1. Aim and central proposition

The practical objective of this analysis is to improve our understanding of the contemporary brain and the organisation of conscious phenomenology associated with its activity. The immediate research target is not to explain why consciousness-as-such exists, but to investigate how consciousness is structured into a relatively stable experience of self and world, and how that organisation can change.

The central proposal is that the experienced self–world partition is a present structural stabilisation corresponding to neural and bodily dynamics whose organism–environment regulatory organisation has been shaped over evolutionary time.

It is important not to mistake this claim for a theory that experience replays biological evolution. Evolutionary history is not present in experience as a sequence of remembered stages. Rather, the contemporary organism inherits and develops regulatory capacities made possible by that history. These capacities remain active in the present organisation of perception, bodily regulation, affect, memory and conceptualisation.

2. Distinct evolutionary descriptions and the three registers

2.1. Evolution of organism–environment partitions within the QDO

Within the scientific register, the evolution of the QDO is reconstructed in evolutionary time. Physical and chemical structures become the conditions for cellular organisation, metabolic regulation, organismal boundaries, sensory discrimination, nervous systems and increasingly complex forms of intelligence. Organism–environment partitioning develops through this history, but is never reducible to a simple material surface: it includes the organised exchanges and regulatory relations through which living systems persist.

In VGF terminology, these are successive and interpenetrating stabilisations of biological closure. Earlier organisations continue to sustain later ones. The history is scientifically reconstructed through comparative biology, developmental biology, physiology, neuroscience and evolutionary theory.

2.2. Structural evolution of self–world distinctions within the NDPO

The phenomenological register begins with experience as presently given. The question is how distinctions among bodily self, surrounding world, agency, affective identification and narrative identity are organised and stabilised within experience now.

This evolution is first treated as structural, rather than as a retelling of phenomenal history in evolutionary time. A structural analysis asks which relations constitute a given phenomenal partition, how those relations constrain one another, and what changes when the partition loosens or reorganises. This does not deny that ordinary experiences unfold in time; rather, it makes the organisation of experience the primary object of inquiry.

VGF analysis permits a conceptual distinction between the structural ordering of closure formation and its temporal realisation. It has not, however, yet supplied a demonstrated physical derivation of time from the Infinite Iteration Principle; such a derivation is not assumed here.

2.3. The correlation register

The third task is to specify the relationship between (a) contemporary neural and bodily dynamics, described scientifically, and (b) the present organisation of experienced self and world, described phenomenologically. The resulting correlation is not an identification of phenomenology with neural activity, nor does it treat the NDPO as a pictorial rendering of the QDO.

3. The present brain as the bridge between evolutionary and phenomenal structure

The crucial intermediary is the presently operating organism. The scientific evolutionary history of organism–environment regulation has produced inherited biological constraints, subsequently modified by development, learning and culture. These constraints help organise the contemporary brain–body system.

Current sensory integration, bodily regulation, prediction, memory and action depend on this inherited and developed organisation. Therefore, the proposed correlation does not require a direct mapping between remote evolutionary epochs and present phenomenal events. It requires a mapping between present neural dynamics shaped by that history and present phenomenal structural distinctions.

Research on bodily self-consciousness already offers relevant empirical footholds. A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis drawing on 56 neuroimaging studies reported distinct and shared patterns associated with manipulated body ownership and agency, highlighting the importance of multisensory integration and self-attribution.^[1] Work on interoception similarly emphasises interacting physiological and neural systems rather than a single localised source of bodily self-awareness.^[2]

Such evidence supports the scientific possibility of mapping separate dimensions of self-related functioning. It does not establish that a VGF decoherence process has been observed, nor that neural organisation explains why conscious experience exists.

4. Interpenetrating dimensions of the self–world partition

The experienced self–world distinction should not be modelled as a single indivisible boundary. The VGF proposal instead treats it as a higher-level phenomenal stabilisation involving interpenetrating patterns of organisation, with different contemporary neural correlates.

The β and γ labels designate VGF interpretive roles, not separate anatomical systems. A person's bodily perception may remain functionally intact while affective or narrative identification changes. Conversely, disrupted sensory ownership need not entail the loss of autobiographical identity. Research distinguishes body ownership, self-location and agency as related but not identical dimensions.^[3]

In the language of interpenetrating hierarchical closure, the apparent unity of the self–world partition may arise through the ongoing coordination of several partially independent organising processes. Its stability may therefore change without a uniform alteration of all constituent functions.

