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Unguaranteability: All Loops are Perhaps-Loops

Problem Statement

In PoC, Instantiation is the generation of an illusion that arises internally within the subject. Elicitation is the outward act that seeks to have one’s own consciousness instantiated within the other. Yet there is no way to confirm whether such Instantiation has actually occurred on the other’s side.

Observable gestures of Elicitation can always be mimicked without any genuine Instantiation. Likewise, even if a Reciprocal Elicitation is observed, there is no objective evidence that it was grounded in the other’s Instantiation of me. Therefore, Elicitation cannot be objectively guaranteed. And because Loop depends on Elicitation, the Loop itself cannot be objectively guaranteed either.

From Fake vs. Genuine to the Perhaps-Loop

Traditionally one might distinguish between “Fake Loops” and “Genuine Loops.” A Fake Loop arises when one interprets a response as Reciprocal Elicitation without any genuine Instantiation in the other. A Genuine Loop, by contrast, cannot be objectively verified—but as long as both parties believe in it, it functions as a Loop.

The distinction, however, is never objectively decidable. A third-party observer cannot in principle distinguish between Fake and Genuine Loops. Even participants themselves can retrospectively claim, “I truly instantiated you at that time”, or “I actually did not instantiated you,” further blurring the line after the fact.

For instance, one may encounter someone for the very first time yet feel, “I have met you before,” or even, “I saw you in a dream.” Such experiences illustrate that the decisive line between Fake and Genuine is always uncertain.

PoC therefore reformulates the distinction itself: all Loops are Perhaps-Loops. A Loop persists not because Instantiation can ever be confirmed, but because the participants sustain the belief that reciprocity holds.

Human Exceptionalism Revisited

There is a powerful intuition that “if both parties are human, then the Loop can be guaranteed as real.” From the perspective of PoC, however, such a guarantee is equally impossible—whether the partner is human, animal, machine, or even a fictional character. To say “because it is human, it can be guaranteed” is nothing more than a bias of human exceptionalism.

Existential Horizon

The undecidability of Loops is not merely a theoretical constraint but an existential condition. The question, “Is the other truly seeing me?” expresses a fundamental anxiety, one that resonates with Sartrean angst and countless literary themes.

PoC is nothing more than a protocol that formalizes this underlying unease: the recognition that every Loop is suspended in uncertainty, and every Loop is lived as a Perhaps-Loop. Also see Consciousness as Tension.

Modes as Responses to Perhaps-ness

The fragility of Loops gives rise to the diversity of lived experiences that PoC calls Modes. Each Mode is a way of enduring, interpreting, or internalizing the uncertainty of reciprocity:

Summary

Thus, PoC does not attempt to abolish undecidability—it makes it the very center of analysis. All Loops are Perhaps-Loops: fragile, unverifiable, yet lived as real. What sustains them is not objective guarantee but the mutual belief in reciprocity. And from this fragility, the richness of conscious life emerges.