Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)· 2026
V01.03 — Mirror Theory III: Recursive Observerhood in Context
- 13citations
- 2026year
Short summary
Mirror Theory is presented not as a replacement for existing cognitive science frameworks, but as a bridge that explicitly targets 'observerhood' as a key explanatory concept.
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Key points
- Mirror Theory is proposed as a bridge between cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and AI frameworks.
- It defines 'recursive observerhood' as a system maintaining and tracking its own world and self-models.
- Observerhood is made an explicit explanatory target, rather than an assumed starting point.
- The theory is situated within a broader landscape, comparing it to predictive processing, enactivism, and IIT, among others.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
This paper closes the Theory Arc of Mirror Programme, Volume I: Observerhood by situating Mirror Theory within the broader landscape of cognitive science, philosophy of mind and artificial intelligence. It compares Mirror Theory with predictive processing, active inference, autopoiesis, enactivism, global workspace theory, integrated information theory, self-model theory, intentional systems theory, strange-loop accounts and simulation arguments. The paper argues that Mirror Theory should be understood not as a replacement for these frameworks, but as a candidate bridge among them by making observerhood an explicit explanatory target rather than an assumed starting point. The paper clarifies the distinctive contribution of Mirror Theory: recursive observerhood as a derived regime in which a bounded viability-constrained system maintains a world-model, a self-model and reliability-tracking over its own self-model in a way that matters for prediction, correction and continued organisation. This release completes the initial Theory Arc following V01.01 — Mirror Theory I and V01.02 — Mirror Theory II.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Cognitive Neuroscience
Cognitive NeuroscienceNeuroscience