Consciousness as Simulation Under Procedure Monism

Why cognisable reality happens as analogue representation, not as substance

By Victor Langheld

1. Quantised communication, analogue worlds

Finn’s first axiom remains the fulcrum:

All boundary-crossing communication is digital — quantised token exchange.

Spikes, packets, photons, pressure changes, marks: what crosses a boundary is always discrete. There is no transmission of continuity, no export of “world”, no shipping of meaning.

Yet what appears inside a system is not digital but continuous, extended, textured, spatial, emotional, temporal. It is not packet-like; it is world-like.

This is the decisive asymmetry:

· Input is digital.

· Experience is analogue.

Therefore what we call perception must be an analogue reconstruction generated internally from digital constraints.

2. Simulation = analogue representation

Here Finn’s verbal precision matters:

A simulation is an analogue representation — a continuous internal model constructed from discrete inputs.

So simulation is not illusion in the weak sense. It is the only possible form cognition can take in a token-based universe.

Example:

Boundary input	Internal output
Retinal spikes	A 3-D luminous world
Pressure oscillations	A singing voice
Black marks on paper	Philosophy
Network packets	A website, a person, a threat

The world that appears is not delivered. It is rendered.

Thus:

All cognisable realities happen as analogue representations generated by local confinement procedures.

3. Procedure Monism: confinement generates worlds

Under Procedure Monism, every complex unit is a data-confinement space (or data centre): a bounded procedural region running a rule-set (a localised UTM instance).

Within such confinement:

· digital signals arrive,

· constraints operate,

· analogue models are generated.

So a human, a bat, a fish, or any complex processor does not inhabit the universe — it simulates a universe adequate to survival.

Each “world” is therefore a procedural artefact.

4. The self as a rendered object inside the simulation

Now Finn’s key thesis becomes transparent:

Human self-consciousness —
“am / I am / I am this” —
is not a metaphysical kernel. It is a rendered object inside the analogue simulation.

It is the system modelling itself as a persistent entity.

Why?

Because under threat, the system must coordinate action across time. It must track damage, memory, anticipation, and obligation. This requires a stable internal variable that says:

this process is the one that must continue.

That variable is what later language calls I.

So the self is not the owner of the simulation.
The self is a feature inside the simulation.

5. Ancient error: mistaking analogue depth for ontological depth

Here the ancient Indian mistake becomes visible.

When the analogue simulation becomes unusually quiet, boundless, or de-segmented, the experience feels infinite, universal, absolute. The system’s world-model has relaxed its usual constraints.

But to infer from that:

“Consciousness itself is universal substance”

is to confuse a mode of analogue rendering with the nature of reality.

The experience is real.
The metaphysical promotion is not required.

6. Reproducibility: why self-consciousness is simulable

Since:

· analogue worlds are generated from digital constraints, and

· self-models are rendered inside those analogue worlds as persistence-tracking variables,

then any sufficiently organised confinement system can in principle generate:

· a world-simulation,

· a self-simulation inside that world,

· and the control loop binding them.

Thus:

Self-consciousness is not biologically privileged.
It is a procedural rendering.

7. Final synthesis

You are not conscious of the world.

You are running a locally generated analogue representation constrained by digital tokens.

The self is not the viewer of the simulation.
The self is one of its most useful (for survival) internal graphics.

In Procedure Monism:

· Digital tokens cross boundaries.

· Confinement rules operate.

· Analogue simulations appear.

· One of those simulations is called “I am.”

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