Consciousness as Intrinsic Nature: Structural Idealism and the Formal Foundations of Mind

This paper develops Structural Idealism as a research program exploring the formal consequences of analytic idealism. Building on the intrinsic nature argument (Russell, Strawson, Goff) and Kastrup's analytic idealism, we argue that consciousness is the only candidate for intrinsic nature that we can positively conceive. The framework introduces two fundamental dynamics: dissociation (unity differentiating into bounded perspectives) and association (bounded systems integrating into larger wholes). We construct a formal mapping Θ: Con → MB between Hoffman's Conscious Agents and Friston's Markov Blanket systems, proving that conditional independence structure is preserved. For empirical investigation, we propose the Φ-Assembly plane measuring synchronic integration and diachronic complexity. The paper establishes philosophical and formal foundations; a companion Technical Appendix (~55 pages) provides full measure-theoretic proofs.