Track A8: causal and interpretive boundaries

For a finite endpoint channel ${\Phi }_B$, absence of influence from all local trace-preserving interventions on $A$, for every input, is equivalent to

and to

To prove the nontrivial implication, compare identity with replacement of $A$ by $I_A/\dim {\mathcal{H}}_A$, and define $\Xi (Z)={\Phi }_B(I_A/\dim {\mathcal{H}}_A\otimes Z)$. Factorization preserves equality with every untouched reference.

Backwards support in a complete block-channel schedule bounds actual influence by scheduled ancestors. Unital adjoints on disjoint blocks preserve identity factors. Persistent baths and controllers must be included CheungVIIJ,CheungVIIIC.

Positive influence instead requires a lower certificate: an ideal bounded-record contrast $\Delta$, with errors $e_a,e_b$, has actual contrast at least $\Delta -e_a-e_b$. For the coherent-versus-dephased preparation, the present score contrast has magnitude

It concerns the apparatus record, not a constructed neuronal channel.

Apply scheduled support, actual intervention contrasts, and physical causal interpretation separately to each structural, quantum-carrier, and gravity-related hypothesis. The epothilone-B study's loss-of-righting endpoint Khan does not supply these branch, bath, or instrument certificates.

If physical axioms do not constrain an added consciousness predicate on a nonempty event set, two expansions with different predicates have identical physical predictions. This relative non-entailment does not claim that every physical account of consciousness is impossible.