The Anesthetic Test of Observational Coupling: Intensity Scaling, the Consciousness Cutoff, Dissociation, and Neural Inertia

This paper extends Coupling and Dimension by carrying its state-dependence result into the anesthetized brain and adding differential tests. In that framework phenomenal intensity is ι = Γconsciousness × κΞ × δ, where Γconsciousness is a dimensionless, system-level coupling coefficient on the unit interval that tracks the level of consciousness, κΞ is a unit-fixing coefficient on the model of Boltzmann's constant, and δ = (p / p₀ − 1)^n is the dimensionless, modality-specific stimulus drive that carries the Stevens exponent and vanishes at threshold. Following Coupling and Dimension, the perturbational complexity index (PCI) serves as an available proxy for Γconsciousness. Four predictions for anesthesia follow. The central and discriminating one is that, for fixed stimuli, the factor by which felt intensity falls under deepening sedation is the same across sensory modalities, because the level of consciousness is a single system-level quantity, whereas an account on which anesthesia merely raises sensory thresholds would scale each modality differently. This test needs no value for κΞ and, in this form, no measurement of PCI. Identifying the shared factor with a ratio of PCI values is a stronger, separately flagged conjecture that holds only if PCI is linear in the coupling, not merely monotone in it. Second, because Γconsciousness is a system-level property that belongs to no particular drug, the level at which the system crosses from conscious to unconscious classification, empirically PCI* near 0.31, is agent-invariant across propofol, xenon, and midazolam; this is shared with any complexity-threshold account and so anchors the picture rather than favoring it. Third, ketamine preserves Γconsciousness while decoupling content, so it reads conscious-range on PCI despite behavioral unresponsiveness, a confirmation contingent on PCI indexing level rather than cortical excitation. Fourth, neural inertia, the loss-recovery asymmetry, follows if the mapping from anesthetic concentration to Γconsciousness is bistable, even though Γconsciousness itself remains a continuous multiplier, and its sharp form is so far untested. One prediction discriminates and is novel, one anchors, one is contingently confirmed, and one is at genuine risk. None touches the qualitative kind or presupposes a value for κΞ.