A Constraint-Based Architecture of Consciousness: Meaning Cost, Alignment, and Interface Coordination

Understanding consciousness requires not only explaining how information is represented and integrated, but also how it is regulated under biological constraints. While contemporary theories such as predictive processing, global workspace theory, and integrated information theory have provided important insights into the mechanisms of conscious processing, they do not fully account for how limited energy, entropy pressure, and uncertainty shape the structure and stability of conscious experience.This paper addresses this gap by proposing a constraint-based framework in which consciousness is defined as a cost-constrained coordination process across functional interfaces. The model introduces three core mechanisms—Meaning Cost, alignment, and bandwidth—which together determine how information is selectively processed, stabilized, and integrated. Within this framework, conscious experience is conceptualized not as a complete representation of reality, but as a compressed internal report generated under resource limitations.To account for the structure of experience, the framework further defines an interface-based architecture in which temporal, informational, and self-referential processes are organized as distinct but dynamically coordinated domains. The self is reconceptualized as a multi-interface configuration, comprising subjectivity, continuity, agency, and reality filtering, and is shown to be both coherent and selectively vulnerable under varying alignment conditions.The model generates a set of empirically testable predictions, including constraint-induced compression of experience, non-linear dynamics between alignment and stability, bandwidth-limited scenario generation, and interface-specific patterns of disruption in both normal and pathological states. These predictions establish the framework as a falsifiable and experimentally tractable account of conscious regulation.Rather than replacing existing theories, the proposed approach integrates their strengths while addressing a previously underspecified dimension: how conscious systems maintain functional stability under constraint. By linking biological limitations to experiential structure through a unified regulatory architecture, this framework offers a novel and integrative perspective on the nature of consciousness.