Herath's State-Space Selection, the Sentience Factor, and the Untriggered State

Financial consultant and independent researcher Roy (Rohitha) Herath's proposed theory of consciousness comprises three connected theories. (I) the State-Space Selection Theory of Consciousness, on how a mind settles into an experience (Herath, 2026a); )ii) the Sentience Factor, on what makes a stabilized configuration a felt one (Herath, 2026b); and (iii) the untriggered state, on how the fully triggered, semi-triggered and untriggered conditions differ in ordinary life (Herath, 2026c). The account claims no substrate and makes no claim about mind apart from the living system that operates it.

Selection and Stabilization

The mind is modeled as a dynamical system whose configuration moves across a stability landscape. A conscious episode is the stabilization of one configuration in an attractor basin, held past a dwell-time threshold, and at most one configuration is stabilized at a time.

The Residue: Two Components of Feeling

A full specification of selection and stabilization is a specification of structure, which alone does not settle whether a configuration is felt (Chalmers, 1995). Herath therefore divides feeling in two: the inseparable sensation (Type-1), conceded to structure, and the separable overlay (Type-2), the relish or aversion laid over it. The sensation cannot be removed while the structure that carries it is engaged, whereas the overlay can be removed while sensation and structure remain. On this removability asymmetry the account rests, and it is the ground for arguing that the overlay is distinct from structure.

The Second Body and the Trigger

The overlay is the union of the stabilized configuration with a second, non-structural body of information, the Sentience Factor. The union forms only when the system takes a binary operation, attachment or aversion, toward the configuration. Identifying the overlay with the union says where feeling is, not why the union is felt.

Overlay-Free Selection

The third paper divides Type-1 function into the autonomous (such as temperature regulation) and the semi-autonomous (thirst, hunger and warmth, which require selecting among options in the world). Semi-autonomous selection requires no overlay, which answers the objection that a system without the overlay could not select or act. The overlay can instead bend selection away from need, as when craving overrides thirst.

The paper replies to that objection with an additive-versus-subtractive contrast. Conditions of lost drive remove structure upstream of the overlay, and with it initiative, whereas the untriggered state (the binary's trigger silent, so no union forms) removes the overlay alone. A double discriminator follows: only the untriggered state leaves Type-1 vivid and initiative whole, and only it is permanent. Where need leaves a choice open, the paper bets that the dynamics settle it, with no affective tie-breaker, and it says what would break the bet: a system with intact structure and no overlay that stalled at such choices.

Wanting, Liking and Pain

Liking and wanting are treated as two cycles of the single binary, distinguished by the sensation on which it fires. Liking fires on the object as consummated, and wanting fires on the object as anticipated, cued or remembered. Liking comes first in origin, since the first firing toward any object can fall only on the sensation the object delivers, and wanting is always the later cycle, carried by the basin that earlier unions have deepened and not by any stored relish. The mapping is claimed only where its criterion holds: a state counts as liking or wanting when the binary fires toward the registered sensation.

On pain, the registration (location, intensity, quality and the fact of tissue damage) is Type-1. It is non-vetoable, vital for survival, and removable only by altering the registering structure, not by silencing the binary. The unpleasantness is the aversion elaborated on the registration and is Type-2, so the untriggered state removes the unpleasantness and leaves the registration whole. The paper names what would break this: a trained system that lost the registration while the registering structure stayed intact, or an identified untriggered system reporting a residual unpleasantness not attributable to attachment or aversion. Both are testable only in first-person report.

Training and the Untriggered State

The binary has a triggering role that forms the union and a sustaining role that prolongs it. Withholding the sustaining role gives the trained gap (the semi-triggered state). Silencing the trigger gives the untriggered state, in which sensation, selection and need-meeting action stay intact and craving and grievance do not arise. The paper argues that this is reached by realization and not by suppression, because refusing the overlay is itself an aversion and so keeps the binary firing. The training reshapes a disposition, and no agent is installed. Permanence is presented as a derived prediction, since what is realized cannot be unseen, whereas damage, drugs or deprivation are lesions or state disturbances and not the reversal of a realization.

The paper concedes that the motive that brings a practitioner to the practice, a wanting for the state or an aversion toward one's own craving, is itself the binary firing. It serves as scaffolding for attending and does none of the reshaping, and a practitioner who still reports wanting the state is not yet untriggered. Separately, and marked as a stronger assertion, the paper identifies the untriggered state in a living organism with Nibbana in its precise Pali sense, distinct from the popular "Nirvana" and from "letting go", which the paper treats as restraint and so as the binary still firing.

Testability and Its Boundary

Three interventions vary the overlay's expression: state induction, attention withdrawal and trained non-attachment. The paper adds a falsifiable signature: an untriggered system should track need without craving-override, a signature that concerns why an option is selected, not which. It states what would break its claims: craving, need-override or stalling without damage in an identified untriggered system, or a reversal without damage in a practitioner whose report is of realization.

The paper states the boundary plainly. Third-person observation detects the overlay's expression but cannot decide between a distinct constituent and a reconfigured structure, a question that admits no third-person resolution at all. Whether the overlay was stopped by realization or by suppression admits only a partial and defeasible answer over time, since suppression re-ignites under changed circumstances and reconfiguration does not, and a definitive answer only from the first person. First-person access settles the matter for the practitioner and is not public proof.

Relationships and Assessment

Herath positions his theory against Integrated Information Theory and the Global Workspace approach, to which the structure-and-dynamics argument above applies directly, and alongside property-dualist and Russellian views, with which it shares the intuition that structure leaves something over. He treats the residue as a second body of information and claims neither a second substance nor a substrate.

The work is offered as a case built so that its joints are visible, resting on the removability asymmetry between the two components of feeling. It does not claim to explain why the union is felt. It claims no substrate, nothing about whether any part of the mind obtains apart from the operating body, no measurement of the second body, and no ranking of the states it distinguishes.

Note: The trilogy is classified as Non-Reductive Physicalism rather than among the monisms. Consciousness is broadly physical and within the living system, while the felt overlay is irreducibly distinct from structural description. The second constituent is characterized by role and property, not by composition, and neither a second substance nor a substrate is claimed.

References

Chalmers, D. J. (1995). Facing up to the problem of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2(3), 200–219.

Herath, R. (2026a). The State-Space Selection Theory of Consciousness (SSSTC). https://philarchive.org/rec/HERTSS-3

Herath, R. (2026b). The Sentience Factor of Consciousness: An extension of the State-Space Selection Theory of Consciousness. https://philarchive.org/rec/HERTSF-7

Herath, R. (2026c). Untriggered State of Consciousness: A further extension of the State-Space Selection Theory of Consciousness and the Sentience Factor. https://philarchive.org/rec/HERUSO