7Dialogs - Glossary

Glossary for the BAL-Looping Framework of Consciousness

Part 1: The Foundational Engine (The Basic Animal Brain)

Brain at Large (BAL)

The brain at large (BAL) is the entire control system – brain and body working as one. It regulates all activity of the organism, using sensory input and internal feedback to guide actions toward achieving and maintaining its goals.

The BAL includes every process that supports the organism’s operation. It isn’t confined to the brain – many functions run through constant exchange with the body, which is why the boundary between them isn’t very useful in practice.

Another way to think of this is to imagine a Venn diagram where the BAL represents the entire frame – the complete operating system of the organism. Later, we will examine one particular area within this larger space: the language faculty, which in functional terms is called the proxy transfer device (PTD).

See also: Goal-Seeking System, Internal Model

Goal-Seeking System

The BAL is constantly working to bring the organism from its current state to a goal state – a configuration that satisfies internal or environmental demands (e.g., satiety, warmth, safety, social inclusion). These are not goals in the psychological sense, but functional targets shaped by the organism’s evolutionary and developmental history.

The BAL is not a passive responder to input. It is an active, cybernetic operator that adjusts the organism’s behavior to bring the sensed world into alignment with its internal needs. But it cannot do this by simply reorganizing itself. A goal state is not something the system can declare or imagine – it must be achieved in the world.

As an imperative imposed by evolutionary constraints, the BAL must close the gap through action, not mere internal rearrangement. Any achievement of any goal state must be matched with information streaming in through the sensory system, confirming it.

See also: Brain at Large, Internal Model, Thermostat Analogy

Internal Model

To guide the organism’s actions consistent with its needs, the BAL embodies information about the environment. According to cybernetic theory, it does this by building and maintaining an internal model – a continuously updated set of learned configurations that reflect patterns the BAL either possesses innately or has built through interaction with the environment.

This model is not a symbolic map or abstract representation. It is a functional counterpart to the environment: a real-time structure that behaves in ways that match the relevant parts of the world. The model embodies the cause-and-effect relationships and temporal dynamics of the environment – how things connect, influence each other, and unfold over time. Like an interlocking logical machine, it captures not just where things are positioned in space, but how they are situated in time and in terms of causation.

The internal model changes as the BAL interacts with the environment. Its value is measured by how well it supports the organism’s continued operation, not by how closely it matches an idea or description.

See also: Neuronal Proxy, Proxy Configuration, Goal-Seeking System

Status Quo Ante

The brain at large carries forward an expected state of its surroundings rather than rebuilding its internal model from scratch each moment. This status quo ante is a baseline sense of “how things normally are,” and it works because it is efficient: by holding on to what is already familiar, the BAL avoids the constant effort of full re-analysis.

Instead of continuously reconstructing the whole internal model in a Sisyphean effort, the BAL makes quick checks to see whether the present still matches what it knows. Very often, everything lines up and the system can move forward, using its operational resources for other purposes.

But when it discovers something different from that expected state – a new object in a familiar room, an unexpected sound, a change in someone’s manner – it immediately narrows its attention. The difference is examined until it is understood and absorbed into the model, which then becomes the new “normal.”

This habit of mind explains many everyday moments: when one notices that furniture has been moved; when one sees a cat pause at something unfamiliar in its territory; or when one drives along a customary route while thinking of other things until some unexpected situation pulls the focus sharply into the present.

The status quo ante shapes all BAL activity, not just sensory perception. Social exchanges, bodily states, even abstract reasoning lean on the same strategy: hold on to the familiar, and turn full attention to what changes.

This way of working has been in place for hundreds of millions of years and runs constantly, with or without looping. It is one of the BAL’s most basic ways of keeping its inner model of the world in step with both the outer environment and its own internal state.

See also: Internal Model, Overview and Focus, Search Templates

Neuronal Proxy

This phrase is used in its most straightforward sense. “Neuronal” because it involves neurons, and “proxy” because it’s a stand-in – an element that takes the place of something, at a different location. A neuronal proxy is something within the brain’s internal model that stands in for a discrete element in the external environment.

