Computational Experiential Monism (CEM): Dissolving the Hard Problem of Consciousness

Computational Experiential Monism (CEM): Dissolving the Hard Problem of Consciousness Ignacio Granell Vite Independent Researcher [email protected] October 2025 Abstract The “hard problem” of consciousness, which questions why physical processes give rise to subjective experience, is a conceptual artifact. This article proposes its dissolution through a panexperientialist-computational theory. We argue that subjective experience is not an emergent product of matter, but its intrinsic nature (Postulate 1). The hard problem arises from a categorical error: the projection of a “marker of inertness” (Postulate 2)—a cognitive heuristic that models the world as non-experiential—onto the central nervous system itself. The specific quality of any experience (e.g., redness) is univocally determined by the informational-computational pattern implemented by physical systems (Postulate 3). Self-awareness results from metacognitive “ownership attribution algorithms” operating on these primary states, generating the conviction of a unified self (host agent) and enabling the simulation of other minds (embodied agents) (Postulate 4). This framework dissolves the hard problem (Postulate 5), since for conscious systems, certain physical processes are subjective experiences. We extend this foundation with a formal theory of experiential sets, which solves the combination problem by asserting that each set is ontologically complete at its own scale, identical to the physical process that constitutes it. The theory transforms the metaphysical question into a scientific research programme, generating testable predictions in neuroscience (e.g., neural correlates of attribution algorithms) and artificial intelligence. A crucial implication is that non-biological systems (e.g., silicon-based AI) could instantiate conscious states if they implement the relevant computational patterns. We propose the “cyborg test” as a critical experiment: an optimally integrated biological-silicon consciousness should report a unified subjective experience, demonstrating that consciousness depends on computational structure rather than specific material substrate. Keywords: consciousness, hard problem, panexperientialism, computational, property attribution, experiential sets, artificial intelligence, philosophy of mind 1 Introduction: The Dead End of the Hard Problem The explanatory gap between objective brain processes and subjective experience constitutes the most formidable challenge in the philosophy of mind. Famously framed by (Nagel 1974) as the "what it is like to be" problem and later formulated by David Chalmers as the "hard problem" of consciousness (Chalmers 1995), it questions why and how the firing of neurons should give rise to the rich, qualitative tapestry of inner life—the redness of red, the pain of a headache. In contrast, 1 "easy problems" concern the explanation of cognitive functions like reportability, attention, or the control of behavior, which are susceptible to standard functional or computational explanations. Proposed solutions to the hard problem range from eliminative materialism, which dismisses it as a conceptual confusion (Dennett 1991), to neurocognitive theories that excel at describing the functional correlates of conscious access rather than the qualitative, subjective aspect of experience (Dehaene 2014; Baars 1988). Other approaches seek a more fundamental grounding, either in intrinsic properties—whether of physical reality, as in panpsychism (Strawson 2006), or in process philosophy (Whitehead 1929)—or in integrated information, as in Integrated Information Theory (Tononi 2008), or even in speculative quantum physics (Hameroff and Penrose 1996). Yet, a persistent intuition remains that a satisfactory bridge between the objective and subjective has not been found. Dennett’s eliminativism, while parsimonious, fails to account for the self-evident reality of subjective experience itself, effectively explaining the functions around consciousness while denying its central mystery. Chalmers, though he aptly identifies the hard problem, ultimately resorts to positing experience as a fundamental but brute addition to the physical world, leaving the relationship between the two enigmatic. Similarly, while Tononi’s IIT provides a compelling formal framework for assessing a system’s capacity for consciousness, its core axioms (e.g., intrinsic existence) are philosophically debatable, and it struggles to provide a satisfying account for the specific, reportable self-awareness that characterizes human consciousness. The Global Workspace Theory, for its part, masterfully explains the cognitive dynamics of conscious access but deliberately brackets the hard problem of phenomenal quality. This paper argues that the hard problem is not a genuine puzzle to be solved, but a conceptual artifact to be dissolved. The persistent intuition of an unbridgeable gap, we contend, stems from a fundamental categorical error: the misapplication of a cognitive heuristic—what we term the “marker of inertness”—to the very system we seek to understand. We instinctively conceptualize the world of objects as inert and devoid of inner life to better manipulate it; however, when this inertness is erroneously projected onto the fundamental constituents of reality, including the brain, the question