Figures

A visual reference to the architecture of Scrutinized Awareness Theory.

These figures illustrate the conceptual architecture of Scrutinized Awareness Theory (SAT), Victor Wyld’s 2026 positive threshold theory of consciousness.

The theory is developed across On the Question of Scrutinized Awareness, The Recompression Problem, The Participanthood Problem, and The Acquisition Problem. Together, the figures map SAT’s consciousness threshold and its broader architecture of scrutiny, implication, carrying, recompression, participation, identity, recognition, and acquisition.

Select an overview or figure to open its dedicated page, full image, and explanation.

Conceptual Landscape of Scrutinized Awareness Theory
An overview of the conceptual terrain developed across Scrutinized Awareness Theory.

On the Question of Scrutinized Awareness

Foundational paper introducing Scrutinized Awareness Theory

Figure 1
The Architecture of Scrutinized Awareness Theory
A structural representation of SAT’s distinction between awareness and consciousness and the role of scrutiny, implication, carrying, participation, and answerability.
Figure 2
Observation vs. Scrutiny
The distinction between registering what is present and exposing awareness to examination, consequence, answerability, self-relation, or loss.
Figure 3
The Structural Dependency Pyramid
SAT represented as a hierarchy of structural dependency rather than a chronological sequence.
Figure 4
Performance vs. Participation
The distinction between displaying capacities associated with consciousness and participating under what has become consequential to continuation.

The Recompression Problem

Development within Scrutinized Awareness Theory

Figure 5
The Concept Collapse Map
How distinctions established through analysis can collapse when neighboring concepts become functionally substitutable again.
Figure 6
Institutional Compression of Distinctions
How systems and institutions can convert structural distinctions into administratively convenient equivalents.

The Participanthood Problem

Development within Scrutinized Awareness Theory

Figure 7
The Kernel of Participanthood
The minimal relation between implication, carrying, and participation under continued implication.
Figure 8
The Path from Event to Identity
How an event becomes implicated, persists through carrying, and can alter the participant’s continuing identity.
Figure 9
The Five Modes of Identity Transformation
Accumulation, reorientation, revision, fracture, and integration as modes through which carried implication can alter continuation.

The Acquisition Problem

Development within Scrutinized Awareness Theory

Figure 10
The Structural Acquisition of Implication
The pathway by which recognition becomes contested incorporation, leaves remainder, and acquires implication capable of being carried.
Figure 11
Representational Recognition vs. Participational Recognition
The distinction between recognition that remains representational and recognition through which what is recognized acquires implication for the participant’s continuation.
Figure 12
Constitution-Equivalent vs. Constitution-Non-Equivalent Continuation
The structural distinction between continuations that preserve the same constitutive terms and those for which incorporation changes what continuation can be.
Figure 13
Participational Order: The Order That Makes Carrying Possible
The distinction between chronological order, causal order, and the order in which implications become part of what must be carried.
Figure 14
The Artificial Case: Operational History ≠ Carried Implication
Why logs, memory, objective modification, and higher-order control do not by themselves establish acquired implication in an artificial system.