We have established four axioms and derived from them the following results.
- Time as Internal Ordinal. Time is not a fundamental external parameter but an internal
ordering relation emergent from the observer’s information structure. The universe, at the
level of the totality, is static. What observers experience as the flow of time is the traversal
of an internally ordered sequence of states encoded in a static information structure.
- Finiteness. The simulation computer is a discrete, finite system, so the execution trace is a
finite bitstring. The universe it represents is therefore characterised by a finite bit count n.
- Substrate Independence. Consciousness is a property described by certain finite
information structures. The physical substrate in which such a structure is instantiated does
not determine whether it is conscious. A computer running a simulation of a conscious observer
and the simulation itself are two arrangements of the same information, with neither causally
prior to the other.
- Simulated Conscious Observer. A simulation physically and behaviourally
indistinguishable from a conscious observer must itself instantiate subjective experience. Two
identical axiomatic systems must behave identically.
- Causal Efficacy of Qualia. Subjective experience is not epiphenomenal. It is a causally
distinguishable component of the observer system.
- Representational Equivalence as a Physical Tool. The equivalence of geometric and
computational descriptions licenses the use of the execution trace as a faithful proxy for
physical processes that are geometrically inaccessible.
By treating subjective experience as a causally efficacious property of a computable information structure,
the framework moves from metaphysical speculation to a derivation with testable consequences. The
foundational falsifiability criterion is the construction of a behaviourally indistinguishable DNA simulation
that lacks subjective experience.