The Book Spine.

Figure

FOUNDATIONS
  1. The Hard Problem of Grounding
  2. The Demon's Unpaid Bill
  3. The Price of Being
  4. The Immanentist Underground

ENGINES
  5. The Genesis Engine
  6. The Stabilisation Engine
  7. The Stratification Engine

COGNITIVE SEQUENCE
  8. The Bioelectric Governor
  9. The Embodied Present
 10. The Affective Witness
 11. The Offline Mind
 12. The Symbolic Exit

CONTEMPORARY VERDICT
 13. The Sixth Transduction

How to read it

The book moves in four bands. Chapters 1 through 4 install the realist and thermodynamic permissions. Chapters 5 through 7 define the engine sequence that explains novelty, persistence, and stacking. Chapters 8 through 12 walk the cognitive staircase one closure at a time. Chapter 13 tests the whole apparatus against the contemporary AI scene.