A Generative Architecture
of Conscious Experience

Abstract

Every conscious experience has form, unfolds in time, and matters from within. Despite advances in theories of consciousness, central questions remain: how is felt meaning related to the dynamic organization of experience, how can this relation be formalized, and what might it suggest about the experience and development of agency?

This theoretical paper proposes a model of conscious experience in which structure, process, and meaning are inseparable aspects of a generative unity. This unity is intrinsically oriented toward articulation through five primitive operations: constraint, differentiation, permutation, valuation, and transformation. Their combinations yield thirty-two canonical configurations, providing a finite formal representation of organized possibilities. The framework distinguishes this formal organization from its experiential realization. Through recursive projection within embodied systems shaped by their histories, these configurations are realized as a spatially and temporally organized field in which possibilities carry differential felt significance. Conscious experience is understood as the lived traversal of this field. Integration preserves coherence and continuity, while agency is defined as the capacity of an embodied system to participate in orienting what follows.

By formally relating experiential structure, temporal development, and felt meaning, the framework lays the foundation for mechanistic accounts and empirical research into the subjective experience and development of agency, its constraints, and its potential expansion through psychological transformation.