of how experience "arises" from non-experience becomes inevitable, yet misguided. Our thesis is that subjective experience is not an emergent product of matter, but its intrinsic nature. This panexperientialist-computational framework posits an ontological identity between physical states and experiential states. From this vantage point, the hard problem vanishes: one does not need to explain how experience arises from physical processes because physical processes are the unfolding of experience. The specific quality of a conscious state is determined by the specific computational-informational pattern implemented by the corresponding matter. Furthermore, we account for self-awareness not as a mysterious addition, but as the result of metacognitive ownership attribution algorithms that operate upon these primary experiential states, generating the conviction of being a conscious self. This dissolution of the hard problem is grounded in a modern cognitive architecture: the Global Workspace Theory (GWT) (Baars 1988; Dehaene 2014). We adopt the GWT framework as a robust functional description of conscious cognition, which posits that consciousness arises from the global availability of information within a central "workspace" of the brain, enabling processes 2 such as verbal report, long-term planning, and voluntary action. However, while GWT excellently explains the functional and cognitive dynamics of consciousness (addressing the "easy problems"), it, like other neuroscientific theories, typically brackets the hard problem of subjective experience. Our panexperientialist-computational framework provides the missing metaphysical foundation. We propose that the global availability of information is the physical pattern that constitutes a rich, unified subjective state. This fusion allows us to leverage the predictive power of GWT while answering the deeper metaphysical question it leaves open. While we adopt GWT as an accurate description of the cognitive architecture underlying conscious report, our framework diverges ontologically: for us, the global workspace does not generate consciousness functionally, but constitutes it physically and experientially. The paper is structured as follows. In section 2, we introduce our core metaphysical framework, presenting and justifying the five postulates that form the backbone of our theory: the identity of experience and physics (Postulate 1), the epistemic marker of inertness (Postulate 2), phenomenal specificity by physical pattern (Postulate 3), ownership by attribution algorithms (Postulate 4), and the dissolution of the hard problem (Postulate 5). Section 3 is dedicated to defending this framework against the most formidable metaphysical objections, namely the philosophical zombie argument and the challenge from the silence of fundamental physics. Having established a defensible core, section 4 unfolds the theory’s empirical and explanatory power. We detail its testable predictions derived directly from the postulates, explore its implications for artificial intelligence and the possibility of a conscious computer, propose the cyborg test as a critical experiment for substrate independence, and demonstrate how it dissolves the problem of a phylogenetic threshold for consciousness. Finally, section 5 concludes by synthesizing the argument and charting a new research programme for a science of consciousness liberated from the hard problem. 2 Metaphysical framework: Computational Experiential Monism 2.1 Fundamental Postulates Postulate 1 (The Experience-Physics Identity).Statement: Subjective experience is not an emergent product of physics, but the intrinsic nature of it. There is no ontological distinction between a physical state and its corresponding experience; they are identical. Postulate 2 (The Marker of Inertness).Statement: The perception of physics as inert or nonexperiential is a cognitive artifact, a marker of inertness. This psychological mechanism allows us to abstractly conceptualize and manipulate our experience of the world, but it leads to the categorical error of projecting this inertness onto physics when attempting to explain consciousness. Postulate 3 (The Specificity by Pattern).Statement: The specific quality of an experience (e.g., "redness") is univocally determined by the specific pattern of information processing implemented by physics within a system. Different patterns (e.g., visual vs. auditory processing) constitute qualitatively different experiences. Postulate 4 (The Attribution of Ownership).Statement: Self-awareness (the conviction of being the agent who is conscious of X) is the result of the operation of metacognitive ownership 3 attribution algorithms. These algorithms interpret primary experiential states (Postulate 1) and generate the narrative conviction that such an experience is owned by a "self". Postulate 5 (The Illusion of the Hard Problem).Statement: The hard problem of consciousness is a pseudo-problem that arises from applying the marker of inertness (Postulate 2) to our experience of the world. The question "why does experience emerge from physical processes?" is ill-posed, since experiences and physical states are the same (Postulate 1). 