The Feedback Primacy Theory: Conscious Regulation as an Extension of Homeostatic Feedback

Current models in cognitive science—especially the Predictive Processing (PP) framework—treat consciousness as an inferential engine that constructs internal models to minimize surprisal. The Feedback Primacy Theory (FPT) proposed here offers a simpler, physically grounded alternative: consciousness is not a modeling system, but an emergent regulatory layer built atop pre‑existing chemical feedback loops. Life and consciousness arise naturally from self‑organizing reactions governed by energy dissipation, reaction coupling, and the physical selection of stable containers. Under FPT, consciousness is the global integrator that coordinates competing homeostatic loops, extending the logic of chemical regulation rather than replacing it with representational prediction.