Open-Loop Cognition and the Architecture of Identity Operations - Why Representation Is Not Consciousness

This paper’s contribution is primarily definitional: it names and delineates a cognitive regime that existing vocabularies implicitly assume but do not explicitly distinguish. Current frameworks for understanding cognition routinely distinguish non-representational regulation from conscious experience, yet lack a stable term for the regime between them: representational operations that are self-referential but not recursively closed. This paper introduces Open-Loop Cognition as that missing category. Open-loop cognition consists of representational, self-referential identity operations that evaluate trajectories and model futures without recursive closure. In this regime, identity may be referenced, evaluated, or simulated, but not constituted or enforced. The concept explains a persistent puzzle: why systems capable of sophisticated self-modeling remain systematically vulnerable to capture and manipulation. The answer is architectural. Open-loop cognition supports self-reference without self-ratification—the model does not bind the modeler. This paper defines the regime, specifies its scalar properties, characterizes its vulnerability profile, and distinguishes it from both non-representational regulation (autoteria, orthesis) and consciousness (recursive closure). The contribution is primarily definitional: naming a regime that existing vocabularies conflate or omit.