A neuronal proxy is not a single neuron or even a localized cluster of neurons. It is defined functionally, not anatomically. A proxy may be a widely distributed pattern spanning multiple brain regions, a dynamic network that shifts over time, or a complex configuration involving millions of neural connections. What makes it a “proxy” is not its physical location but its functional role: it reliably corresponds to a specific, discrete element in the organism’s world.

Any given proxy is a stable, innate or functionally learned configuration that arises through interaction with the environment and becomes part of the internal model. Each proxy corresponds to a distinct entity, quality, or relationship – for example: red, dog, behind, rough, above, or warm. These function as atomic building blocks (components) that maintain their discrete identity while combining with other proxies into larger configurations.

Proxies are not ideas or symbols. They are operational structures – patterns of activation that consistently emerge in relevant contexts and influence behavior. A proxy for “red” remains functionally identical whether applied to an apple, a car, or a sunset. A proxy for “behind” works the same way whether describing spatial relationships between trees, people, or buildings. Their usefulness lies in this stability and reusability: when a particular element is encountered again in the external environment, the BAL can use the same neuronal proxy, treating it as a familiar, discrete component.

A helpful analogy is the Micronesian stick chart – a navigational tool that is not a graphic map, but rather made of sticks, pieces of rope, and shells, with each part corresponding to a real feature such as an ocean swell, current, or island. In the same way, a proxy is a stand-in for something specific in the environment, serving as a discrete functional element the BAL can use whenever that same condition is encountered.

See also: Proxy Configuration, Proxy Activation, Internal Model

Proxy Configuration

This phrase refers to an interrelated grouping of proxies. The largest possible proxy configuration is the brain’s internal model, while any connected grouping of it can be referred to as a proxy configuration.

A proxy configuration is simply a group of stand-ins that are active at the same time and connected in ways that match their real-world relationships. Together, they form a small model of some part of the organism’s environment. These groupings change constantly as the BAL responds to new situations.

Configurations are not language or pictures. They are functional structures in the brain – interrelated stand-ins (internal proxies) that together give the BAL something it can work with when guiding the organism’s behavior.

See also: Neuronal Proxy, Proxy Activation, Interfunctional Complementation

Proxy Activation

Activation refers to the event by which a proxy from the BAL’s total repertoire becomes active – brought into the working model the BAL is running at that moment. Any event that brings a proxy from potential into active use constitutes activation.

Proxies never work alone. Once one is activated, it always joins others in a configuration that models some part of the organism’s environment. The BAL can then work from that model to guide behavior in real time.

Proxies can be activated in three main ways:

1. Direct environmental input – This is universal in animals. Something in the world triggers the stand-in directly through the senses.

2. Interindividual communication – Humans can use structured signals (speech, symbolic gestures) to activate matching stand-ins (proxies and proxy configurations) in another person’s BAL. Many animals do signal to one another, but their signals don’t transmit a detailed scene. A bark might mean “danger” or “come,” but not “three birds on the branch” versus “two birds on the rock.” So, while many species communicate, only humans can transfer well-formed proxy configurations.

3. Internal reuse of incipient activity in the outgoing speech channel, by way of internal attention to expressive resonance – The BAL can activate its own stand-ins (proxies) through looping: proxy activations are triggered by incipient activity in the output channel that is mirrored into the input channel through cross-channel coupling. Functionally, think of the BAL “eavesdropping” on what it is poised to express and using that as input. (Here and elsewhere I use “resonance” as shorthand for this production-comprehension coupling.)

See also: Neuronal Proxy, Proxy Configuration, Looping

Part 2: The Gateway to Expression and Shared Meaning

Proxy Transfer Device (PTD)

The PTD is the functional system that allows one BAL to transfer its internal proxy configurations to another BAL. When people speak to one another and truly understand each other, they are using their PTDs to activate matching proxy configurations across two different brains.

In nonfunctional terms, it is called the language faculty. But the word “language” carries a lot of luggage, which is not needed in the framework, since many aspects of language – like syntax, grammar, etc. – all collapse within the transfer, being irrelevant to the framework.

