The paper investigates the hypothesis that the first-order structure of physical interactions, i.e. gradients or Jacobians, characterizes the structure of phenomenal experience. This investigation occurs within Gradland, an idealized world inhabited by neural networks, where the physics are known and the functions are (mostly) differentiable. The paper introduces two measures of Jacobian structure: effective rank and cohesion, based on Kirchhoff complexity. Applying these measures to a series of worked examples reveals that the hypothesis accounts for several aspects of experience. These include the duration of experience, which can prolong over hundreds of milliseconds, the difference between what is experienced vividly and obscurely, the experience of texture, the blooming buzzing confusion presumably experienced by newborns, the difference between ideas that are held distinctly in mind and ideas that are confused, what learning is like, and finally the function of rich, dense experience.
Source: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.09306