The Simulation You Call “I”

A book that dissolves the Hard Problem of consciousness, provides an engineering blueprint for artificial consciousness, and extends the framework to cosmology.

What This Book Does

• Proposes a four-model architecture (IWM, ISM, EWM, ESM) that explains why it feels like something to be a conscious system
• Derives the architecture from first principles: self-referential computation at criticality
• Connects consciousness to cosmology through the SB-HC4A framework — same computational pattern, different scale
• Makes nine testable predictions about neural criticality, anesthetic mechanisms, and phenomenology

Background

This is the English-language successor to Die Emergenz des Bewusstseins (2015, German, 300 pages). The theoretical framework has been significantly expanded and is now accompanied by two formal papers:

• The Four-Model Theory of Consciousness — the core theory (Gruber, 2026)
• Emergent Spacetime from Self-Referential Computation — cosmological extension (Gruber, 2026)

Status

Manuscript in progress. Research and papers available at github.com/JeltzProstetnic/aIware.