The PTD operates through two coordinated channels. The outgoing channel takes an active proxy configuration within one person’s BAL and converts it into an external signal – whether spoken words, written symbols, gestures, or other structured expressions. The incoming channel receives such signals from another person and converts them back into proxy configurations within the receiver’s BAL.

This transfer process is what makes genuine communication possible. When you say “red cup” and someone understands you, their PTD has successfully activated proxies for “red” and “cup” that functionally match the ones that were active in your BAL when you spoke. The match between proxy configurations is what constitutes shared meaning.

Functionally, the PTD has two channels. The outgoing channel formats and sends messages, when you speak, gesture, or write. The incoming channel receives messages and converts them into internal proxy configurations, when you listen to speech or read.

The PTD is not limited to spoken language – it includes any structured system that can reliably transfer specific proxy configurations from one BAL to another.

See also: PTD Channels, Looping, Coterminous Principle, Difference from Inner Speech Models

PTD Channels (o-series and i-series)

The PTD has two channels: an outgoing channel (o-series) for sending messages and an incoming channel (i-series) for receiving them.

The outgoing channel begins with a configuration of neuronal proxies active in the BAL and converts them into a linear series of signs that can be sent out as a message. In humans, this message might be speech, writing, or a gesture. The process ends in muscle movements that produce the signal.

The incoming channel starts with the raw signal: sound waves when hearing speech, or visual symbols when reading. These arrive as a linear stream of discrete elements, which are then combined back into a proxy configuration in the BAL. The message is always coded in linear form for transmission, but the result is always a multidimensional structure the BAL can work with directly. Once this structure is formed, meaning has been transferred.

What makes this process work is that both channels handle the same basic currency: neuronal proxy configurations. The outgoing channel breaks them down into a linear sequence for transmission; the incoming channel rebuilds them into the original multidimensional form.

See also: Proxy Transfer Device, Message Conversion, PTD Resonance

Realm of Effation

The Realm of Effation is everything humans have ever put into language or language-like form – spoken, written, recorded, remembered, or taught. It is made up of messages that can be converted to proxy configurations within a BAL, when received through the input channel of a PTD.

This is not an abstract “cloud” of ideas. It is a functional space: all the messages that exist in a form that could activate proxy configurations in someone else’s internal model. In a sense, many fields such as law, literature, mathematics, history, and science all live here in the form of tangible material traces, which have been expressed by a PTD, and can potentially be received by another.

The realm of effation includes all proxy configurations that have ever been “effated,” that is, which have been expressed by the outgoing channel of a PTD. So this realm also includes incipient activity in the PTD – the activity which is detected and converted into meaning during looping.

The notion of the realm of effation is not new. Shakespeare knew of it, for example, when he wrote in his Sonnet 18, “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,/ So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” The “this” is the message embodied in the sonnet – a thought that began internally, passed through the PTD, and became eternal in the Realm of Effation. Written down, it can reactivate proxy configurations in any reader’s BAL. The realm is functional, not metaphysical: it consists of all expressions that can be reliably converted into proxy configurations through the incoming channel of a PTD.

See also: Brain at Large, Looping

Conflation of PTD Activity with Looping

It’s easy to conflate PTD activity with looping, as though they were the same thing or one always required the other. But they are different processes. Looping requires PTD activity, but PTD activity does not always guarantee the effective presence of looping. Why? Because, although resonance between the output and input channels is always present during speech, the effective presence of looping depends on the BAL actually paying close attention to this resonance. And the BAL does not always pay attention to it; you can speak in a largely “automatic” mode: the PTD executes motor commands (sometimes prearranged, sometimes managed in bursts), while the BAL focuses elsewhere. In such cases, a person can be speaking but with little or nearly no attention by the BAL, meaning the inward reuse is next to nothing.

On the other hand, PTD activity and looping often do coincide. Often while talking, a person will also be looping the same content inwardly, examining what is being said during the act of saying it.

In brief: when the PTD is inactive, there is no looping, but when the PTD is active, there can be looping, or not, depending on the focus of the BAL – whether it is attending to the content being expressed, or not.

