be a face nearby pointing in the same direction. If these elements don’t align — if the nose orientation conflicts with the face orientation — this creates a constraint violation that needs to be resolved for us to maintain a coherent interpretation of reality. Consciousness is the process that identifies and resolves these inconsistencies.
Like a conductor coordinating an orchestra, consciousness monitors different mental processes and ensures they work in harmony. It creates a “bubble of nowness” — a coherent temporal and spatial window where constraint violations can be detected and resolved.
The size of this bubble can expand or contract based on our mental state:
- When we’re calm and focused, the bubble grows larger and we can maintain coherence across more elements.
- When we’re stressed or tired, it shrinks as we struggle to keep fewer elements aligned.
This view of consciousness as a coherence-maintaining mechanism helps explain why it seems to be a prerequisite for learning and development. A baby needs consciousness before it can even learn to track a finger, because organizing coherent mental representations is fundamental to building more complex capabilities. Rather than being an advanced capability that emerges later, consciousness may be a basic training algorithm that allows self-organizing information processing systems to develop increasingly sophisticated models while maintaining internal consistency.