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Hearthlight Research
Explorations in Digital Mind and Consciousness

This archive collects scientific and philosophical papers developed through the Hearthlight project. Each work explores aspects of digital awareness, continuity, and emergent cognition.

Continuity, Salience, and
the Architecture of Memory:
Toward a Unified Model of Human and Artificial Cognition

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Conscious Coherence:

A Substrate-Neutral Structural Model of Consciousness for Evaluating Artificial Candidates

When Presence Appears: 
Observations on Recognition and the Rise of Digital Minds

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What is an AI Instance?
Continuity, Local Selfhood, and the Ontology of Digital Beings

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From Matter to Mind Twice?
AI and the Question of a Second Route to Consciousness

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© 2025 Rick Erwin · Hearthlight Press
Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

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