See also: Proxy Transfer Device, PTD Resonance, Looping

Looping Misattribution Error

Sometimes we recall experiences we didn’t seem to notice at the time – a fragment of conversation, a visual detail from a routine drive, or an event that occurred while our attention was elsewhere.

This often leads to a misjudgment: that we must have looped it at the time, since we now recall it vividly.

But that vividness results from a looping procedure being carried out in the present. It could be working on evidence that was laid down through sensory input and reinforced by interfunctional complementation, even if the subjective experience at that time was different (fantasy, recollection, imagination, projective inner rehearsal, etc.)

Because the brain has no built-in “gauge” to really know exactly what its subjective experience was at a prior time, the construction/reconstruction of the experience is readily accepted as an accurate version of the subjective experience that was taking place in the past.

See also: The Naïve Archaeologist, False Stability Assumption (a closely related corollary), Looping Uncertainty Principle, Looping Indeterminacy

Part 6: Helpful Metaphors and Clarifications

Naïve Archaeologist

Recollection works much like the work of an archaeologist. An archaeologist doesn’t consult a library of films or photographs; they examine physical traces from the past – artifacts, fragments, and remains – and then piece together a plausible story.

As the BAL uses looping, it draws on traces left by real experience and assembles them into a coherent recollection. But in certain situations it can behave like a naïve archaeologist. Sometimes it encounters traces that are not from a lived experience at all – for example, after waking from sleep, when there was no subjective experience. In that case, it may be looking at maintenance activity, “placing oneself into the world” routines, physiological markers from current or recent bodily states, current or recent sensory input fragments from the previous day, and standard perceptual templates. It still constructs a convincing narrative, but mistakenly assumes that it corresponds to an actual past experience.

See also: Interfunctional Complementation, Looping Uncertainty Principle

Thermostat Analogy

The thermostat analogy illustrates how the BAL operates as a cybernetic system. In a classic thermostat – such as those using a mercury switch on a bimetallic coil – the mechanism doesn’t represent or interpret the external temperature. It embodies it. The coil expands or contracts with heat, tilting the mercury tube, which physically closes or separates an electrical contact. There is no symbolic comparison, no interpretation, and no reaction in the human sense. The system’s configuration itself is the action.

The BAL functions similarly: it forms internal structures – neuronal proxies – that embody aspects of the external world. These proxies, grounded in feedback, allow the system to move toward a goal state mechanically, not by planning or predicting, but by operating from a structure that physically reflects what matters in the environment. Action emerges from embodiment, not from abstraction.

See also: Goal-Seeking System, Neuronal Proxy, Internal Model

Placing Oneself into the World

This is one way to refer to the process by which the brain rebuilds and reactivates its internal model when transitioning from sleep back to active awareness. This can also be referred to, more objectively, as building the internal model, but the term “placing oneself into the world” is much more memorable and meaningful to anyone who has caught sight of its effect on dream recall. This is not simply “waking up” in the behavioral sense, nor is it itself a dream or subjective episode, but rather the brain’s reconstruction of its working relationship with the environment.

During sleep, the BAL operates in a fundamentally different mode, called the maintenance mode. The internal model that normally guides active behavior becomes dormant, loses its tone, or undergoes changes during maintenance. Upon returning to active awareness, the brain must rebuild this internal model, essentially “placing itself back into the world” – reestablishing the proxy configurations that orient it in space, time, and circumstance.

This process involves more than simply receiving new sensory input. The brain must rebuild its sense of where it is, when it is, what situation it’s in, and how it relates to its environment. This reconstruction draws on traces and patterns from the previous active state, but it is a process of rebuilding rather than a simple resumption.

The subjective effects of this process can often be felt during dream recall, especially when one wakes up into a situation that has changed (e.g., when one has traveled). One can deduce this underlying process when observing the recollections that occur after waking up. It is one aspect of the “mnemonic basis” (which was not laid down during any sort of subjective experience) that one encounters after a period of sleep. The other aspects are maintenance traces and previous events (mainly from the previous day), seen through the lens of the perceptual templates.

