Consciousness Under Correction: Structural Intelligence, Warrant, Fixed Worth, and the Architecture of Answerable Intelligence
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This paper develops Structural Intelligence as a philosophical framework for understanding consciousness, rationality, and intelligence under conditions of correction. The central claim is that internal coherence is necessary for any stable belief, identity, role, theory, institution, or artificial system, but coherence alone is not sufficient for truth, rationality, or mature intelligence. A form becomes answerable when relevant evidence, consequence, other perspectives, or practical failure can revise the organization through which it currently holds. The paper develops an operational sequence from discrepancy to contact, correction claim, warrant, response, binding, and re-revisability. Warrant is treated as evidential, procedural, and proportional, allowing the framework to distinguish calibrated correction from defensive closure, reasoned resistance, compliance, suspended judgment, and revision theater. Correction-capacity is defined as warrant-response calibration that persists over time rather than as generalized openness or willingness to agree. The paper also develops fixed worth as a proposed human floor supporting correction under self-relevant threat. This claim is operationalized through identity-belief fusion and person-belief differentiation: correction becomes more survivable when a challenged belief, role, or self-representation is not treated as exhaustive of the person. The framework is then extended across psyche, relationships, institutions, and artificial intelligence while preserving domain-specific mechanisms. For AI, the paper distinguishes fluency, social presence, persistent memory, corrective continuity, and phenomenal consciousness. Durable correction is defined by trace-bearing change that persists across relevant contexts and remains open to later revision; such structural continuity is explicitly distinguished from evidence of machine sentience. Across domains, the broader thesis is that intelligence is better revealed by reorganization under warranted correction than by coherence, confidence, or apparent self-consistency alone. The framework is presented with explicit limits and falsifiers and is not offered as a complete theory of phenomenal consciousness.
Author: Jovanovic, Vladisav
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7203862990
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