Organisms and consciousness
How temporal constraints, biological needs and incomplete processing may give rise to valence, conscious evaluation and integrated selfhood.
Explore consciousness research →Arik Shimansky
I work on how systems make sense of incomplete worlds.
I investigate how organisms, persons, artificial systems and institutions transform incomplete signals into meaningful evaluation, coherent attention and adaptive action—and how, through this process, they construct both a self and the world available to that self.
The work moves between scientific theory, computational systems and commercial practice. These are not separate interests, but different expressions of one continuing inquiry.
One inquiry, several scales
Partial signals acquire significance. Significance organises attention. Attention becomes action.
Artificial cognitive systems
How memory, provenance, goals, attention, uncertainty and action can be organised into persistent personal cognitive architectures.
Explore artificial systems →Institutions and collective action
How organisations construct what they can recognise as credible, risky or actionable when a new reality no longer fits existing structures.
Visit Synaptic Quanta →Current work
Research, systems and practice
Measuring the Unmeasurable
Accepted conference talk · working paperA theory of consciousness centred on temporal constraint: when an organism must evaluate survival significance before the underlying information can be fully resolved.
↗Digital Umwelt
In developmentA persistent, user-governed layer translating between a person and interchangeable applications or AI models.
↗Personal Cognitive Architecture
Active system · research and developmentA provenance-grounded personal AI architecture combining information integration, continuity, metacognition and valenced goal control.
↗Nested Selfhood
Exploratory theoryHow nested regulatory and representational boundaries may produce progressively integrated forms of self.
↗Synaptic Quanta
Active practiceA small commercial practice for complex situations involving emerging technology, capital and institutional reality.
↗An evolving research programme
The question has changed as the work has developed.
PQM and the hard problem
An early proposal connected low-level physical mechanisms with predictive processing, affect and evolutionary delay. Presented at The Science of Consciousness, Taormina.
Temporal constraint and valence
A theory-agnostic account in which unresolved temporal pressure creates the evolutionary need for early, felt survival-value assessment.
Official conference abstract →From formal systems to lived institutions
A route through science, finance, technology and climate.
Formal training in mathematics, physics and quantum chemistry was followed by a career across institutional finance, investment, technology ventures, climate systems and complex commercial work. The sectors changed, but a recurring pattern remained: consequential situations contain fragmented signals, competing models and boundaries between systems.
Mathematics & physicsQuantum chemistryInstitutional financeTechnology & climateArtificial cognitive systemsConsciousness & selfhood
Read the full history →