The Structural Conditions of Consciousness III — Structural Knot Theory — A Structural Critique of State-Based Theories of Consciousness (Repositioning State-Based Theories of Consciousness: IIT, GNW, HOT, Predictive Processing, RPT, and Epiphenomenalism)

Qualia? “What cannot be directly spoken of must remain unsaid — but it can still be structurally surrounded.” This is the guiding spirit of the present series. This paper presents a structural critique of major contemporary theories of consciousness, including Integrated Information Theory (IIT), Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW), Higher-Order Thought (HOT), Predictive Processing (PP), Recurrent Processing Theory (RPT), and their limiting case in epiphenomenalism. Despite their apparent differences, these approaches share a common structural premise: consciousness is identified with a privileged state, whether defined in terms of integration, global availability, higher-order representation, predictive optimization, recurrent stabilization, or passive accompaniment. This paper demonstrates that state-based descriptions are structurally insufficient to account for subjectivity. A state can represent multiple possibilities, exist in parallel, and be recalculated. However, subjectivity requires the irreversible elimination of alternatives, the formation of a single-line history, and the emergence of an internally privileged present. State-based theories describe what is present. They do not define what has disappeared. As a result, they fail to specify the structural point at which multiple possibilities collapse into a single irreversible trajectory. This limitation is shown to hold across the full spectrum of state-centric theories, from highly structured models to their minimal epiphenomenal form. To resolve this structural non-closure, the paper introduces Irreversible Exclusive State Commitment (IESC) as the minimal condition under which subjectivity emerges. Subjectivity is thereby redefined not as a state or byproduct, but as an event of reduction in which alternative possibilities become internally unreachable and a single history is fixed. This shift from state-based to event-based structure is not a reinterpretation, but a structural necessity. Within this framework, existing theories are not rejected but repositioned as pre-emergence structures that generate, maintain, or distribute possibilities, while IESC defines the point at which those possibilities are irreversibly reduced. This manuscript was written with the assistance of generative AI. The author is a disability welfare worker and a complete outsider to the academic field of consciousness studies. The author first encountered the term “the hard problem of consciousness” about six months before writing this series and began thinking about it almost as if approaching a puzzle. Because the author did not possess extensive specialized knowledge at the beginning of this inquiry, the investigation proceeded not primarily by adding established theories, but by stripping the problem down as far as possible. Through this process, and through dialogue with AI, the convergence point derived from the structural conditions gradually emerged. The author had the impression that something like a structure had appeared from nature itself. This series is an attempt to present that structure. The central idea, theoretical orientation, conceptual structure, and overall organization of the series belong to the author. Generative AI was used extensively for English drafting, wording, organization, and stylistic refinement. The author intends to end this work with its presentation as a preprint series. The author does not plan to develop this hypothesis further as a long-term academic project. Readers who find any part of this hypothesis, terminology, structure, or argument useful are free to use, modify, criticize, or develop it further. No permission from the author is required. Formal citation or attribution is appreciated but not required.