On Nov 30, 2025 I posted a new paper on consciousness to arXiv, a preprint server used by scientists to share work with colleagues and the public before formal peer review and journal publication. On May 6, 2026 I updated the arXiv with a greatly improved version of that paper.
The Paper Itself
Title: The Modeler-Schema Theory of Consciousness, with a Falsifiable Experiment
The current May 6, 2026 version of the theory is available here:
- arXiv link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.01073
That page shows the basic information (category, submission date, abstract, etc.). To read the paper, click “View PDF” under “Access paper” in the upper right. The paper is 39 pages with 5 figures and goes into the full details of the theory and the proposed experiment.
Very briefly, the paper proposes that:
- The brain can be understood as a multi-agent architecture composed of the Modeler, Controller, Targeter, and their regulatory “schema” agents.
- A specific agent, the Modeler-Schema, is the locus of conscious experience.
- A falsifiable vision experiment involving eye movements, called saccades, could support or disprove the theory.
- The theory offers a possible solution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness.
Short, Accessible Overviews of the Theory
If you would prefer short, readable introductions before reading the full technical paper, David McFadzean, who is acknowledged in the paper for helpful comments on earlier versions of the theory, has written three companion essays on his blog axio.fyi. In addition, an independent science writer, George Semaan, came across the paper and wrote his own summary on his blog Daily Neuron. Here are the links to those four blog posts:
1. Daily Neuron: A New Theory of Consciousness
This Daily Neuron article offers an easy-to-read description of the theory. It uses everyday metaphors (CEOs, floodlights, backstage crews, etc.) and emphasizes one of the most surprising claims:
The part of you that talks and acts (the Controller) is not the part that is actually conscious.
Instead, consciousness is attributed to a “hidden” regulatory agent—the Modeler-Schema—that performs quality control on your internal model of the world.
2. axio.fyi: Consciousness Explained (overview of the theory)
https://axio.fyi/p/consciousness-explained
This post gives a clear, non-technical overview of the main ideas. It explains:
- The different “agents” that make up the brain in the theory.
- The single agent (the Modeler-Schema) that is responsible for all conscious experiences.
- The simple eye-movement experiment that could either support or falsify the theory—what I hope makes this a scientific theory of consciousness, not just a philosophical story.
3. axio.fyi: Beyond Consciousness Explained
https://axio.fyi/p/beyond-consciousness-explained
This follow-up piece connects the theory to well-known philosophical debates about consciousness, especially the so-called “Hard Problem”—the claim that consciousness cannot be fully explained by a physical system.
In the Modeler-Schema framework:
- Everything in the theory is physical and mechanistic.
- If the proposed experiment supports the theory, it would provide a counterexample to the idea that the Hard Problem is unsolvable.
- In other words (from my perspective), the Hard Problem becomes a design problem: define the right kind of control agent and test its predictions.
4. axio.fyi: Why Zombies Don’t Evolve: Consciousness, Attention Control, and the Modeler-Schema
https://axio.fyi/p/why-zombies-dont-evolve
David McFadzean’s newest essay begins with an evolutionary question: if consciousness is not needed for behavior, why would it evolve at all? David argues that the Modeler-Schema Theory gives consciousness a specific biological job: helping maintain a coherent world model under the pressures of attention, action, memory, bodily need, and change. In this framing, qualia are not an idle glow added to cognition; they are the internal format the Modeler-Schema uses to stabilize and calibrate the world model.
Taken together, the full paper on arXiv, the Daily Neuron article, and David’s three axio.fyi essays provide several different entry points into the same underlying theory of consciousness.
An earlier version of this theory was presented at The Science of Consciousness Conference in Tucson on April 23, 2024, under the title “The Model Constructor Schema: A Potential Solution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness.” Since then, the theory has been substantially revised, simplified, and extended to include a falsifiable experiment.