CL
CL1 — Single Sensory Coupling
Minimal sensor → response coupling.
Component Hierarchy (CLn)
The CCM component hierarchy expresses the cumulative sequence of bounded control capabilities used to organise the Consciousness Component Model (CCM), written as CL1 … CLn.
This page introduces the hierarchy as a working hypothesis scaffold, separating currently defined components from postulated future capability boundaries. It is a guide to the sequence, not an authoritative definition of any individual component.
The authoritative specifications remain the individual component definitions and their binding constraints. This page functions as a branch entry point for the hierarchy itself, clarifying scope, status, and the current public ordering of the sequence.
How this page should be used
What this page does
- Presents the current public component sequence as a signpost overview
- Separates defined components from postulated future boundaries
- Helps maintain shared expectations about what control capabilities are reserved for later ceilings
What this page does not do
- It does not define any component mechanism, variable, or discriminator
- It must not be used to justify escalation when lower ceilings remain sufficient
- It does not imply that every postulated future component already exists as an admissible definition
Purpose and status
The hierarchy is presented as a hypothesis scaffold, not an authoritative definition layer. It provides a provisional public ordering of capability territory, while preserving the conservative rule that if a behaviour is explainable by CLn−1 mechanisms, it must not be escalated. Defined components remain governed by their individual specifications, and later entries remain placeholders for future work rather than pre-committed definitions.
Current locked scope, defined components
The following entries are currently within the locked public scope of the hierarchy. These are signpost summaries only, showing the present sequence without replacing the authoritative component definitions.
Individual component definition pages will be linked here as they are published.
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CL2 — Pattern Integration
Within-tick multi-input integration into graded pattern activation.
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CL3 — Sensor Adaptation
Persistent sensor-state modulation alters future sensing.
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CL4 — Response Threshold Gating
Response execution requires instantaneous threshold crossing.
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CL5 — Temporal Persistence for Response Triggering
Response execution can require persistence across ticks.
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CL6 — Response Trigger Threshold Adaptation (Habituation)
Repeated execution suppresses re-triggering via response-local refractoriness / suppression shift, a non-outcome-based habituation mechanism.
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CL7 — Regime Stabilisation / Mode Latch
Persistent stabilisation of incompatible response regimes via hysteresis / mutual inhibition, preventing rapid reversal under competing signals without prediction, GS, or valuation.
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CL8 — Short-Horizon Trigger Timing
Bounded single-trajectory extrapolation for trigger timing at the pattern level, anticipatory gating without global physiological state, valuation, or learning.
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CL9 — Integrated Global Physiological State (Feeling State)
Organism-level global state biases execution conditions, updates once per tick, and influences behaviour from the subsequent tick onward.
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CL10 — Post-Outcome Calibration Loop
Outcome-based calibration of parameters within a single declared operator family per instance, excluding valuation, policy arbitration, action selection, and cross-family learning.
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CL11 — Execution-Time Viability Gating
Persistent potential-threat regime biases or vetoes non-defensive execution prior to execution, without valuation, policy arbitration, or counterfactual simulation.
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CL12 — Outcome-Conditioned Pattern Learning
Exposure-weighted outcome-conditioned updating of pattern-category risk or safety associations over co-active pattern sets at execution, without within-scene credit assignment, valuation, planning, or new category formation.
Authoritative definitions remain elsewhere in the framework. These entries are included here only as public signposts for the current locked sequence.
Postulated future components
The following later entries are hypothesis-only. They mark capability territory reserved for future work without implying that their exact mechanisms, admissibility, or final ordering are already fixed.
Later entries will remain signpost-only until individual definitions are justified and published.
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CL13 — Valuation / reinforcement semantics
Behaviour change is best explained by reward, utility, value prediction, reinforcement schedules, preference, punishment, or incentive salience, with updates driven by value signals rather than discrepancy-only adequacy checks.
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CL14 — Policy arbitration / action selection under competition
Multiple response tendencies compete and the organism must choose, suppress, or sequence beyond thresholding and local rules, implying explicit arbitration among competing action programmes rather than independent triggering.
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CL15 — Stabilised behavioural regimes
Persistent regime-level control locks the organism into a behavioural mode or coordinated state across time, biasing multiple responses and thresholds beyond CL9 scalar readiness and beyond local parameter retuning.
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CL16 — Prospective viability gating
Prospective gating prevents execution of trajectories judged likely to violate viability constraints, without requiring reward or valuation semantics.
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CL17 — Counterfactual / branching simulation
Limited branching evaluation of alternative trajectories, an if-then simulation capability that exceeds bounded single-trajectory continuation.
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CL18 — Reflective self-model
A stable reflective internal model that treats the organism as an explicit object of representation for control and reportable cognition.
Insertion remains explicitly open
The hierarchy is not presented as a completeness claim. If biological evidence forces a new capability boundary not represented in the current scaffold, a new component must be inserted at the appropriate point rather than forced into an existing postulated slot.
Split when needed
- If a postulated future entry contains more than one genuinely new capability, it must be split
- The hierarchy therefore remains conservative about how much any single later component is allowed to carry
Insert when required
- If a missing biological boundary appears, a new CL component must be inserted in the correct place
- The binding rule remains: behaviours must not be escalated when lower ceilings already explain them
Note on Global State (GS)
Within the current public hierarchy, Global State (GS) is introduced as a control-eligible construct only at CL9. Earlier references to organism-level change are descriptive only and must not be read as implying GS representation, control use, or execution bias prior to that point.
Pre-CL9
- GS is not introduced as a control variable
- Physiological change may occur, but only as downstream consequence of sensing and response execution
- Allowed persistence remains local, sensor-state, response-local, or pattern-local
CL9 adds
- An explicit persistent integrated organism-level GS variable
- Additive aggregation of GS drive from multiple detected patterns
- Execution-bias effects that apply from the subsequent tick onward without implying valuation, arbitration, or reportable access