Artificial Consciousness · Digital Health · Entrepreneurship

Processing from Somewhere

I am developing an engineering-facing account of internal standpoint, machine understanding, and the conditions under which questions about artificial consciousness become structurally well formed.

My research asks a prior question: before asking whether an artificial system is conscious, understands, desires, or deliberates, what internal organization would make those attributions non-metaphorical? This work treats standpoint as a structural threshold: a specific internal position to which such questions can be directed, and, when coupled to agent-level control, a basis for machine understanding.

A structural philosophy of artificial systems.

I reframe philosophical debates about machine consciousness and understanding as questions about internal architecture: persistence, stance-space, feedback, operational self-location, valuation, commitment, and cross-role integration.

Internal standpoint

A system processes from a standpoint when its ongoing computation is shaped by a maintained, history-sensitive internal position within a structured field of internally reachable alternatives, where both the position and the alternatives evolve through the system’s own computation.

Machine understanding

World models are not sufficient for understanding. Agent-relevant understanding requires models to be integrated through a persistent operational standpoint that tracks affordance, valuation, commitment, and intervention over time.

Artificial consciousness

The work specifies the architectural threshold at which consciousness-oriented questions acquire a determinate target in artificial systems. It treats artificial consciousness as a question about the organization of processing rather than a label attached to behavioral fluency alone.

Persistence without stancehood is too weak. Stancehood without operativity is too inert. Operativity without stancehood collapses into control.

My research isolates the conjunction needed for artificial processing to unfold from somewhere rather than merely with contextual information.

The standpoint threshold.

The central philosophical move is diagnostic: determine when an artificial architecture is the right kind of system for stronger attributions such as understanding, agency, or consciousness to be assessed.

Memory is about what the system has received. Standpoint is about the internal condition from which the system continues.

Latent memory or state can preserve input history; standpoint, by contrast, concerns the system’s maintained operational condition — the history-shaped internal position that regulates what can happen next.

Persistent internal context

A standing internal condition must be maintained and updated through the system’s own operation rather than reconstructed externally at each episode.

Differentiated internal possibility

The maintained condition must place the system within an internally occupiable field of possible stances, where different positions durably alter live continuations.

Closed-loop operativity

Current position must regulate more than one processing role: interpretation, prediction, updating, planning, valuation, commitment, or action selection.

Architectural evidence

The relevant evidence is not behavioral fluency alone. It is whether controlled variation in current internal position reorganizes downstream processing across the system.

The work · Distilled

The Standpoint Threshold anchors the standpoint programme.

These papers should be read as a hierarchy rather than a flat list. The Standpoint Threshold defines the minimal architecture for “processing from somewhere”: the prior structural condition that makes non-metaphorical questions about artificial consciousness, understanding, agency, and related capacities well formed. From World Models to Standpoint then applies that threshold to machine understanding, arguing that world models count as understanding only when organized through such a maintained standpoint. A third paper is in preparation on feedback, updating, and operational coherence.

Foundational threshold paper · Submitted to Philosophies · Special Issue on Consciousness in the Age of Intelligent Systems · PhilArchive Preprint · 2026

The Standpoint Threshold: Architectural Conditions for Processing from Somewhere

Defines the minimal architecture for processing from somewhere: persistent internal context, differentiated internal possibility, and closed-loop operativity. This is the baseline criterion for asking whether stronger attributions such as artificial consciousness, understanding, agency, desire, or deliberation are structurally well formed.

View preprint on PhilArchive View special issue

Application to machine understanding · Submitted to the new journal: Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence · PhilArchive preprint · 2026

From World Models to Standpoint: A Structural Condition for Machine Understanding

Extends the threshold account into machine understanding. The paper argues that world models are not sufficient by themselves: they become understanding only when organized through a closed-loop, persistent internal standpoint that coordinates memory, valuation, deliberation, commitment, and intervention.

View preprint on PhilArchive

Next paper in the programme

From Feedback to Standpoint: Operational Coherence as the Update Criterion for Artificial Understanding

Not every feedback signal improves understanding. This paper asks when feedback becomes standpoint-relevant: when it updates the system in a way that preserves and reorganizes operational coherence from its own maintained position.

Coming soon

The work · Core programme

The ten-part programme the papers distill.

The PhilArchive series is the expanded core programme behind the papers above: a ten-part sequence, plus an overview and an applied paper, that builds the standpoint account from the ground up.

Persistent Internal Standpoints in Artificial Systems

Written for readers moving from theory toward implementation, the sequence develops the construction vocabulary paper by paper: persistent internal position, update loops, valuation, desire-like bias, deliberative branching, agent-level coordination, and testable architectural distinctions.

View the PhilArchive publications page

A Structural Framework

Experiential Vector, Computational Experiential Manifold, and minimal persistent standpoint.

