Abstract

Consciousness is often attributed to particular classes of systems, most commonly living organisms, on the basis of their capacity for self-maintenance and regulation. This approach correctly identifies persistence as central yet leaves the underlying physical condition unspecified. This essay proposes a general criterion for the emergence of awareness based on coherence rather than substrate. An interior arises when the rate of a system’s internal self-correction exceeds the rate of external disruption, forcing feedback to become self-referential. Below this threshold, regulation preserves form without interiority. Above it, persistence itself becomes informative, and awareness appears as a continuous present. Living systems reliably cross this coherence threshold through biological organization, yet the phenomenon is not defined by biology itself. Consciousness is presented as a regime of organization in which coherence closes inward, yielding self-observation as a physical consequence rather than an added property.