The AASC Description of Consciousness

Under the dependency lock of the AASC fixed-domain admissibility-and-standing framework, this paper develops a downstream description of consciousness and qualia. It imports the established AASC kernel—bivalent standing, fail-closed enforcement, witness-coherent evaluation, redescription covariance, quotient-interface formation, standing/admissibility identity, no-hiddenremainder closure, same-scope operator exhaustion, and anchor–tensor–skin decomposition—and asks what follows when that structure is instantiated on candidate records, candidate referents, subject indices, memory and report channels, and qualitative distinctions. Report, computation, global broadcast, integrated information, predictive inference, recurrence, and neural correlation may realize or witness consciousness-related structure, but none alone fixes what a report, memory trace, discrimination, neural surrogate, or machine selfascription refers to. The formal core proves that non-vacuous, reusable consciousness evidence requires a unique, redescription-invariant, diachronically compositional map from active record orbits to quotient-level referents. When the witness basis is consequence-complete and confirmation factors through that map, consciousness-level confirmation is presentation-independent. The constructive result defines the qualified consciousness interface as the least simultaneous closure of neutral candidate records, referents, profiles, channels, subject relations, and standing conditions. Experiential status is earned only after internal reference, subject coordination, selfinvolving reuse, diachronic naturality, standing, and qualitative nontriviality are jointly satisfied. The scope-indexed profile Π(S) E records the authoritative same-domain consequences of record incidence, reference, contrast, memory, discrimination, access, self-indexing, transition, history, and compatibility. Within this dependency-locked regime, consciousness is standing-positive occupancy of the subject-indexed referential quotient interface. Qualia are its non-skin qualitative tensors: quotient-invariant differences that preserve standing while changing the complete profile. Null-effect same-domain qualitative surplus is skin under the imported closure. The account is substrate-neutral: a biological or artificial system that genuinely instantiates the full interface is structurally conscious under AASC, whereas fluent output, logging, self-monitoring, or externally imposed semantics alone are insufficient. The paper supplies exact qualification, false-positive, bridge, diachronic, comparative, empirical, and objection-jurisdiction criteria.