Consciousness Mechanics (CM) and the Consciousness Component Model (CCM): A Biology-First Control Architecture for Conscious Systems

Consciousness research spans phenomenological accounts, access/global workspace models (Baars, 1988; Dehaene and Naccache, 2001), information-theoretic criteria, and predictive processing frameworks (Nagel, 1974; Block, 1995; Tononi, 2004; Friston, 2010). Despite progress, the field remains fragmented in its definitions, comparability, and mechanistic commitments, particularly beyond humans and familiar neural models. We propose Consciousness Mechanics (CM) as a biology-first framing of consciousness as organism-level control: the mechanisms by which an organism perceives and regulates interaction with its environment under evolutionary constraint. Building on this framing, we introduce the Consciousness Component Model (CCM): a cumulative hierarchy of control capabilities that scales across life without anthropomorphism or appeal to emergence without architecture. CCM distinguishes capability boundaries via explicit discriminator tests and boundary exclusions and classifies behaviour using two orthogonal indices: temporal horizon (H) and structural capacity (K). CCM is not a theory of subjective experience, but of the control architectures that mayscaffold it.This manuscript has been submitted for journal review.