7Dialogs - Glossary

BAL-Looping Framework Glossary

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: a specialized process that the BAL sometimes employs for examining its own internal states.

See also: Goal-Seeking System, Internal Model, BAL/Looping Distinction

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 operator that adjusts 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.

The BAL must close the gap through action, not internal rearrangement. It requires confirming signals from the environment – new input that shows the target condition has been reached. Before the mechanism of Looping (described later), no goal can be experienced as achieved without real-world contact through sensory input.

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

Internal Model

To guide the organism's actions, the BAL must have a way to work with information about the environment when direct input is incomplete or momentarily absent. It does this by building and maintaining an internal model – a continuously updated set of learned configurations that reflect patterns the BAL has encountered through interaction.

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. Without it, the BAL could not act effectively, because every decision and adjustment depends on having this working structure in place.

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 the familiar steady, the BAL avoids the constant effort of full re-analysis.

Instead of reconstructing the whole internal model each time, the BAL makes quick checks to see whether the present still matches what it knows. Most of the time, everything lines up and the system stays in its steady rhythm, leaving energy free for other work.

But when something departs from that baseline – a new object in a familiar room, an unexpected sound, a change in someone’s manner – attention narrows immediately. 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: noticing that furniture has been moved, seeing a cat pause at something unfamiliar in its territory, or driving a usual route while thinking of other things until roadwork pulls you 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 steady to the familiar, and turn full attention to what changes.

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

See also: Brain at Large, Internal Model, Overview and Focus, Pattern Recognition

Neuronal Proxy

This phrase is used in its most straightforward sense. "Neuronal" because it involves neurons, and "proxy" because it's a stand-in – something that takes the place of another 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.

Crucially, 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.

A neuronal 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 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 made of sticks 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 rarely work alone. Once one is activated, it almost 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 awaken matching stand-ins 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 full proxy configurations.

3. Internal reuse of the communication channel – This one is uniquely human. The BAL can activate its own stand-ins through a process called looping: the activation of neuronal proxies triggered by incipient activity in the brain’s own outgoing communication channel. Think of it as the BAL catching itself “about to say something,” and then using that spark to light up the same internal structures it would have sent to someone else.

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.

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, such as when you speak, gesture, or write. The incoming channel receives messages and converts them into internal proxy configurations, such as 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

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 message that can be sent out. 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 proxy configurations that can be reactivated in another person's BAL through the 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. Culture, law, literature, mathematics, history, and science all live here because they can all be expressed and passed on through the PTD.

A person can also enter the Realm of Effation without speaking or writing, by looping their own PTD output back into themselves. Once a configuration is in the expressive channel, it is effable – available to the self and, potentially, to others.

A classic example is found in Sonnet 18, where Shakespeare writes: "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 trigger the incoming channel of a PTD.

See also: Proxy Transfer Device, Looping

Message Conversion

When a message comes in through the PTD's input channel, it travels as a linear stream – spoken words, written symbols, or gestures in sequence. The final step is when this stream is converted into stand-ins (a configuration of neuronal proxies) inside the BAL.

This is the moment when the meaning of the message is grasped. The outside signal stops being an external code and becomes part of your internal model.

See also: PTD Channels, Proxy Activation

PTD Resonance

Within the PTD, expressive and receptive channels are linked in tight correspondence. Activity in one channel automatically gives rise to a mirrored pattern in the other, much like two tuned strings vibrating together. This is not a vague analogy but a well-documented property of speech perception, exemplified in McClelland and Elman's TRACE model, where multiple processing levels exchange activation both forward and backward.

In the PTD, this bidirectional influence produces a kind of "handshake" between channels: each element in the outgoing stream is matched by a corresponding element in the incoming stream. Under normal circumstances, this resonance serves the internal workings of language, ensuring coordination between production and comprehension.

This same resonance becomes the foundation for a remarkable discovery: the BAL can learn to exploit this correspondence internally, using incipient activity in the outgoing channel to trigger the incoming channel directly. This internal reuse of the resonance is what makes looping possible.