5. Defining “VGF decoherence image”

Here, “image” does not mean a visual likeness or complete copying of one system by another. It means a correspondence of selected structural properties—for example, boundary stability, relative permeability, cross-system coupling, response to perturbation or the persistence of a partition under constituent change.

Likewise, “VGF decoherence” is being used as a proposed generalisation of stabilisation from interacting dynamical possibilities into reproducible organisational distinctions. It must not be equated without further derivation with the precise physical mechanism of quantum decoherence, which concerns the suppression of interference in reduced quantum states through system–environment interaction.

To qualify as more than metaphor, the VGF proposal would need to identify:

1. the relevant state spaces, partitions and measured variables in both registers;
2. the transformations whose structural properties are proposed to correspond;
3. the limits of that correspondence, including cases of dissociation; and
4. predictions that are not merely rephrasings of existing neuroscience.

The working thesis is consequently modest but precise: the present phenomenal self–world partition may be a VGF decoherence image of the consequences of biological partition evolution as presently realised in the functioning brain and body, rather than a direct reproduction of phylogenetic history.

6. Provisional mathematical correlation model

Let 𝓔_Q(τ) denote the scientifically reconstructed evolution of organism–environment organisation over evolutionary time τ. Let Θ_evo denote relevant inherited organisational constraints resulting from that history. We write schematically:

The mapping ℋ is not assumed to preserve all evolutionary details. It stands for identifiable inheritance and developmental mechanisms through which historical constraints remain operative.

Let X(t) describe a contemporary brain–body state at experimental time t, and let U_B and U_E denote bodily and environmental influences. The current dynamics may be represented as:

For phenomenology, let P_N(s) denote the organisation of the experienced self–world partition, with s indexing a structural configuration rather than the phylogenetic timeline. Its candidate dimensions may include:

These are proposed phenomenological descriptors to be operationalised through suitable reports and experimental tasks. They are not presumed to be an exhaustive representation of conscious experience.

The principal correlation hypothesis is:

Here Φ extracts candidate structural properties of brain–body dynamics; 𝓒 is the hypothesised cross-register correspondence. In a study, paired observations connect phenomenal descriptions to contemporaneous neural measurements. This is not a causal equation asserting that a neural variable is identical to, or sufficient for, experience.

Combined, the proposed research relation is:

Evolutionary time τ, experimental time t and structural index s are distinct; equation (5) does not identify them. The mathematical challenge is to specify Φ and 𝓒 sufficiently to yield constrained, falsifiable predictions.

7. Empirical programme and discriminating predictions

The immediate experimental question is whether measured brain–body organisation predicts changes in the reported phenomenal self–world partition, especially when its constituent dimensions change differently.

7.1. Bodily ownership and perceptual boundaries

Controlled visual–tactile or visual–proprioceptive incongruence could be used to alter body ownership or self-location, together with neuroimaging, electrophysiology and reports of experienced boundary change. Rubber-hand and full-body illusion paradigms already demonstrate experimental approaches to altered bodily self-consciousness.^[4]

7.2. Affective and interoceptive organisation

Interoceptive and emotionally salient conditions could be varied while distinguishing changes in felt personal significance from sensory body identification. The VGF account predicts that affective identification may alter the higher-level stability of self–world organisation even where some elementary perceptual boundaries remain functional.

7.3. Narrative and reflective self-organisation

Autobiographical recall, self-referential language and reflective tasks could be studied together with measurements of network integration and reported self-identification. These experiments would test whether narrative changes can be dissociated from bodily ownership and basic sensorimotor competence.

7.4. Altered self-boundary experience

Studies involving trained participants who can report changes in self-boundary experience provide a further opportunity. A magnetoencephalography study of 41 experienced meditation practitioners reported above-chance, but modest, classification of self-boundary states from neural features; it supplies evidence that some state differences are measurable without identifying a single neural signature of selfhood.^[5]

These predictions are currently broad and may also follow from established network, interoceptive or predictive-processing frameworks. A distinct VGF model must specify numerical measures, pre-registered parameter estimates and comparisons against such alternatives. A failure to outperform reasonable baseline models, or a failure to find the predicted structural relations, would count against the proposed model rather than being absorbed into its terminology.

8. Separability of physical and phenomenal partitions

A particularly significant implication is that the biological organism–environment partition and the phenomenal self–world partition need not have equal stability or vary in lockstep.