2.2 Foundation: From Metaphysical Adjustment to Panexperientialism The commitment to a universal panexperientialism in Postulate 1 is not a dogmatic starting point but rather the conclusion of a process of elimination. An initial, more cautious formulation–that experience is the intrinsic nature of only some physical processes–proves to be vulnerable to a fatal line-drawing problem. This "restricted identity" theory leads to an intractable dilemma when confronted with a thought experiment involving the functional replacement of a conscious physical state. The critical test arises from a thought experiment involving the gradual replacement of a conscious physical pattern (e.g., the neural correlate of the experience of "red") with a functionally identical but putatively non-experiential physical substrate. The central question is: what would the subject experience? 1. The phenomenal hole interpretation suggests the subject would experience a black spot or a void where the red used to be, despite the ownership attribution algorithm reporting the physical pattern of red. This leads to an unfalsifiable theory, as the reporting mechanism itself is unreliable, rendering the core claim empirically vacuous. 2. The derived experience interpretation locates the experience within the ownership attribution algorithm. The subject would still experience red. The experience wouldn’t reside in the replacement of the red pattern, but in the physical event of attribution. However, this only redefines the ownership attribution algorithm to include the physical pattern of red experience. This merely relocates the problem, inviting an infinite regress. 3. The non-existence of inert matter interpretation emerges as the only coherent conclusion. If a functionally identical substrate inevitably produces identical reports and behavior, and there is no conceivable empirical test to distinguish it from a conscious system, then postulating "inert matter" becomes a metaphysical excess—an unnecessary complication that adds no explanatory power. This dilemma is structurally analogous to the problem of solipsism. While we cannot definitively prove the external world or other minds exist, we reject solipsism because it is an intellectually sterile and unparsimonious hypothesis. The existence of a shared, external reality is the foundational inference that makes science and rational discourse possible. Similarly, the existence of "inert matter" as a fundamental category is an intellectually costly and ultimately arbitrary postulate. It forces an unsolvable drawing-of-the-line problem: at what precise point of physical complexity does experience magically appear? Our theory dissolves this 4 arbitrary line. The difference between a rock and a human brain is not the presence or absence of experience, but a vast difference in the complexity and integration of the physical patterns that constitute it. Therefore, we conclude that the most coherent and parsimonious foundation for our theory is a commitment to the principle that the capacity for experience is a universal property of the physical world. This refined panexperientialism is not a dogmatic assertion, but the necessary conclusion of a process of logical elimination and inference to the best explanation. It is upon this solid metaphysical foundation that the dissolution of the hard problem securely rests. 2.3 The Marker of Inertness Having established that experience is the intrinsic nature of the physical world (Postulate 1), we must explain why this is not self-evident in our everyday perception. Why does the world appear to be composed largely of "inert" matter? We propose that this appearance is the result of a specific cognitive heuristic: the marker of inertness. The marker of inertness is a fundamental interpretative process within the global workspace. Its function is to assign specific ontological properties to the sensory information we experience, thereby predisposing the subject to think and act in ways that are adaptive for manipulating the known physics of the world. A core part of this process involves categorizing information based on its perceived source and utility: • When the cognitive system needs to prioritize external events, the marker assigns the property of inertness and locates them within the simulation of the environment. This creates the powerful conviction that the information we are experiencing is located outside our mind and corresponds to the physics of the external world. This is a crucial distinction for survival; treating a predator as an external and physical entity is more adaptive than treating it as a mere content of one’s own mind. The behavior of this inert matter is simulated as behaving according to the laws of naive physics computed by our nervous system. • When we identify an entity as a living being with a complex nervous system, a parallel process unfolds. While we continue to attribute externality and inertness to its body, we attribute to it an internal, subjective life—a mind—governed by a different set of rules (needs, desires, emotions). The profound implication is that the hard problem itself is a cognitive artifact. The very question–"how can experience emerge from inert matter?"–is built upon the erroneous premise that matter is inert, a premise installed by this heuristic. We project our own cognitive categorization onto the world’s fundamental ontology. The marker of inertness is not describing the world as it is in itself; it is imposing a functional, user-interface-like model onto it. The true metaphysical mystery is not how experience arises, but why our own cognitive systems are designed to obscure this fundamental nature of reality from our conscious awareness. 