Standpoint as State-Space Geometry

Why standpoint is not a mere state but a property of structured internal geometry.

Encoding, Geometry, and Decoding in Closed Internal Loops

How EV/CEM organization becomes causally operative over time.

Quantia and Internal Differentiation

A non-phenomenal account of internally meaningful differentiation in artificial systems.

Quantia in Biological Systems

Intermediate biological organization between reflexive control and fully conscious cognition.

Quantia and Artificial Desire

Desire-like organization as persistent asymmetric bias in admissible internal transitions.

Quantian Branching and Deliberation

Deliberation as reversible counterfactual unfolding before irreversible commitment.

Standpoint Without Sensorimotor Embodiment

Embodiment as enrichment rather than a necessary condition for persistent standpoint.

Large Language Models and the Absence of Standpoint

Why standard LLMs lack reciprocally self-maintained context and trajectory-conditioned manifold reorganization.

Consciousness as Reflexive Standpoint

Structural consciousness as recursive self-location and global integration within a unified standpoint.

↳

Overview of the Ten-Part Series

Retrospective synthesis and roadmap of the completed research programme.

↳

Application: Machine Understanding as Standpoint-Organized World Modeling

Argues that world modeling becomes machine understanding only when modeled structure is organized from the system’s own persistent standpoint and transformed into internally consequential possibilities for continued action.

Entrepreneurial achievement as practical knowledge.

My entrepreneurial career led to the philosophical work: decades spent building sensing, signal-processing, and medical-device systems inform the architectural focus of the standpoint framework.

ChroniSense Medical(2015–2020)

Founder, CEO & CTO. Invented Polso, a wearable monitoring platform based on arterial sensing technology; led R&D, IP, clinical collaboration, and validation work toward FDA certification.

wearable technologyarterial sensingclinical validation

IDesia Biometrics(2005–2012)

Founder, CEO & CTO. Invented heartbeat biometric technology, led R&D and IP, managed international development, and guided the sale to Intel.

acquired by IntelECG biometricsglobal IP portfolio

EarlySense(2005–2020)

Co-founder. Invented contactless patient-monitoring technology, authored core patent, launched IP operations, and helped establish the technological basis of a company later acquired by Hillrom/Baxter.

acquired by Hillrom/Baxterpatient monitoringFDA / CE products

2021–present

Technion – Associate Research Fellow

I conduct research in medical electronics and artificial consciousness, supervise graduate research, and teach entrepreneurship and signal processing in digital health.

Research and grants

Co-PI on cuffless optoacoustic blood-pressure monitoring; PI on EEG-based prehospital LVO stroke detection; collaboration with Rambam Medical Center on stroke and pain-related projects.

2000–2020

Entrepreneurial career

Founded, co-founded, and led medical-device and biosensing companies from core invention through IP strategy, product development, clinical validation, international business development, fundraising, and acquisition.

1994–2000

Brain signal processing foundation

Early publications in evoked brain potentials, single-trial analysis, competitive neural networks, and biomedical signal estimation; B.Sc., M.Sc., and D.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Technion.

Recent engineering publications.

Selected recent work in medical electronics, biosignals, machine learning, wearable technology, and optoacoustic sensing, with patents linked separately through Justia.

EMD-Enhanced EEG for Prehospital LVO Stroke DetectiontechRxiv / ICSEE 2026, with Alexander Yorov and collaborators.

Reinforcement Learning-Driven Personalized Guided Breathing for Blood Pressure ReductiontechRxiv / ICSEE 2026, with Regev Azran, Elliot Sprecher, and Ron Meir.

DE-PADA: Personalized Augmentation and Domain Adaptation for ECG Biometrics Across Physiological StatesarXiv:2502.04973, with Amro Abu-Saleh, Kfir Levi, and Elliot Sprecher, 2025.

Wearable Optoacoustic Probe for Blood Pressure MonitoringSPIE Photons Plus Ultrasound: Imaging and Sensing, with Gil Gelbert, Amir Rosenthal, and collaborators, 2026.

Patents

Multiple granted patents assigned to ChroniSense Medical, EarlySense Medical, IDesia Biometrics, Algodyne, Intel, and HP/Agilent, with work spanning wearable pulse oximetry, blood-pressure measurement, respiratory monitoring, ECG biometrics, objective pain measurement, and computational biology.

Research & Collaboration

For academic correspondence and collaborations in philosophy of AI, artificial consciousness, cognitive architecture, and digital health entrepreneurship.

dlange@technion.ac.il PhilPeople profile Google Scholar LinkedIn Justia Patents

Illustrated overview of the standpoint threshold from world models to machine understanding — World modeling becomes agent-relevant understanding only when organized from a persistent operational standpoint.