If there were an elegant alternative to this model, that would be better. But I don't know of any other model that tries to comprehensively explain mental conflict without handwaving through the difficult parts.

Part of the problem may be that I assumed people already agreed with most of this model's premises. Looking at the comments, I see I was totally wrong and the average person here doesn't believe in things like the signaling theory of consciousness (which I thought was almost-universal in the Less Wrong community). So I might backtrack and try to make a sequence out of this, where I present each premise in order and slowly try to justify them. Maybe if people already believed all the premises it would look more like a reasonable way to fit a few large parts together, and less like LOOK HERE ARE TWELVE MILLION HYPOTHESIZED SYSTEMS AND SUBSYSTEMS THAT WHEN YOU PUT THEM TOGETHER KIND OF PRODUCE SOMETHING LIKE OUR BRAINS.