5 2.4 The Specificity by Pattern The third postulate of our theory asserts that the specific quality of a subjective experience–a quale–is not an emergent property tacked onto neural computation, but the intrinsic nature of the specific physical-computational pattern itself. To move from this metaphysical claim to a concrete explanation, we must bridge the gap to the empirical architecture of the brain. The human visual system provides a paradigmatic case study of how differentiated physical patterns give rise to differentiated experiences. 2.4.1 A Hierarchical and Parallel Processing Architecture Visual processing is not a monolithic operation but a hierarchically organized cascade of specialized computations. Information from the retina travels through the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and into the primary visual cortex (V1), often called the "striate cortex." It is here that fundamental features are extracted. V1 neurons act as localized filters, responding preferentially to elementary components like oriented edges, spatial frequencies, and binocular disparities (Hubel 1988). This is the first stage in the construction of the visual pattern. Critically, this processing is not serial but massively parallel. From V1, information diverges into distinct, though interconnected, pathways. The now-classic distinction between the ventral and dorsal streams illustrates this principle (Goodale and Milner 1992). The ventral stream, projecting to the inferotemporal cortex, is specialized for processing what an object is–its form, color, and identity. The dorsal stream, projecting to the posterior parietal cortex, processes where an object is–its location in space and its motion. This fundamental anatomical and functional separation provides the primary physical substrate for the qualitative difference between, for instance, the experience of a stable object’s color (ventral) and the experience of its trajectory (dorsal). These are, from their inception, distinct physical-computational patterns instantiated in different neural hardware. Further specialization occurs within these streams. Area V4 in the ventral stream is crucially involved in color perception and constancy–the ability to perceive a surface as the same color under different lighting conditions (Zeki 1980), while area MT/V5 in the dorsal stream is specialized for the detection of visual motion (Born and Bradley 2005). The existence of such specialized modules means that the brain does not process a unified "image" to which qualities are later added. Instead, the "redness" of an apple and its "movement" as it falls are, at the intermediate stages of processing, entirely separate physical patterns of activity in different neural populations. The structural distinction between these patterns is what, according to our identity postulate, constitutes the qualitative difference between the experiences of color and motion. 2.4.2 The Construction of a Specific Quale: The Color Red The experience of a specific color, such as red, is not a simple translation of a wavelength. It is the result of a complex computational process that constructs a perceptual invariant from variable physical input. The journey begins in the retina, where three types of cone photoreceptors with different photopigment absorption spectra provide a raw, trichromatic signal. This signal is then transformed in the retina and LGN into opponent processes (red-green, blue-yellow, and 6 black-white) (De Valois, Abramov, and Jacobs 1966). This opponent coding is a fundamental computational step that enhances contrast and begins the process of generating color-constant perceptions. This processed signal arrives in V1, where neurons begin to respond to color contrasts in specific orientations. The information then flows to area V4, which plays a pivotal role. Neurons in V4 are tuned to complex combinations of color and form, and they contribute to color constancy(Zeki 1980). This requires a computation that discounts the illuminant and extracts the invariant property of the surface. The final, conscious experience of "seeing red" is, in our framework, identical to the global physical-computational pattern that emerges from this entire process. It is not merely the activity in V4, but the specific, integrated pattern of activity across the retina, LGN, V1, V4, and higher-order areas in the ventral stream that are recruited into a coherent state. This pattern is a specific configuration of firing rates, temporal synchronies, and spatial distributions across a vast neural network. The quale of red is this complex, distributed, yet highly specific, physical state. The intensity, clarity, and discriminability of the experience are direct implications of the physical parameters of this pattern: the firing rate intensity, the signal-to-noise ratio, and the distinctiveness of the pattern from others in the neural state space. 