De essentia finitudinis atque subsistentia ex ea consequente

Finio, Ergo Sum proposed an ontology-first framework for consciousness individuation: before assessing mechanisms of consciousness, one must first derive the bearer for whom any mechanism could matter. The original paper had to move quickly from diagnosis to clinical stress-tests, developmental cases, the Tripartite Stack, and artificial systems. Several aspects were consequently compressed. We now elaborate on two specific joints: the circularity diagnosis of mechanism-first theories, and the specification of the bearer's thermodynamic properties as the necessary escape from circularity. The diagnosis is not casual. The consciousness field is one in which any vocabulary touching volition, agency, or perspective imports the bearer before the bearer has been derived; the apparatus developed here was sharpened by the requirement to identify, term by term, where the for-whom enters the explanans of mechanism-first theories. Drawing on four diagnostics from classical philosophy of science — Hempelian vacuity, van Fraassenian bootstrapping, Nagelian functional circularity, and Fuchsian phenomenological redescription — together with a fifth tool introduced here as boundary bootstrapping, we apply the diagnostics to two of the most advanced and accepted consciousness theories available, IIT 4.0 and GNWT. The application yields a strong indication of circularity: mechanism-first theories of consciousness recreate the for-whom in the grammar of their explanans. The diagnosis is offered as evidence, not as closure; theorists working within these frameworks may yet show that their formulations admit non-circular readings the apparatus has missed. Finio, Ergo Sum was developed in order to propose a circularity-free approach. We therefore moved from consciousness individuation to bearer individuation: a necessary step for consciousness emergence. On such a basis, three properties that define a candidate bearer of consciousness were derived: spatial finitude (the partition A versus not-A), temporal finitude (the finite trajectory), and constitutive active resistance against thermodynamically unavoidable termination. The first two specify a bounded finite partition. The third specifies what such a partition must be structurally organised to do, in the entropic actual world, to persist as bounded across time. The rock and the candle satisfy the first two properties and fail the third; the embryonic heart satisfies all three and is therefore a candidate bearer, even though it is not yet conscious. The for-whom enters only with the Second Axiom, when L1 Identity, L2 Subjecthood, and L3 Ownership co-instantiate on a bearer in act. Keywords: consciousness; circularity; bearerhood; finitude; constitutive active resistance; thermodynamics; ontology-first; for-whom; IIT; GNWT