AFH Research · Autopsychic Fold and Horizon
Matter, organised in specific temporal ways,
may be experience —
not produce it.
The AFH framework proposes that phenomenological presence is constitutively identical to a specific temporal organisation of thalamocortical activity — not its product. This is an empirical hypothesis. It is falsifiable, and we specify in advance the conditions under which it should be abandoned.
Research Papers
Resources
Framework
H* — Horizon
Threshold of thalamocortical organisational convergence. The proposed condition of possibility for temporal self-encounter. When abolished — as in bilateral ILN destruction or deep anaesthesia — no phenomenological space exists.
∇ — Autopsychic Fold
Convergence of fast (50–100 ms) and slow (200–600 ms) thalamocortical pathways in the intralaminar thalamic nuclei. Current processing encounters traces of its own recent past. AFH proposes this temporal self-encounter may be identical to phenomenological presence.
R — Residue
Phenomenological presence as constitutive event — the same neural process described from the mode of access that H* generates. Not a separately detachable entity: two methodological positions with respect to the same event.
V — Configurational Volume
Effective dimensionality of phenomenological space. Varies continuously from near-zero (N3 sleep: presence without richness) to maximum (alert wakefulness). Distinct from arousal; distinct from the binary conscious/unconscious.