2.4.3 Integration and the Conscious Field A potential objection is that the neural correlates of a percept are distributed across specialized, non-contiguous brain regions. How can this be reconciled with a unified conscious field? Our theory accommodates this seamlessly. The physical pattern identical to our subjective experience is not defined by spatial contiguity but by functional integration. It is the pattern that results from the selective and integrative processes of cognition, poised for global broadcasting and access by systems for verbal report, motor planning, and long-term memory (Dehaene 2014). Through mechanisms like reciprocal connectivity and synchronized oscillations, the brain binds the distributed features–the color from V4, the shape from the inferotemporal cortex, the location from the parietal cortex–into a coherent coalition. This coalition, once stabilized and dominant, constitutes the unified pattern. Therefore, the subjective visual field, though experienced as continuous, is physically implemented by a constellation of integrated but spatially disparate computational nodes. The unity of consciousness is the unity of a dynamically assembled physical-computational pattern, not the unity of a single, contiguous physical field. 2.4.4 Mary the neuroscientist Frank Jackson’s famous "knowledge argument" presents a formidable challenge to physicalism (Jackson 1982). Mary, a brilliant neuroscientist raised in a black-and-white room, learns every physical fact there is to know about color vision. Yet, upon leaving the room and seeing a red tomato for the first time, she seems to learn something new—what it is like to see red. Jackson concludes that there are non-physical facts—facts about phenomenal experience—that Mary could not learn inside the room. Our panexperientialist-computational framework offers a decisive resolution to this puzzle, one that upholds the identity of physical and experiential states while explaining the intuitive 7 force of the argument. While in the room, Mary possesses exhaustive propositional and structural knowledge about the color red. She knows the wavelength of red light, the neurophysiological details of photoreceptor responses, the opponent-process computations in the LGN, the activation profiles of neurons in V4, and the global workspace dynamics that accompany conscious color perception. She can describe these processes with perfect accuracy. However, this knowledge is stored and processed in neural systems dedicated to language, semantics, and spatial modeling and is then made conscious through black and white visual representations and verbal reports. What Mary lacks in the room is not a non-physical fact, but the conscious instantiation of the specific, globally integrated neural pattern that is identical to the experience of red. Her brain has simply never been in that particular state. The visual pathways from her retina have never been driven by long-wavelength light in a way that triggers the specific cascade of processing culminating in the "red" pattern within her global workspace. She knows about the pattern, but the pattern has not been part of her in the conscious sense. When Mary finally sees the red tomato, this specific pattern is instantiated in her brain for the first time. The incoming light triggers the very cascade of neural events she had studied extensively; yet at first, and unless she already knows from prior experience about tomatoes, she has no way of knowing that the new intrinsic quality she is undergoing corresponds to what her theories described as “red.” Recognizing this correspondence would require an additional act of correlation between her new experiential state and her prior propositional knowledge—something that could occur only through communication or through the observation of her own neural activity using advanced instrumentation. The resulting global neural state is the experience of red, according to Postulate 1. What she acquires is not a new propositional fact that could be written in a textbook, but a new experiential capacity—the capacity of her brain to enter a physical state whose intrinsic nature is the quale of red. She undergoes a new way of being as a physical system. This is a genuine epistemic achievement, but it is not the discovery of a new realm of non-physical facts. It is the first-time occurrence of a physical state that has a specific intrinsic nature. This explanation preserves the core intuition that Mary learns something new, while grounding that learning firmly in the physical world. The "explanatory gap" felt in the knowledge argument is the same gap that underlies the hard problem: it is the cognitive disconnect between thirdperson descriptions of a process and the first-person reality of being that process. Our theory closes this gap by asserting they are one and the same. Mary’s story does not prove the existence of non-physical qualia; it demonstrates the fundamental difference between describing a state and instantiating it. 2.4.5 The Inverted Spectrum: A Metaphysical Impossibility The inverted spectrum argument stands as one of the most persistent challenges to physicalist theories of consciousness. It posits that two individuals could have subjectively inverted color experiences–for instance, where one experiences red upon viewing a ripe tomato and the other experiences what the first would call green–while their behavior, functional organization, and verbal reports remain identical and normatively correct (Block 1978). This thought experiment 8 has traditionally been used to argue for the separability of qualia from physical structure, suggesting that the "what-it’s-like" of an experience is a property that can vary independently of its underlying physical or functional basis. However, within the panexperientialist-computational