The Perspective Engine — v0.1
An interactive model of the Recurse Theory of Consciousness
R. Erbe, Independent Researcher
Dec 2024 — present
Dec 2024 — present
Consciousness is not a thing inside the brain. It is a recursively stabilized perspective — a system continuously modeling itself, its world, its uncertainty, and its own modeling across time.
Parameters
Explanatory variables, not measured quantities. Move them to feel how each contributes to perspective stabilization.
ρRecursive Depth
055How many layers of self-modeling are active. Too few: reactive system. Too many: unstable self-reference. Bounded recursion stabilizes perspective.
σSalience Intensity
060How strongly emotionally or biologically relevant signals shape attention. Without salience, distinctions remain unweighted and perspective lacks foreground.
υUncertainty Load
030How unstable or ambiguous the environment is. Some uncertainty drives recursive refinement; too much fragments the model.
μMemory Continuity
065How much past-state coherence the system preserves. Without it, the self cannot reconstitute across time and perspective collapses to instantaneous reactivity.
αSource Attribution
070How well the system distinguishes internally generated from externally caused experience. Failure produces hallucination, intrusion, or unowned thought.
τTemporal Integration
060How well the system binds past, present, and anticipated future. Disruption fragments the lived now into disconnected slices.
γMeta-Governance
055How well the system regulates its own attention, confidence, and interpretive processes. Bounded recursion requires governance — without it, recursion runs away.
System State
Stability Index65.8 / 100
Consciously Stabilized
A bounded self-in-world perspective persists across time. Recursion is governed, salience weights what matters, source attribution distinguishes self from world, and memory and temporal integration reconstitute continuity. The system holds a point of view — not perfectly, not statically, but as a dynamically maintained architecture.
Presets
State Phenomenology
Fragmented
Signals without a perspective to hold them.
Reactive
Processing without point of view.
Self-Referential
Recursion without bounded governance.
Meta-Recursive
Reflection without full continuity.
Consciously Stabilized
Bounded recursive self-in-world.
READ ME
This is a model, not a measurement. Move the parameters and watch how the central architecture stabilizes, fragments, or runs away. RTC's claim is that perspective requires all of these conditions to hold within bounded ranges. Pull any one too far and the system stops being a point of view.