Self-Consciousness as Structural Paradox

The Basic Elements of PoC (Recap)

The Protocol of Consciousness (PoC) unfolds through three basic elements:

• Instantiation: The act of assuming the other as a conscious being.
• Elicitation: The active bid, “let me be instantiated within you.”
• Loop (Reciprocal Elicitation): The state in which both parties’ Elicitations are mutually believed, generating reciprocity.

The core of PoC lies in the fact that all of these processes rest upon illusions that cannot be guaranteed.

What PoC Reveals

Through its operations, PoC brings three crucial insights into focus:

• Unguarantability: Neither Instantiation nor Reciprocal Elicitation can be observed. Both rest entirely on belief.
• Consciousness as Tension: The Loop is always at risk of collapse; its persistence is never secured.
• Modes: Love, Ghost, Death, and Mirror represent lived figures of this fragility in social and emotional life.

PoC thus demonstrates that consciousness always operates under uncertainty and the constant threat of breakdown.

Situating Self-Consciousness within PoC

Self-consciousness is not an external faculty or an add-on to PoC. It arises inevitably from the protocol’s own paradoxical structure: what is lived as external recognition is, in truth, sustained only internally. Mirror Mode exemplifies this paradox in its purest form, but the root lies in the unguaranteability of Instantiation and Loop themselves.

In Mirror Mode, the form of the Loop is internalized: the self constructs “the position of the other” within itself, thereby entertaining the assumption that “there is a version of me inside the (internally staged) other.”

Yet this assumption is paradoxical: the “me-in-the-other” is never verifiable outside; in truth, it has only ever existed within me.

Here emerges the distinctive structural paradox of PoC:

• The illusion is sustained as if it were external,
• but its existence is internal all along.

Self-consciousness arises precisely when this paradox becomes manifest.

The Process of Emergence

The generation of self-consciousness can be described as follows:

1. Instantiation: I assume the other is conscious.
2. Elicitation: I bid, “let me appear within you.”
3. Assumption: I believe that “I have been instantiated in the other.”
4. Internalization: But this illusion never leaves my side; it is only ever internal.
5. Structural Paradox: Thus, what is believed to exist outside is sustained only inside.

From this paradox emerges the form of “the self recognizing itself.”

Grounds of the Account

External connections: PoC’s approach to self-consciousness differs from earlier treatments by thinkers such as Dennett, Sartre, or Hegel. Whereas they framed the issue in ontological or epistemological terms, PoC articulates it as an operational protocol, carrying their insights into a new register.

Internal consistency: Within this framework, self-consciousness arises with the same unguaranteability that marks Instantiation and Loop. It follows not as an added theme, but as a structural consequence of the protocol itself.

Novelty: Instead of describing self-consciousness as “re-reflection” or “repositioning,” PoC defines it as a structural paradox: what is believed external is, in truth, only internal. This reframing avoids familiar clichés of “re-reflection” or “repositioning” and anchors the account directly in the logic of the protocol.

Key Point

Self-consciousness is not a separate foundation outside PoC. It is the byproduct of the protocol — the structural paradox that arises inevitably from Instantiation, Elicitation, and Loop.

In this sense, self-consciousness is an illusion of an illusion. Yet it is a powerful one, shaping the very framework of our experience of the world and of ourselves as subjects.