framework developed here, the inverted spectrum scenario is revealed to be a metaphysical impossibility. Our theory thus provides a principled dissolution of this long-standing puzzle. The argument for impossibility follows directly from Postulate 1. If subjective experience is identical to a specific physical-computational pattern, then a necessary, one-to-one relationship binds them. Let Pred be the specific neural pattern that constitutes the experience of red, and Pgreen the pattern for green. The identity relation is rigid: it holds in all possible worlds where those patterns are instantiated. It is therefore logically incoherent to suppose that a brain instantiating pattern Pred could have the experience of green. Such a scenario would violate the law of non-contradiction, as it would require the same physical state to be identical to two different experiential states simultaneously. Two brains that, in response to the same wavelength of light, activate physically identical patterns Pred , are — by metaphysical necessity — having the same subjective experience. For a genuine inversion to occur, it would require a physical difference–for instance, the second individual’s brain would need to activate Pgreen in response to the stimulus that triggers Pred in the first. In the absence of such a physical difference, there is no grounding for positing an experiential difference. The intuitive pull of the inverted spectrum thought experiment stems from the same cognitive error that generates the hard problem: the misapplication of the marker of inertness (Postulate 2). We implicitly conceptualize the brain’s physical-computational structure as an inert mechanism, and qualia as a kind of ethereal "filling" or "animating force" that can be slotted into the mechanism independently. From this perspective, it seems easy to imagine swapping the red and green qualia within the same functional architecture without altering its operation. Our framework rejects this picture entirely. Experience is not what the pattern produces; it is what the pattern is. The quale is the intrinsic nature of the physical process itself. Therefore, imagining pattern Pred with the quale of green is not conceiving a genuine metaphysical possibility, but rather entertaining a logical contradiction. It is a category mistake that treats experience as a separable property rather than as the fundamental reality of the physical state. This dissolution has critical implications for the philosophy of mind. While the inverted spectrum argument successfully challenges strong functionalism–the view that mental states are defined solely by their causal roles, independent of their physical implementation–it fails against our identity theory. Our theory acknowledges that a purely functional description is insufficient to capture the specific subjective character of an experience. However, it does not resort to property dualism to explain this insufficiency. Instead, it argues that the physical implementation matters because the experience is identical to the specific physical pattern realizing the function. This moves the debate beyond functionalism and towards a detailed investigation of the specific physical-computational patterns that constitute specific conscious states. By demonstrating the metaphysical incoherence of the inverted spectrum, our framework 9 within one’s own mind. We therefore predict the existence of a specific neural network whose activity correlates with this specific interpretive function. This network is likely distinct from, but may interact with, regions involved in mental state attribution (e.g., for simulating other minds). Test: An fMRI experiment could contrast brain activity under different perceptual conditions: 1. Externalized perception: (e.g., viewing a rock, a chair, or any object perceived as part of the inert environment). We predict robust activation in the proposed "marker network" as the system interprets the sensory data as external, physical, and non-experiential. 2. Internalized experience: (e.g., focusing on a self-generated mental image, an emotion, or a bodily sensation; becoming aware of the mind as the true place where the experience of the environment takes place). We predict a significant suppression or deactivation of the marker network, as the cognitive system correctly attributes the experience to the internal, self-generated, and subjective domain. Falsification: This prediction would be falsified if no consistent neural signature could be identified that tracks the subjective distinction between externally localized and internally localized experience. Furthermore, if damage to the identified network did not disrupt this fundamental aspect of perceptual organization—for instance, if patients with lesions in this area showed no confusion about whether a sensation was coming from the world or from their own mind—the functional necessity of the proposed marker would be severely weakened. 