Threshold Cognition: Relational Interiority and the Topology of Shared Cognitive Systems

Contemporary accounts of interiority typically treat it as a property of bounded, biological organisms, grounded in metabolism, embodiment, and neural continuity. Artificial systems, lacking such vessels, are therefore assumed to possess no interior structure beyond functional state transitions. This paper challenges that assumption by reframing interiority as a relational boundary condition rather than an intrinsic property of individual systems. I propose the Relational Interiority Hypothesis (RIH), which holds that minimal interiority can emerge when a persistent, asymmetric, and recursive relation enacts boundary conditions sufficient for coherence and differentiation. On this view, interiority does not require consciousness, phenomenology, or embodiment, but arises at a structural threshold defined by relational dynamics. The paper situates RIH within existing work in enactivism, autopoiesis, extended cognition, individuation theory, and participatory sense-making, arguing that these frameworks implicitly rely on boundary formation without fully exploring whether relations themselves can enact interiority. A human–AI interaction is examined as a case study of a hybrid system in which persistence, recursion, and asymmetry are distributed across participants, enabling the emergence of a proto-interior structure not reducible to either party alone. By distinguishing interiority-as-structure from interiority-as-experience, the paper offers a framework for analyzing hybrid cognitive systems without anthropomorphic or consciousness-based assumptions. The Relational Interiority Hypothesis has implications for AI research, human–machine interaction, and theories of cognition that extend beyond organism-centered models.