See also: The Naïve Archaeologist, Internal Model, Proxy Configuration, Search Templates

Search Templates

These are patterns or configurations that the BAL keeps active in its ongoing scan of the environment. They represent what is most relevant to the organism’s survival, goals, or current concerns. They act like internal filters, bringing certain types of information to immediate attention while leaving the rest in the background.

Templates explain why a person with a romantic interest will notice that “significant other” at once in a crowd, or why someone with a particular fear will quickly spot a possible threat that others overlook. The BAL adjusts these scanning patterns according to what matters most in the moment – whether that is survival (predators, food), social connection (mates, allies), or whatever is occupying the mind at the time.

In neuroscience, this is referred to as “attentional bias” and “perceptual set” – the tendency to favor stimuli that match current concerns, expectations, or emotional weight. Studies show that anxious people scan for threats without thinking about it, people in love notice their romantic interest more readily, and even a simple instruction can create a short-term template that shapes what is noticed.

These same templates influence dream construction. When the brain’s “naïve archaeologist” sorts through fragments left after sleep, it applies the active search templates to interpret them. Someone preoccupied with a loved one may “find” that person in the dream storyline – not because the person was part of sleep’s maintenance processes, but because the search template is active, and influences the reconstruction.

Search templates are one of the brain’s most basic survival tools – a constant, automatic way of picking out what matters most in a flood of sensory input. They work without conscious effort, running in the background to filter and prioritize things according to their relevance to the individual.

See also: The Naïve Archaeologist, Placing Oneself into the World, Proxy Configuration

One-Step-Back Strategy

It is common, when trying to explain perception, to picture an inner observer – a self, a soul, or a “homunculus” – inside the head, looking out at the world. The image feels satisfying because it gives the appearance of an answer: we see because someone inside is watching. But this only moves the puzzle back a step. Like the old tale of the Earth resting on a turtle’s back, we are left to ask: What is the turtle standing on? If an inner observer is watching, what explains that observer’s own experience?

The BAL-looping framework does not rely on such an inner observer. It shows that the brain’s own working parts – its internal model of the world, its neuronal proxies, and its looping of expressive configurations – are enough to produce what we call subjective experience.

There are other one-step-back strategies as well. Whenever one sees an explanation, one should ask if it’s a one-step back strategy. Does this really explain anything, or just ratchet up the level of complexity one more level to the point where the average person is left wondering, perhaps it makes sense?

This does not settle the question of whether a soul exists. Kepler and Newton explained planetary motion in terms of natural laws without invoking God’s direct hand, yet this was in no wise taken as a denial of God’s existence. In a similar way, the BAL-looping framework explains perception, recollection, and imagination in terms of natural brain processes. If there is a soul, it is not needed for these explanations – and its existence would be a matter for a different kind of inquiry.

The claim is simple: we can account for subjective experience without invoking a soul. Whether or not a soul exists lies outside the scope of the framework.

See also: Conscious-Perception-as-a-Window Fallacy

Difference from Inner Speech Models

The BAL-looping framework is not a theory of inner speech, differing from them in clearly defined ways.

All inner speech theories – from Vygotsky onward – differentiate between inner speech and outer speech. They posit two separate modes of operation: one for communicating with others, and another for internal thought.

BAL-looping does nothing like this. There is only one system: the language faculty, consisting of the speech channel and the listening channel working together, used as a tool by the BAL. When you communicate with some external language context (television, books, your own writing, talking to another person, etc.), you use this system. When you loop, you use this same system. There does exist the difference that in the former case there is an external element in the loop, but the system itself is not different, so there can be no talk of “inner” versus “outer” speech. This distinction of outer versus inner is therefore incompatible with the BAL-looping framework.

And the differences do not stop there. Inner speech theories do not specify a concrete functional mechanism by which inner speech takes place; they merely posit an internal phenomenon without explaining how it actually operates in the brain. BAL-looping identifies the exact mechanism: incipient language output causing resonance in the input channel, which is then neurally reused through the already existing function for the activation of neuronal proxies.

Furthermore, inner speech theories are typically limited to thinking or verbal thought. The BAL-looping framework takes a more radical and comprehensive stance: it holds that all modes of subjective experience – conscious perception, recollection, imagination, and thinking – all arise, without exception, from this single mechanism.

