This is an automated rejection. No LLM generated, heavily assisted/co-written, or otherwise reliant work.
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Summary: I propose a framework for thinking about consciousness that treats temporal integration - how much past, present, and future a system can simultaneously inhabit - as a primary axis of variation. I suggest that emotional complexity may emerge as a structural consequence of increased temporal integration, rather than as a separate faculty. This is exploratory and intended to invite critique, not to settle questions.
The core idea:
Most theories of consciousness fragment time into separate domains: memory, anticipation, duration perception, narrative identity, affect. This risks missing a more basic question:
How much time can a system actively hold, traverse, and integrate at once?
I’m proposing what I call the Temporal Integration Model of Consciousness (TIMC): the idea that conscious systems vary primarily in temporal dimensionality - the span and richness of time they can simultaneously inhabit.
This is not about physical time, but about subjective temporal representation: the width of the temporal window that is live and accessible within experience.
A provisional framework:
To make the idea concrete, I sketch several descriptive attractors in a continuous space (not discrete tiers): • Minimal temporal integration Experience largely confined to the present moment; reactive, stimulus-driven behaviour; minimal episodic memory or future simulation. • Short-range temporal integration Present plus recent past; working memory; conditioning; learning from recent outcomes. • Extended temporal integration Past/present/future co-represented; episodic (or episodic-like) memory; anticipation and planning; possible mental time travel. • Narrative temporal integration An extended self across time, including counterfactuals and autobiographical reasoning. Narrative here is not restricted to language; it may be symbolic, somatic, image-based, spatial, or ritualised.
The claim is not that all minds fit neatly here, but that these attractors help describe how temporal span relates to qualitative experience.
Emotion as an emergent consequence of temporal depth:
A central (speculative but testable) claim of TIMC is that many emotions may emerge naturally once sufficient temporal integration exists, rather than being added as independent modules.
Examples: • Anticipatory fear requires imagined future harm • Grief requires recognising permanent loss across time • Regret requires counterfactual comparison • Hope requires projecting positive futures while recognising present constraints
Pleasure may exist with minimal temporal depth, but emotions like anxiety, grief, or nostalgia may be structurally impossible without extended time.
Put another way: greater temporal depth expands the vulnerability surface of a system.
Adaptive reduction of temporal dimensionality:
Temporal integration is metabolically and computationally expensive. Under acute threat, high sensory load, or uncertainty, maintaining long-range temporal processing may become maladaptive.
TIMC predicts that systems will adaptively reduce temporal dimensionality under pressure, prioritising present-focused processing. This may manifest as: • sensory overload • dissociation during trauma • acute stress responses • some neurodivergent regulation strategies
From this perspective, such states are not necessarily pathological failures, but efficient reconfigurations. The cost is reduced narrative continuity and emotional complexity; the benefit is faster, more robust immediate response.
Implications and predictions:
If TIMC is useful, it should generate predictions. Some candidates: 1. Emotional complexity should correlate with temporal integration capacity (e.g. episodic memory specificity, emotional granularity). 2. Anxiety should correlate with future-weighted or negatively-biased future simulation. 3. High sensory load should temporarily reduce access to episodic/narrative memory. 4. Artificial systems with persistent memory and future modelling may develop preference-like behaviour without explicit emotional programming. 5. Developmental emergence of emotions should track development of episodic memory and future thinking.
Relation to existing frameworks:
TIMC is intended to be orthogonal to state-based integration (e.g. IIT) and to global accessibility (e.g. GWT). Those frameworks ask what is integrated and what is broadcast; TIMC asks how much time that integration spans.
What I’m looking for:
I’m posting this to test whether: • this collapses cleanly into an existing framework I’ve missed • the temporal integration axis does real explanatory work • there are obvious counterexamples or failure modes
I’m especially interested in critiques that try to formalise, falsify, or compress this into something simpler.
Summary:
I propose a framework for thinking about consciousness that treats temporal integration - how much past, present, and future a system can simultaneously inhabit - as a primary axis of variation. I suggest that emotional complexity may emerge as a structural consequence of increased temporal integration, rather than as a separate faculty. This is exploratory and intended to invite critique, not to settle questions.
The core idea:
Most theories of consciousness fragment time into separate domains: memory, anticipation, duration perception, narrative identity, affect. This risks missing a more basic question:
How much time can a system actively hold, traverse, and integrate at once?
I’m proposing what I call the Temporal Integration Model of Consciousness (TIMC): the idea that conscious systems vary primarily in temporal dimensionality - the span and richness of time they can simultaneously inhabit.
This is not about physical time, but about subjective temporal representation: the width of the temporal window that is live and accessible within experience.
A provisional framework:
To make the idea concrete, I sketch several descriptive attractors in a continuous space (not discrete tiers):
• Minimal temporal integration
Experience largely confined to the present moment; reactive, stimulus-driven behaviour; minimal episodic memory or future simulation.
• Short-range temporal integration
Present plus recent past; working memory; conditioning; learning from recent outcomes.
• Extended temporal integration
Past/present/future co-represented; episodic (or episodic-like) memory; anticipation and planning; possible mental time travel.
• Narrative temporal integration
An extended self across time, including counterfactuals and autobiographical reasoning. Narrative here is not restricted to language; it may be symbolic, somatic, image-based, spatial, or ritualised.
The claim is not that all minds fit neatly here, but that these attractors help describe how temporal span relates to qualitative experience.
Emotion as an emergent consequence of temporal depth:
A central (speculative but testable) claim of TIMC is that many emotions may emerge naturally once sufficient temporal integration exists, rather than being added as independent modules.
Examples:
• Anticipatory fear requires imagined future harm
• Grief requires recognising permanent loss across time
• Regret requires counterfactual comparison
• Hope requires projecting positive futures while recognising present constraints
Pleasure may exist with minimal temporal depth, but emotions like anxiety, grief, or nostalgia may be structurally impossible without extended time.
Put another way: greater temporal depth expands the vulnerability surface of a system.
Adaptive reduction of temporal dimensionality:
Temporal integration is metabolically and computationally expensive. Under acute threat, high sensory load, or uncertainty, maintaining long-range temporal processing may become maladaptive.
TIMC predicts that systems will adaptively reduce temporal dimensionality under pressure, prioritising present-focused processing. This may manifest as:
• sensory overload
• dissociation during trauma
• acute stress responses
• some neurodivergent regulation strategies
From this perspective, such states are not necessarily pathological failures, but efficient reconfigurations. The cost is reduced narrative continuity and emotional complexity; the benefit is faster, more robust immediate response.
Implications and predictions:
If TIMC is useful, it should generate predictions. Some candidates:
1. Emotional complexity should correlate with temporal integration capacity (e.g. episodic memory specificity, emotional granularity).
2. Anxiety should correlate with future-weighted or negatively-biased future simulation.
3. High sensory load should temporarily reduce access to episodic/narrative memory.
4. Artificial systems with persistent memory and future modelling may develop preference-like behaviour without explicit emotional programming.
5. Developmental emergence of emotions should track development of episodic memory and future thinking.
Relation to existing frameworks:
TIMC is intended to be orthogonal to state-based integration (e.g. IIT) and to global accessibility (e.g. GWT). Those frameworks ask what is integrated and what is broadcast; TIMC asks how much time that integration spans.
What I’m looking for:
I’m posting this to test whether:
• this collapses cleanly into an existing framework I’ve missed
• the temporal integration axis does real explanatory work
• there are obvious counterexamples or failure modes
I’m especially interested in critiques that try to formalise, falsify, or compress this into something simpler.