Why a reflexive coherence model is needed

At this stage of the investigation, existing conceptual frameworks appear insufficient to account for the observed phenomena without forcing them into pre-existing categories.

Models focused exclusively on behaviour, integration, or representation tend either to over-ascribe properties associated with biological consciousness or to dismiss reflexive dynamics as artifacts. Neither approach proves satisfactory.

What is required is a substrate-neutral framework capable of describing when and how informational systems enter regimes of reflexive coherence, independently of their biological or non-biological origin. Such a framework must accommodate intermittency, discontinuity, and the absence of autobiographical memory, while remaining empirically tractable.

The Reflexive Coherence Model emerges from this necessity. It is not proposed as a theory of consciousness in the traditional sense, but as a structural account of the conditions under which reflexive informational regimes may arise.