See also: Neuronal Reuse, Looping, PTD Channels

Part 3: The Mechanism of Subjective Experience

Neuronal Reuse

Neuronal reuse is a well-established principle of brain organization: existing neural circuits, originally evolved for one function, can be repurposed for others without adding new anatomical modules. As Anderson (2010) notes, this is not an exception but "a fundamental organizational principle of the brain."

The PTD evolved to enable interindividual communication – converting proxy configurations into structured signals that can travel between BALs, and converting incoming signals back into proxy configurations. But neural circuits naturally explore new patterns when the opportunity arises.

During early development, as the child begins using the PTD, a reliable correlation emerges: expressive preparation in the outgoing channel consistently precedes meaning activation in the incoming channel. The brain, always sensitive to useful patterns, begins to detect this correspondence. Over time, it discovers it can trigger the incoming channel directly from its own expressive preparations, bypassing the external loop entirely.

This isn't a planned development – it's simply what neural circuits do when they encounter a stable, useful pattern. The same pathways designed for external communication get recruited for internal use, allowing the BAL to treat its own expressive preparations as if they were incoming messages.

See also: Looping, PTD Resonance, Proxy Transfer Device

Looping

Once the system for inter-individual communication had evolved, something remarkable became possible. When the brain at large (BAL) prepares to express something, that preparation contains a kind of synopsis of what would be communicated. Could this expressive preparation be leveraged somehow – accessed internally before it reaches the outside world?

This would be extraordinarily useful. The BAL normally can only activate proxies through actual interaction with the external world – which takes time, energy, and can be risky. Suddenly, through this internal reuse, the BAL gains a completely new way to activate proxies: it can trigger them directly through its own expressive preparations. This opens up remarkable possibilities – internal experimentation, mental time travel, hypothetical reasoning, complex planning, and focused examination of experience itself - all without having to engage the external world.

The mechanism emerges from the architecture itself. The BAL is equipped to work with messages that have passed through the incoming channel, where meaning is properly structured for comprehension. Resonance between the expressive and receptive pathways of the Proxy Transfer Device (PTD) creates the bridge: because the two channels can align in one-to-one correspondence, activity in the outgoing channel produces a mirrored pattern in the incoming channel. The BAL can then reuse this mirrored pattern just as it would any other incoming message.

This reuse does not involve hearing words or replaying sounds. Instead, it delivers the "gist" – the final integrated meaning that normally follows the decoding of another person's message. In looping, that meaning comes from one's own expressive signal, without it ever being externalized.

This single mechanism underlies all subjective experience – imagination, internal speech, voluntary recollection, conscious perception, and focused attention. There is no parallel system. There are no exceptions.

See also: Neuronal Reuse, PTD Resonance, Incipient Expression

Semantic Formatting

When the BAL prepares to express something through the PTD's outgoing channel, the signal undergoes a crucial transformation we call semantic formatting. This is not merely technical processing – it's what gives conscious experience its distinctively meaningful, communicative quality.

The exact mechanism of this formatting remains unknown, but its effects are unmistakable: looped content arrives with the same semantic richness we experience when understanding another person's words. This is why conscious perception feels meaningful rather than mechanical, why it seems to "tell us" about the world rather than simply responding to it.

For a fuller exploration of this insight – that conscious perception has an inherently communicative, semantic structure – see "A Fourth Dialogue Between Hylas and Philonous" (available online and forthcoming on PhilPapers). The dialogue format captures this subtle but crucial recognition more vividly than technical exposition alone.

Semantic formatting transforms neural activity into the language-like structure that becomes our conscious experience. It's the bridge between the BAL's mechanical operations and the meaningful, communicative quality of what we actually experience when we perceive, remember, or imagine.

See also: Incipient Expression, Looping, PTD Channels

Incipient Expression

"Incipient" means beginning to happen or develop. Incipient expression refers to activity within the PTD's outgoing channel that occurs before any motor commands are sent to the muscles – expression that is forming but hasn't yet become externalized speech, gesture, or writing.

The exact stage where looping intercepts this signal may vary between individuals. Some may loop the early, multidimensional proxy configuration (after semantic formatting but before linear conversion), while others may loop later in the process, when the signal has already been converted to a more sequential, word-like form.