An organism can maintain metabolism, sensorimotor discrimination and ordinary bodily regulation while experiencing changes in identification, self-location or narrative selfhood. Likewise, one aspect of bodily self-consciousness may be disrupted without eliminating other self-related capacities. The scientific literature on bodily ownership, agency and self-location supports their partial dissociability.^[1][3]

This is central to the proposed VGF correspondence. The phenomenal partition may depend upon evolved regulatory organisation without being equivalent to the functional boundary required for the organism's survival.

In particular, the experience of being identified with the body should not be conflated with the body's capacity to perceive, act and maintain a functional separation from its surroundings. Changes in affective or narrative self-identification might occur while important perceptual distinctions remain available.

That observation motivates a more precise correlation programme: rather than asking whether selfhood is simply “present” or “absent”, investigate which organisational relations are maintained, weakened or transformed under particular conditions.

9. Scope, register discipline and outstanding problems

The proposed analysis has three explicit limits.

1. No ontological reduction. Correlating phenomenal structure with neural organisation does not establish that consciousness-as-such is generated by those neural processes, nor that the scientific QDO is merely a phenomenon of knowing.
2. No quantum equivalence. The use of “decoherence image” is a VGF theoretical proposal. It is not an inference that phenomenal boundaries are generated by quantum decoherence in the strict physical sense.
3. No proven derivation. A correspondence between evolved biological regulation and present phenomenal structure has not yet been specified by a validated mathematical mapping. The equations above state the modelling task, not its solution.

The central unresolved mathematical problem is to define stability, boundary permeability and reopening for the phenomenological partition in ways that can be paired with reproducible measures of neural dynamics. A second challenge is to make the evolutionary component informative: explaining why particular present brain–body organisations exist, rather than merely labelling them “evolved”.

A further conceptual boundary must remain clear. Describing the structural evolution of present phenomenology does not establish an evolutionary history of consciousness-as-such. The former may be approached through correlations with contemporary brain organisation; the latter remains a separate philosophical and scientific problem.

10. Evolutionary–Structural Correlation Proposition

11. Conclusion

The QDO provides the scientifically reconstructed evolutionary history of organismal regulation. That history has shaped the contemporary brain and body, whose ongoing organisation can be studied experimentally. The NDPO, in contrast, is approached through the present structure of phenomenal objectivity, including the distinctions between body, self, world and the various forms of personal identification.

The proposed VGF correlation concerns the relation between these present structures. It does not require the experienced world to be the brain's picture of QDO reality, nor the phenomenal self–world partition to be a direct image of ancestral evolutionary stages.

The decisive scientific question is whether particular structures of current brain–body dynamics correspond systematically to the formation, stability and reopening of particular phenomenal boundaries—and whether VGF analysis can provide a precise mathematical description that yields new predictions.

The central conclusion is that the experienced self–world duality may be a present VGF stabilisation of phenomenology, structurally correlated with organism–environment organisation whose conditions have been formed through biological evolution.

This approach separates the profound question of why consciousness exists from the more tractable question of why conscious experience takes the particular self–world form it does. The latter is open to disciplined work across neuroscience, mathematical dynamical systems and phenomenological investigation, even while the former remains unresolved.

Selected scientific references

1. Brunello, N., et al. (2025). “A systematic review and meta-analysis on the neural correlates of bodily self-consciousness.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 179, 106420. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2025.106420.
2. Candia-Rivera, D., Engelen, T., Babo-Rebelo, M., & Salamone, P. C. (2024). “Interoception, network physiology and the emergence of bodily self-awareness.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 165, 105864. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2024.105864.
3. Seghezzi, S., Giannini, G., & Zapparoli, L. (2019). “Neurofunctional correlates of body-ownership and sense of agency: A meta-analytical account of self-consciousness.” Cortex, 121, 169–178. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2019.08.018.
4. Serino, A., et al. (2013). “Bodily ownership and self-location: Components of bodily self-consciousness.” Consciousness and Cognition. PubMed record.
5. Röhr, H., et al. (first published 26 December 2025). “Decoding the Self: Single-Trial Prediction of Self-Boundary Meditation States From Magnetoencephalography Recordings.” Human Brain Mapping, 47(1), e70440. doi:10.1002/hbm.70440.

Source and status note: The references support the stated neuroscience background and experimental possibilities. The QDO–NDPO correlation, VGF decoherence image and evolutionary–structural proposition are hypotheses within the IIP–VGF interpretive framework; they should not be presented as established findings of the cited studies.