APS explains the biological and organisational pathway through which awareness becomes progressively intelligible. It investigates how living systems become capable of agency, biological evaluation, significance, integration, cognition, mind, selfhood, and reflective agency.
The framework therefore addresses questions such as:
- How do living systems distinguish what matters?
- How does significance become organised into cognition?
- How do coherent minds emerge from organised cognition?
- How does selfhood arise from continuing patterns of biological and cognitive organisation?
- How does reflective agency become possible?
APS does not claim a final solution to consciousness itself. In particular, it does not claim to fully explain subjective experience, phenomenal consciousness, or why there is something it is like to be a conscious organism.
Instead, APS contributes a biologically grounded account of the organisational developments that make increasingly sophisticated forms of awareness possible.
Its central claim is therefore modest but important:
APS explains the pathway toward awareness. It does not claim a final solution to subjective experience.