Imagination as General Intelligence: Reconciling Consciousness and Free Will (zenodo.org)

A new white paper introduces the Predictive Timeline Simulation (PTS) Framework, which reconceives consciousness as an evolved predictive simulation engine rather than a mystical byproduct. Combining predictive coding neuroscience, the brain’s “common core” network, and the Block Universe view of spacetime, the authors argue consciousness functions as a workspace that simulates and evaluates possible future timelines. Qualia are reframed as a compact data format optimized by evolution for navigating a largely deterministic universe, making the framework explicitly testable and grounded in physics and biology. The paper outlines concrete implications: neuroscientifically, it models how predictive systems generate an internal timeline-simulation workspace; clinically, it proposes the Simulation Misfiling Hypothesis, where schizophrenia and related disorders arise from failures of executive control over that simulation process, suggesting avenues for early detection and intervention. For AI, PTS supplies a blueprint for AGI centered on “imagination” — the capacity to generate and assess novel futures as the core of general intelligence. The proposal is multidisciplinary and empirically oriented, with a robust bibliography and a submitted public version (2025-09-12), inviting experimental tests across philosophy, neuroscience, clinical science, and AI research.