Consciousness as Constraint Navigation

This record presents a process-based model of consciousness in which conscious experience emerges from continuous constraint navigation rather than internal representation or symbolic computation. Sensory, interoceptive, and memory-derived signals jointly generate a dynamic constraint landscape, within which biological systems must select viable trajectories under energetic, temporal, and structural limits. Consciousness is identified with the felt quality of this navigation process, encompassing clarity, confusion, distress, and insight. The framework reframes health as adaptive constraint negotiation characterized by low latency, efficient energy use, and stable feedback, while illness and cognitive disturbance are described as navigation failures arising from constraint overload, misalignment, or delayed feedback rather than informational deficits. Constraints are treated as relational and situational properties emerging from system–environment interactions, not as externally imposed or metaphysically fundamental entities. The model is compatible with systems theory, control theory, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and embodied cognition, and does not require new physics or dualist assumptions. It is intended as a unifying descriptive framework for interpreting conscious experience, biological regulation, and cognitive breakdown within a single dynamical process.