Theory of Content-Perspective Distinction: Constitutive Independence of Perspective and Informational Content

This article introduces the theory of constitutive distinction between informational content and perspective. Informational content includes perceptual objects, thoughts, bodily sensations, emotions, temporal and spatial organization, and self-related components. Perspective defines the condition of first‑person givenness under which such content can be experienced. Content and perspective are functionally distinct but empirically intersecting levels of experiential organization. Empirical testing proceeds along several lines. States with sharply reduced content provide a preliminary reference case for a neuropattern of content minimization, including reduced posterior default mode network activity, increased dorsal attention network engagement, reduced alpha power, and increased theta power. Individual alpha frequency and the temporal binding window belong to mechanisms of the temporal organization of content and leave open the question of perspectival organization. Depersonalization‑derealization disorder and ketamine‑induced dissociation provide test cases in which content may remain available despite disturbance of self‑reality coupling, reality feeling, and dynamic integration. The distinction has predictive status. Its support requires a reproducible divergence between parameters of content and parameters of perspectival organization. The distinction loses empirical support if content, wakefulness, sensory input, attention, reportability, temporal segmentation, and dissociative factors fully account for the reported network and rhythmic effects, leaving no independent residual that would require a separate level of perspective.