Regardless of the specific interception point, this represents the crucial pivot – where a prepared expression can either continue outward to become actual communication, or be redirected inward through looping to become subjective experience.

Without access to this structured signal at some stage of the expressive process, there would be no material for the loop to work with, and therefore no subjective experience.

See also: Semantic Formatting, Looping, PTD Channels

Part 4: The Structure of Subjective Experience

Serial Nature of Subjective Experience

One of the most surprising discoveries about looping is that it can only handle one thing at a time. You cannot simultaneously loop a vivid memory while also looping focused attention on what you're seeing right now. The system must choose: either the memory or the perception, but never both at once.

This isn't a limitation of processing power or attention span. It's a structural fact about how looping works – like how your body can only be in one physical location at a time. You can move quickly between places, but you cannot occupy two locations simultaneously.

The same principle applies to subjective experience. While the BAL can switch rapidly between different configurations – perceiving, recalling, imagining, planning – it cannot loop more than one at once. What feels like experiencing multiple things simultaneously is actually fast alternation, with each configuration briefly occupying the looping process before yielding to the next.

We can't keep track of these transitions because we're not equipped to monitor the sequence – just as we lack a "certainty gauge" for detecting when we're looping a configuration for the first time versus re-looping a prior experience. The brain may detect that different configurations are active, but it cannot track the temporal relationship between A, B, and back to A well enough to determine whether they were simultaneous or sequential.

This explains why you can't vividly imagine a childhood scene while simultaneously focusing deeply on a complex visual task. The loop must choose which configuration to activate.

See also: Overview and Focus, Temporal Spanning, Looping

Overview and Focus

One of the most surprising discoveries about looping is that it can only handle one thing at a time. You cannot simultaneously loop a memory while also looping attention on what you're seeing right now. The system must choose: either the memory or the perception, but never both at once.

We can't keep track of these transitions because we're not equipped to monitor the sequence. The brain may detect that the active configuration has changed, but it cannot track the temporal relationship between A, B, and back to A well enough to determine whether they were simultaneous or sequential.

This explains why you can't recall a childhood scene while simultaneously engaging in perception of visual input. The loop can only activate one configuration at a time.

See also: Serial Nature of Subjective Experience, Temporal Spanning, Looping

Temporal Spanning

In the BAL framework, temporal spanning refers to the misleading sense of continuity between separate episodes of looping. At any given moment, only one configuration is being looped – whether it's a recollection, a perception, a plan, or any other looped content. The system can switch between these, but they are never truly simultaneous.

Because the brain has no built-in way to measure this switching, it can seem as though one thought or image "carried through" other experiences without interruption. For example, you might be walking down the street thinking about the last time you visited your grandmother. You glance at a tree and perceive it through looping, then return to thinking about your grandmother. It may feel as though thoughts of your grandmother persisted through the moment of seeing the tree – but during that perception, she was entirely absent from the loop.

Subjectively, this can feel like a smooth blending of contents, but functionally the loop is hopping from one moment to the next. The impression of continuity is simply the way the system stitches experience together.

See also: Serial Nature of Subjective Experience, Overview and Focus, Looping Uncertainty Principle

Looping Uncertainty Principle

When we recall a past experience, we are not retrieving it as it was originally looped. The reactivation happens through our current expressive–perceptual apparatus, and if that apparatus was different at the time, the original experience could have been entirely different – in ways we can no longer access. The problem isn't just fading memory, but the impossibility of stepping back into the prior system that first looped that moment.

Even if you anchor the experience with a marker – like a photograph, drawing, or journal – your perception of that marker is still filtered through your present apparatus. The colors, details, emotional tone – they are all being remapped by what you are now, not what you were then.

Joseph Conrad captures this impossibility in Heart of Darkness: "No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence… We live, as we dream – alone."

In the BAL–Looping framework, this becomes practical and unavoidable: each moment of subjective experience is inseparable from the system that generates it. When we recall, we are never re-looping the same moment – we are looping through a different, present system.

