A Toy Model of Consciousness as a Maintained Selective Field

David T. Swanson · 2026

Abstract

This paper presents a toy model of consciousness approached as a maintained selective field rather than as a mere list of contents or a sequence of isolated states. The model is not offered as a quantitatively faithful simulation of human consciousness, nor as a solution to the hard problem. Its aim is more limited and exploratory: to see whether a field-based rendering of consciousness can be formalized in a way that still produces coherent and nontrivial dynamics. The model represents disclosures as weighted tokens distributed across a maintained field and tracks salience, articulation, carriage, uptake, weighting, foreground/background position, residue, closure, fragmentation, and correction. The paper motivates the model, specifies its formal structure, explains its parameters and derived ratios, and examines canonical scenarios and parameter sweeps. The guiding question is whether behaviors such as weak carriage, failed uptake, fixation, premature closure, fragmentation, and correction can be rendered in a reasonably stable and interpretable way rather than appearing only as artifacts of narrow or opaque tuning.

Citation

@misc{Swanson2026ToyModel,
  author       = {Swanson, David T.},
  title        = {A Toy Model of Consciousness as a Maintained Selective Field},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Zenodo},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.19199863},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19199863}
}