Consciousness as an Evolutionarily Formed Regime for Holding a Phenomenal Scene: The SCPM/RIDD Framework

In the new SCPM/RIDD theory, I argue that consciousness is an evolved, currently culminant regime of matter organization: a regime in which a multilevel hierarchy of self-contained parts of matter (SCPMs) can reproducibly self-hold as a phenomenal scene. Consciousness is not reducible to a marker, to access, or to reportability. In SCPM/RIDD, phenomenality is not introduced as an additional property over and above functional architecture, but is understood as the very realization of a causally integrated regime of scene-holding on the window Δt. Evolution is understood here as the long-term increase in the diversity of connection types, in the system’s capacity for their selective assembly, holding, uncoupling, and reorganization, and, as a consequence, in the number of levels of organization. Evolution is therefore treated as a process of structural increase and retuning of connectedness. In this context, “culminant” is understood in a strictly operational sense: not as a teleological goal of evolution or as evaluative superiority, but as indicating a regime in which, at the present stage, the line of increasing diversity of connection types, causal density, and selective retunability is most strongly expressed. SCPM provides an operational language for describing self-contained parts of matter through boundaries, channels of exchange, and relative causal autonomy. The phenomenal scene is understood as a temporary causally integrated coalition of SCPM-images within a multilevel hierarchy of SCPMs on the window Δt, organized around a dominant image-anchor and centered by bodily indexation. I formulate the mechanism of its reproducible holding as RIDD / nested RIDD: a multilevel dynamic of recurrent integration and directed discharge. Consciousness, accordingly, is specified not by a single indicator but by a vector of regime parameters, r(Δt) = (A, TI, M, R, D, L), which makes it possible to describe scene stability, regime reorganizations, and trajectories of degradation. The article draws a central distinction between scene integrity and access/reportability: phenomenality belongs to the very holding of the causally integrated scene on Δt, whereas report is a special case of symbolic directed discharge. On this basis, the article formulates discriminating predictions and the D0–D4 program, through which the theory accepts empirical risk and becomes distinguishable from competing approaches. In conclusion, the article shows how SCPM/RIDD reframes the problems of qualia, zombies, the inverted spectrum, agency, and free will.