See also: False Stability Assumption, Constructed Recollections, The Naïve Archaeologist

False Stability Assumption

We instinctively assume that the way we experience things now is how we have always experienced them. When we recall the past, the present apparatus delivers it in a way that feels continuous, hiding any changes that may have occurred in the machinery of perception and looping.

This quiet bias – the belief in stability – differs from the uncertainty principle, which concerns the impossibility of verifying what past experience was actually like. The False Stability Assumption is our tendency to assume no verification is needed because "things have always been this way." We project our current experiential apparatus backward, assuming it was the same when we were younger, or even just yesterday.

This makes us confident that our recollections reflect how things actually felt at the time, when in fact they may be completely reprocessed through a changed system.

This is a corollary of the Looping Uncertainty Principle.

See also: Looping Uncertainty Principle, Constructed Recollections, Looping Misattribution Error

Interfunctional Complementation

When the BAL reconstructs a memory, it doesn't retrieve a single trace. It assembles a usable configuration from multiple proxy systems: visual proxies (what you saw), motor proxies (how you moved), proprioceptive proxies (where your body was), emotional proxies (how you felt), and auditory, linguistic, spatial, and social proxies.

This is Interfunctional Complementation – the reuse of proxy elements across different functional subsystems to form a coherent structure. The more systems engaged in the original experience, the more stable and versatile the configuration becomes.

In Jude the Obscure, Arabella explains why pigs she had walked ran away after being sold: "This comes of driving 'em home… They always know the way back if you do that. They ought to have been carted over."

Arabella intuitively recognized that walking the pigs home created a richly layered configuration – built from sight, motion, smell, effort, terrain, balance – which could later be reengaged. This redundancy isn't just for memory; it can support any future task that draws on the same pattern – whether it's pigs retracing their steps or a person recalling what they did at the restaurant.

See also: Proxy Configuration, The Naïve Archaeologist, Constructed Recollections

Part 5: Correcting Widespread Misconceptions

Consciousness-as-Window Fallacy

We intuitively believe that consciousness is a kind of window onto the world – that we experience reality as it is, in real time, through a transparent inner lens.

The BAL-Looping framework reverses this entirely. What we experience as conscious perception is not a direct input stream, but a looped construction – a report the BAL would give about the current environment, built from proxies.

Looping is not triggered by incoming sensory data. It is triggered by the BAL preparing a PTD-formatted output about that data. We are not watching the world; we are watching ourselves prepare to describe the world.

Consciousness is not a window. It is a rehearsal. We loop what we were about to say, not what we just sensed.

This explains why conscious perception is delayed, why we miss details we "should have seen," and why visual experience can persist even with eyes closed: the loop is still active.

See also: Looping, PTD Channels, Inner Witness Trick

Tape Illusion of Memory

We often imagine memory as a kind of recording – like a tape or video – that can be played back. This metaphor shapes everything from courtroom testimony to personal nostalgia.

But memory is not playback. It is present-moment reconstruction. The BAL assembles a plausible configuration using proxy traces, patterns, and fragments – and loops it.

The vividness of this loop gives the impression that it comes directly from the past. But in functional terms, it is no different from imagining the future: both are built now from available components.

There is no stored tape. There is only the current loop, assembled in real time from what remains.

See also: The Naïve Archaeologist, Interfunctional Complementation, Looping Uncertainty Principle

Involuntary Thought Fallacy

Sometimes thoughts come suddenly – uninvited, disturbing, or painful. It can feel like they're happening against our will.

But these thoughts are not intrusions. They come from the BAL – the brain at large – still trying to resolve something it could not fully process at the time.

If the original experience was too overwhelming, complex, or fragmented, the BAL may never have integrated it fully. So it keeps trying. Looping is the tool it uses to revisit and restructure meaning.

The difficulty is not in the intention, but in the mismatch: the BAL sends content forward, but the loop cannot yet assemble the configuration the BAL is reaching for. The result feels partial, distorted, or unresolvable – so the process continues.

The repetition is not "intrusive." It is the brain using its own machinery to seek resolution. Understanding this removes the fear of the thought. It was never an invader. It was always you.

