The Differentiation of the Continuous Core
I first proposed the concept of two tiers for conscious awareness last year in The Two Tiers of Consciousness: A Physiological Paradigm. I viewed the first tier as a construct that integrated the idea of the whole self that I had been using with a behavioral substrate that more clearly allowed for learning through experience. I realized that the concept of the whole self needed to be grounded in experience. I envisioned the idea of two tiers as I was working to complete the book, and I modified its final version substantially to accommodate this new insight.
After completing the book in August of 2025, I began to envision the first tier of consciousness as a pre-empirically developed core of experience. This critical realization pushed my thinking far beyond what I had developed in the book I had just completed. I proposed a physiological paradigm as a genetically given, innate substrate for pre-empirical functioning. This substrate included mirroring, the direct response we have to others that takes place without conscious guidance.
We resonate to others in a personal way, visceral way through mirroring, and this provides a basis for the human communities we form. Resonance stamps specific features within the otherwise undifferentiated landscape we encounter at the first tier with personal significance. This provides a necessary first step toward differentiating this landscape into the world of entities and events we learn to recognize at the verbal-symbolic tier. Personal significance at the first tier remains unvoiced as it leads us to pause what we are doing and linger in the presence of those who matter to us. Our ability to pause an otherwise continuous pre-empirical flow of activity creates space for a new level of conscious awareness.
We differentiate the conscious world we learn to recognize at the verbal-symbolic tier from the continuous physical core previously established at the first tier. The process of differentiation takes place gradually in stages as new layers of response are laid down upon those that have already been established. We learn to identify entities and events before adding symbolic designations and descriptions.
The developmental stages involved in this process can be considered phylogenetically as species gradually gain increasing awareness of their surroundings. They can also be thought of ontologically as infants grow into childhood and then into adults. They can even be applied personally to the steps each of us goes through as we discover new aspects of the world and assimilate what we learn as knowledge. The developmental process of moving from a continuous core at the first tier to the recognizable world at the verbal-symbolic tier involves the addition of increasingly differentiated layers of physical response. Verbal and symbolic ways of responding develop from their physical base as we identify features within the core of experience and learn to recognize them as entities and events.
I propose seven developmental stages for this transition:
- We develop a continuous core of experience through undifferentiated physical encounters guided by pre-empirically generated responses.
- Certain features gain personal significance through mirroring as the first step toward delay and conscious differentiation.
- Entities and events are identified because of their personal significance within the otherwise undifferentiated realities we encounter.
- Family resemblance identifications enable us to rapidly recognize previously identified entities and events.
- Designations and descriptions are assigned to the entities and events we have identified.
- These designations and descriptions access and activate specific structural constellations within the core of experience at the first tier in preparation for potential lines of response.
- Designations and descriptions are used in thought and writing to access and activate core structures while inhibiting a physical response, making it possible to formulate extended behavioral plans and strategies.
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