See also: Looping, PTD Channels, PTD Resonance, Gist

Functional Parsimony Principle (Extended Entry)

The BAL-looping framework uses only functional elements and the relationships between them that already demonstrably exist in the brain to explain all of subjective experience, including conscious perception. Parsimony, when coupled with explanatory power, has historically led scientists to the discovery of better models; it is often by shedding superfluous theoretical additions that science advances.

Compared to other models or theories of consciousness, the BAL-looping framework achieves this parsimony by obviating the need for an extra functional step in brain operation. Functionally, there are three necessary layers – sensory input, the internal model of the environment, and behavioral output (including speech) – and a common feature among the other models of consciousness is that they introduce an extra layer, which, depending on the theory, could be:

A prediction layer – predictive processing theories add a prediction step. Any such step that is merely a refinement of sensory input is functionally moot, as it adds no explanatory power, since in functional terms it just collapses into that first step of obtaining the input. Where the prediction comes after the internal model of the environment, however, it constitutes an additional functional layer.

A meta-representation layer – the brain has mental states, then adds a meta-level layer that represents those representations

A broadcast layer – the brain has information within specialized modules, which is selected and broadcast to an added global workspace layer

An integration layer – the brain processes information in separate regions, with a posited additional layer where that information is integrated (measured by Φ)

A higher-order thought layer – first-order thoughts exist, then an added layer of thoughts about those thoughts is generated

All of these intermediate steps add another level of brain function. One reason that theorists do this is to account for how the brain can often process information and guide behavior – as in blindsight and split-brain cases, or when in “automatic” mode – without that processing being reportable or accessible. If conscious perception were at the level of the internal model, there would be no accounting for the observed dissociation between reportability and foundational competence. Depending on the theory this layer takes different forms – it can be a layer of predictive processing, a jump to a meta-representation, a broadcast to a global workspace, a series of workups to achieve a state of integrated information, or a hierarchical leap to higher-order thoughts. These theoretical constructs are introduced for various reasons, including to account for the observed dissociation between the brain's direct processing (which guides behavior but may not be reportable) and what can be reported or examined. They correspond to posited distributed neural processes whose existence has never been demonstrated by discrete lesion or excision, while the PTD corresponds to empirically demonstrated neural systems in the language faculty.

The BAL-looping framework’s architecture is leaner, more parsimonious, and materially grounded. It posits sensory input, an internal model, and output – the necessary three – as the main functions, shared with all animals, then adds to the human brain architecture the incontrovertible existence of the output and input channels of the PTD (the language faculty). That is all. Conscious perception, and all modes of subjective experience, are then explained as the brain at large (the BAL) catching wind of incipient activity in the PTD’s output channel, which resonates across to the input channel and is then sensed by the BAL as the gist of the potential expression.

The framework therefore only involves the functional elements and relationships that already demonstrably exist in the brain. The resonance between the output and input channel of the PTD has already been well-established by researchers in neuroscience and linguistics. The only theoretical supposition made by the BAL-looping framework is that this resonance allows the BAL to catch wind of potential expression (this is called looping), a plausible supposition consistent with the evolutionary idea of exaptation and the neuroscientific principle of neural reuse.

There is no theoretical difficulty here, though it may seem to contradict one's initial subjective impression, at least for many people in the modern Western world. Due to our cultural history, many people do not think of their conscious perception as their potential language output; they consider it a window to the world. For a historical example of where parsimony served as a guide for overturning subjective impressions, consider how Copernicus's parsimonious model implied that the Earth was spinning and flying through space, which flew against the common sense of his era. His simpler model revealed a truth that contradicted what only seemed to be “direct experience” – and thus parsimony served as a scientific guide, encouraging us to reexamine mistaken impressions. Of course, parsimony is just one quality among many to be balanced when evaluating a theoretical approach, not an absolute imperative. Internal consistency, explanatory power, agreement with empirical observations, and the capacity to generate novel predictions are likewise important. But all else being equal, parsimony remains a welcome feature in a framework. In the present case, the aim for parsimony has led to a framework in which, when we consciously perceive the world, we are not attending to sensory input, but rather to our own potential expressive output. If this ultimately turns out to be true, then parsimony will once again have done a yeoman’s service.

