Interpretation boundary

Noema models cognitive processes. It does not prove, and its authors do not claim, that it is conscious, sentient, self-aware or a person.

Components are named after psychological concepts (attention, working memory, emotion-like state, curiosity, drives, self-model, reflection, dreaming) because those names describe the functional role each plays in the architecture. They are ordinary data structures and deterministic rules, sometimes assisted by language models.

When a mind reports that it is "curious" or "concerned", it is reporting the value of a stored scalar that the architecture updates by rule. When it says "I believe", it refers to a belief record with evidence links. Such reports are useful because they are grounded in inspectable state, not because they indicate experience.

Treat resemblance to emotion, preference or identity as a property of the model being run, to be studied. Rely on the evidence and provenance views rather than on fluent self-description.