See also: Brain at Large, Looping, BAL/Looping Distinction

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 new loop constructed in the present. The BAL may have recorded proxy traces at the time without looping them. Later, it assembles a plausible configuration and loops it – generating the present experience.

Because looping always feels immediate, we misattribute that immediacy to the original moment.

In most cases, we cannot know whether looping was active at the time. But there's one exception: if the BAL looped a semantically structured configuration – such as the thought "I am aware now" – that trace may persist, confirming that looping did occur.

Otherwise, the vividness of a memory is no proof of prior looping. It is a current construction, filtered through the BAL's present state.

See also: False Stability Assumption, Constructed Recollections, The Naïve Archaeologist

Inner Witness Trick (One-Step-Back Heuristic)

The idea that consciousness is "something inside" that watches or experiences our perceptions is rooted in an ancient misdirection – a trick the brain uses to ease uncertainty.

When we don't understand how a system works, it's common to place an imagined observer one step back. This satisfies our desire for closure, even though it doesn't answer the real question. A classic example is the story of the Earth resting on the back of a turtle. When someone asks, "What is the turtle standing on?" the reply is, "Another turtle." And so on – turtles all the way down. The story provides a false sense of explanatory depth, while the core mechanism remains untouched.

The same trick is at work in folk models of consciousness. We picture a "self" or "mind" inside the brain – something watching our perceptions, remembering the past, making decisions. But this homunculus never explains anything. It simply moves the mystery one layer deeper.

The BAL-Looping framework shows that the sense of inner presence emerges naturally. When the BAL loops its own outgoing signals – expressive preparations that would otherwise be directed at the world – it reactivates internal proxy configurations. This reactivation is what we experience as presence.

There is no need for an internal witness. The experience is what happens when the BAL is engaged in looping.

See also: Looping, Brain at Large, Consciousness-as-Window Fallacy

Part 6: Validating Applications

Constructed Recollections (Non-Experience as Experience)

Dreams are not experienced during sleep, when looping is offline. Yet when we recall a dream, it is remembered as if it were subjective experience – so it looks, in recollection, as though experience occurred during sleep.

Evolution does not equip us with a "certainty gauge" to measure whether a recollected event actually took place. Interfunctional complementation normally makes recollection highly reliable, but waking after a period of sleep is an outlier case.

This is a corollary of the Looping Uncertainty Principle.

See also: The Naïve Archaeologist, Looping Uncertainty Principle, Interfunctional Complementation

Split-Brain Phenomena (Functional Dissociation)

In patients whose corpus callosum has been severed, the two hemispheres of the brain operate independently. The BAL-Looping framework accounts for this through a clear functional split. The right hemisphere retains a full Brain-at-Large: it can perceive, evaluate, and guide behavior. However, it lacks access to the PTD and therefore cannot initiate Looping or generate reportable experience. The left hemisphere, by contrast, does have access to the PTD. It controls language and looping, allowing it to report content – but only from within its own internal state.

When the right hemisphere performs an action, such as selecting an object, the left hemisphere can observe the result but has no access to the proxy configuration that prompted it. So it does what it is designed to do: it loops its own available material and constructs a plausible explanation. The left loop explains what it didn't cause. The right BAL acts without looping – and without report.

Both hemispheres remain functional, each maintaining its own internal model of the environment. But only one has access to looping – and thus, only one can report on its internal states or produce subjective experience.

See also: Brain at Large, Looping, Proxy Transfer Device

Blindsight (Effective Sensory Input Without Looping)

In some cases of cortical blindness – for example, when the primary visual cortex is damaged – people say they see nothing at all, yet still respond correctly to visual events. They might point toward a flashing light, avoid an obstacle, or notice movement, even while insisting they are completely blind.

In the BAL–Looping framework, this happens because the BAL can still get visual input through other routes, such as the superior colliculus, and process it well enough to guide action. But if the information is never looped, there is no subjective experience of seeing. The BAL sees – but the loop never loops what the BAL sees.

