Research Program / Claims / alternate-focus-1

Consciousness itself does not change; what changes is only the direction or level toward which consciousness points, not the essence of consciousness itself.

意识本身不变，改变的只是意识所指向的方向或层面，而非意识自身的本质

Concept alternate focus · Domain Consciousness States and Attentional Dynamics · ontological claim · interface 3/3 · testability 3/3 · status untested · ★ fundable

This program treats the Seth Material as a source of hypotheses, not as doctrine to be validated. Lead dossiers are AI-compiled from the corpus with a book-and-session citation after every statement; literature reviews are AI web-search summaries whose references were all DOI-verified against Crossref; the agenda draft is an AI synthesis. None of it is Seth's original text, and none of it represents scientific consensus. English fields are machine-translated; the Chinese text is authoritative.

Seth sources (book §session)
Adjudicating experiment
The original assertion has no measurable 'essence' and cannot be directly adjudicated. A weak version can be agreed upon first: whether conscious capacity remains equivalent when altering direction of internal/external attention. Recruit approximately 120 adults for within-subject comparison of interoception, external vision, imagery, and relaxation conditions, recording EEG, subjective experience, perceptual sensitivity, and metacognitive efficiency; each person 3 sessions, 1 week apart, project about 12 months. Pre-register equivalence bounds and test cross-state measurement invariance; capacity stability can only support this weak version.
Suggested paper title
Conscious Access and Metacognitive Capacity Across Internal and External Attentional States
What it would overturn
Only if 'essence' is defined as measurable capacity can results possibly modify specific models of 'attention direction and conscious capacity may vary independently'; it cannot directly overturn brain-dependence assumptions.
Candidate labs / funders
Marcello Massimini：米兰大学，意识与TMS–EEG研究; Cogitate Consortium：意识理论对抗性合作研究团队; Athena Demertzi：列日大学 Physiology of Cognition Laboratory
Specificity of Seth's formulation
Provides no invariant, measurement method, or failure condition; 'direction changes, essence unchanged' is currently more difficult to distinguish and falsify than modern consciousness state models.
Note
The full table is rated according to the original claim; untested means this search found no direct test, not proof that no one worldwide studies it; adjacent evidence is noted with scope; sample sizes are planned magnitudes; formal projects still require power simulation; proposed English titles do not presuppose positive results.
Evidence (2, DOI-verified via Crossref)

Cite: Future Mind Institute, Seth Material Research Agenda, claim alternate-focus-1, https://www.seth.org.cn/en/research/claims/alternate-focus-1