Is reflexive awareness intrinsic to experience or a constructed higher-order operation?

{
 "schema_version": 1,
 "artifact_type": "argument_fabric_dossier",
 "question_id": "q:reflexivity-intrinsic-or-constructed",
 "question": "Is reflexive awareness intrinsic to experience or a constructed higher-order operation?",
 "why_it_matters": "This is the local crux beneath the broader question of whether consciousness is fundamental. It separates structural reflexivity, intrinsic self-manifestation, Buddhist no-self analysis, and higher-order/self-model accounts.",
 "status": "live_crux",
 "resolution_level": "local_argument",
 "parent_questions": [
  "q:consciousness-fundamental",
  "q:prakasa-definition"
 ],
 "candidate_explanations": [
  {
   "candidate_id": "cand:abh-vimarsa-intrinsic",
   "tradition_scope": "trika_pratyabhijna",
   "name": "Intrinsic self-manifestation",
   "best_case": "Experience is not merely present; its presence is intrinsically self-apprehending. Vimarsha is not a later reflection but the self-disclosure without which manifestation could not be intelligible.",
   "hard_to_vary_core": [
    "Manifestness cannot be derived from non-manifest third-person structure alone.",
    "Recognition requires self-presence, not merely object presentation.",
    "Prakasha without vimarsha would be inert shining rather than intelligible manifestation."
   ],
   "current_problems": [
    "The universalization from local reflexivity to one ultimate consciousness is not entailed by local phenomenology.",
    "Brain dependence constrains any account that treats empirical minds as direct windows into ultimate consciousness.",
    "The account risks using experience as evidence that experience is fundamental without an independent bridge."
   ],
   "falsifiers": [
    {
     "type": "anumana",
     "condition": "A complete account of recognition/reflexivity that explains self-presence without intrinsic manifestness.",
     "status": "untested"
    },
    {
     "type": "prasanga",
     "condition": "Show that intrinsic self-manifestation can be removed while all phenomena Abhinavagupta uses it to explain remain equally explained.",
     "status": "untested"
    }
   ],
   "initial_status": "live"
  },
  {
   "candidate_id": "cand:dharmakirti-conditioned-reflexivity",
   "tradition_scope": "dharmakirti_buddhist",
   "name": "Conditioned cognition without enduring Self",
   "best_case": "Cognition can be reflexively structured without requiring a permanent or universal subject. Selfhood is constructed through cognitive operations and exclusion, not discovered as an ultimate owner.",
   "hard_to_vary_core": [
    "No enduring self-substance is required for cognition to function.",
    "Recognition and identity can be explained through structured causal/cognitive relations.",
    "Apoha and arthakriya shift the burden from metaphysical essence to functional discrimination."
   ],
   "current_problems": [
    "It must explain immediate manifestness without treating it as a mere abstraction.",
    "It must avoid collapsing reflexivity into eliminativism about experience.",
    "It must explain why cognition appears self-present, not only successful."
   ],
   "falsifiers": [
    {
     "type": "anumana",
     "condition": "A proof that recognition logically requires intrinsic self-manifestation rather than conditioned cognitive structure.",
     "status": "untested"
    }
   ],
   "initial_status": "live"
  },
  {
   "candidate_id": "cand:nanavira-structural-reflexivity",
   "tradition_scope": "nanavira_phenomenology",
   "name": "Structural reflexivity without hidden substance",
   "best_case": "Experience can include its own occurrence through recursive structure. Identity is preserved through transformation without positing an owner-substance or universal subject.",
   "hard_to_vary_core": [
    "Reflexivity is a structural capacity of experience.",
    "Self-identity can arise from invariance across transformations.",
    "The owner of reflexivity need not be reified."
   ],
   "current_problems": [
    "Structural