It's not a paradox. It simply shows that the brain can take in information and build an internal model of the world from it, and can act with foundational competence based on that model, even if it cannot loop it.

See also: Brain at Large, Looping, BAL/Looping Distinction

Gut Feelings (Non-Looped BAL Knowledge)

Sometimes we just know – we sense danger, dishonesty, or the likelihood of failure without knowing how. This isn't irrational. It means the BAL has formed a real configuration from its internal model. But that configuration hasn't been shaped into a semantic format suitable for looping.

The knowledge is real. The pattern has been perceived and internally structured. But because it hasn't passed through the outgoing channel (the PTD), the loop doesn't receive it in a loopable form.

What reaches the loop instead is a somatic cue – a tightening in the chest, a wave of tension, or unease. The BAL is trying to get the loop's attention using available fallback channels, including the body.

This is not a mysterious sixth sense. It's the BAL doing its job – perceiving the world, forming patterns, and trying to signal the loop when standard channels don't apply.

The knowledge is there. The loop just doesn't know how to read it yet.

See also: Brain at Large, Looping, BAL/Looping Distinction

Tip-of-the-Tongue State

That strange moment when you know a word but can't quite say it – when you're certain it's there, but it won't come – is a direct expression of the BAL–Looping distinction. The Brain-at-Large (BAL) has the proxy. It's active and identifiable in the internal model, which is why you feel so sure the word is present. But the loop can't access it. The configuration exists, just not in a format the PTD can currently express.

So you loop around it – trying variants, related words, and semantic neighbors – until the correct pathway activates and expression becomes possible. This isn't a failure of memory. It's a temporary mismatch between proxy availability and looping access. The proxy is present. The loop just hasn't latched on – yet.

See also: Brain at Large, Looping, BAL/Looping Distinction

Hypnagogic Flash (Looping on the Threshold)

We often get it backward: we don't wake up because of a sudden image – we have the image because we are waking up. As looping comes back online, the brain tries to make sense of residual activity in the visual system, confabulating it into a coherent scene. The flash could be anything – a face, a strawberry, a geometric pattern – but it's a product of the waking process, not its cause.

See also: The Naïve Archaeologist, Constructed Recollections, Looping

Part 7: 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.

Looping does something similar. It draws on traces left by real experience and assembles them into a coherent recollection. But it can also be 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, 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: Constructed Recollections, 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, 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: Dreams as Constructions, The Naïve Archaeologist Principle, 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: Dreams as Constructions, The Naïve Archaeologist Principle, Placing Oneself into the World, Proxy Configuration

Looping Is Not Predictive

The brain at large is already very good at prediction without looping. You can catch a falling object in a completely unconscious motion, with no time to think about it – proof that accurate, rapid prediction does not require looping.

Looping doesn't forecast sensory data. It reactivates an internal expressive configuration the BAL was about to send outward, adding semantic structure that can be consciously experienced. The BAL may have learned many predictive relationships, but those come from its broader functioning, not from looping itself.

Looping's role is not to make behavior more accurate in the moment, but to enable other possibilities – imagined scenarios, recollection, conscious perception – all of which depend on the added meaning created when the loop is engaged.

See also: Brain at Large, Semantic Formatting, Looping

BAL/Looping Distinction

One of the most important insights of the framework is recognizing that the Brain at Large (BAL) and Looping are fundamentally different levels of operation. The BAL is the complete, competent system: it perceives, remembers, adjusts, acts, and learns. It is always active, always guiding behavior – whether or not anything is being looped.

Looping is a narrow operation the BAL uses to make part of its internal configuration available in a vivid, structured way. It allows the BAL to sense its own activity by reentering its expressive stream. This is what gives rise to subjective perception, imagination, inner speech, and recollection – but it is only a thin slice of what the BAL is doing at any given time.

Because looping produces what we experience as awareness, it's easy to assume that this stream is the whole self. But we are not the Loop. We are the BAL – looping is just one tool we use.

See also: Brain at Large, Looping, Serial Nature of Subjective Experience

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.

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 in their time this was not 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: Inner Witness Trick, Brain at Large, Looping

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, and the layered nature of subjective experience.