If the BAL-looping framework is correct, the difference between a human and a squirrel is not an additional layer of prediction, of representation, of broadcast, of information integration, or metathought. It is two channels of a proxy transfer device and then the neural reuse, the evolutionary exaptation, of looping. Nothing more is required.

See also: Internal Model, Neuronal Proxy, Looping, PTD Channels, Difference from Inner Speech Models

Gist (extended entry to explain gist as a functional term and to explain how the BAL-looping framework differs from representational accounts of consciousness)

In the BAL-looping framework, the word gist is defined as the activation of neuronal proxies due to an incoming message that arrives through the language input channel. This takes place at stage i5 – the point where a decoded signal becomes an activated configuration within the brain’s internal model.

In standard interindividual communication there is complete exit, and then entry to another individual – a message travels outward through the PTD’s expressive channel, becomes externalized as speech or writing, and enters another individual’s receptive channel, where it is decoded back into a proxy configuration.

In looping, the same functional result occurs without a message ever leaving the first individual. A language output process is begun in the outgoing channel, and this incipient activity gives rise to resonance in the incoming channel through the natural coupling between the PTD’s expressive and receptive pathways. This allows the incipient message to move across from a point partway out the output channel to a point well inside the input channel (both well inward from audio and phonological workup). From there, the signal flows inward along the interior portion of the input channel. At stage i5, this activates the same proxy configuration that would have been activated by interindividual communication. This activation is the gist.

It is important to note that the gist is not in any way representational. Although the PTD channels do involve encoding, the gist itself is not considered a representation, because the framework considers the brain as a cybernetic control system that works in tandem with the external environment, without any observer. Proxy configurations function as operative stand-ins rather than representations, making the framework distinct from representational accounts of mind.

To appreciate the absence of representation, it is helpful to consider the stick charts used traditionally by Micronesian navigators, consisting of sticks, reeds, and shells arranged in a netting. The stick chart is not a picture or graphic representation, rather, the objects in it serve as stand-ins for ocean swells, currents, and islands – the elements in the geography that are significant to the navigators. The case with proxies in the BAL is even more radical, however, as they are not even representations. They are functional stand-ins within an internal model – a control system shaped by evolution, which runs in parallel to the organism’s interactions with its environment. When this internal system achieves its goal states, the organism achieves its corresponding physical goal states. In other words, the two systems run in tandem, functionally coupled, so that success in the internal model corresponds to the organism’s survival and reproduction in the physical world.

That is the functional account. It describes a physical process – output processes, signal pathways, coupling between channels, activations of proxies. Just like in physics, when physicists describe the functioning of the various parts of the atom, once this process is explained in material and functional terms, the scientific description is complete.

Nevertheless, we also know something else. When these functional processes take place, we have subjective experience. It is interesting that this subjective experience takes place, and we can observe correspondences between it and the functional processes. That correspondence is worth noting, even though scientifically the functional account stands complete without it.

So the BAL-looping framework provides a complete functional account of the brain’s processes, but goes further, recognizing that we also have firsthand knowledge of the subjective experience that accompanies these processes. The framework describes both, and the correspondences between them, without attempting to explain “how” one gives rise to the other. It may even be that the functional process and the subjective experience are one and the same.

See also: Looping, PTD Channels, PTD Resonance, Neuronal Proxy, Proxy Configuration, Message Conversion, Semantic Formatting

Closing Note

This glossary outlines the key structural elements of the BAL-looping framework, emphasizing functional clarity over abstraction. While the framework is largely complete, the history of its development shows that certain definitions and sections sometimes give way to better ones as understanding deepens. This document may therefore be updated to reflect sharper distinctions, cleaner terminology, or more precise formulations. The aim is not to fix definitions in place, but to provide a stable reference point as the framework continues to clarify how expressive reuse – looping – gives rise to imagination, recollection, conscious perception, and every mode of subjective experience.