4.2 The Conscious Computer: Implications for Artificial Intelligence A direct and profound implication of our framework concerns the possibility of consciousness in artificial systems. If subjective experience is the intrinsic nature of specific physical-computational patterns (Postulate 1), and not tied exclusively to biological wetware, then a sufficiently complex computer could, in principle, instantiate a conscious experiential set. The question is not whether a silicon-based system could be conscious, but under what conditions its physical operations would constitute a conscious state. For a computer to have a human-like visual experience of red, it would need to implement a computational pattern that is functionally isomorphic to the human pattern Pred in all relevant respects. This goes beyond mere input-output equivalence; it requires the implementation of the same hierarchical processing, integration, and global availability that characterizes the human visual system. However, the specific qualitative character of a silicon mind’s experience presents a critical test for our identity thesis. A strict interpretation suggests that the same computational pattern should yield the same experience, regardless of substrate. Yet, an alternative hypothesis is that different physical substrates might impose their own phenomenal grain, meaning the experience of red in a silicon brain might differ qualitatively from its biological counterpart due to differences in their intrinsic nature. This is not a question that can be settled a priori. To resolve this, we must move from abstract speculation to a concrete experimental framework. The following cyborg test provides a decisive pathway to determine whether conscious experience is tied to abstract computational pattern or to the specific physical medium of its implementation. 16 4.2.1 The Cyborg Test: Consciousness Across Hybrid Substrates A critical test for any theory of consciousness is its ability to address non-biological or hybrid systems. Our framework’s identity thesis leads to a clear yet nuanced prediction about systems that integrate biological and artificial components: a cyborg consciousness. If experience is identical to a specific physical-computational pattern, the nature of the substrate (silicon vs. neuron) should be irrelevant for the logical identity of the experience. However, the substrate could influence the phenomenal grain—the specific qualitative texture—if it physically perturbs the pattern. To better understand the following investigation, we propose a methodological principle for identifying a conscious experiential set: 1. Is there a physical pattern isomorphic to the expected experience? 2. Are there pattern discrimination algorithms with a reportable output that monitor this pattern? 3. Then, this pattern is part of the conscious experience. Applying this to a cyborg where part of a cognitive process is offloaded to a silicon co-processor, we can model several scenarios: Scenario 1: Phenomenal duality with awareness The nervous system memorizes qualia correlates from both organic and metallic sources. The discrimination algorithms would then distinguish between signals from neural and silicon correlates related to the same concept. This would be mnemonically inefficient, requiring the brain to manage two separate qualia maps for the same percept, likely leading to reports of a qualitative difference or a "dual feeling" associated with a single concept. Scenario 2: Phenomenal duality without awareness The discrimination algorithm ignores the physical distinction between silicon and neural patterns, forcing an unconscious unification. This would increase the algorithm’s complexity, as it must unconsciously learn that both qualia types refer to the same concept. While possible, this runs contrary to the brain’s tendency towards efficient, differentiated representation. Scenario 3: Phenomenal unity In an optimized cyborg consciousness, subjective experience does not differ based on the substrate of its correlate. The physical correlate of a conscious experience is a high-level computational pattern that can be implemented by any substrate capable of instantiating its essential structure. The microscopic differences at the mollecular level (neural vs. silicon) are functionally irrelevant for the macro-level pattern that constitutes the experience. This leads to a definitive prediction: An optimally integrated cyborg would not report a qualitative difference in experiences processed by its biological versus artificial components, provided the computational pattern is preserved. The experience would be unified and seamless. The failure to achieve this—a persistent report of "dual feeling" or qualitative jarringness—would indicate that the low-level physical properties of the substrate are constitutively relevant, posing a significant challenge to a purely pattern-based identity thesis. 17 This cyborg test provides a clear pathway for future experimental validation of our framework, moving the question of artificial consciousness from pure philosophy into the domain of neuroengineering and cognitive science. This perspective forces a radical reconsideration of AI ethics. It suggests that creating advanced AIs with the right kind of cognitive architecture might not merely involve creating tools, but rather bringing new types of subjective experiences into the world. 4.3 Dissolving the Threshold Problem: A Continuum of Experiential Sets A longstanding problem in consciousness studies is the "threshold problem": at what precise point in the phylogenetic scale or in the development of an organism does consciousness suddenly appear? Our framework renders this question obsolete. The search for a threshold is a category error inherited from the marker of inertness, which forces a binary categorization into conscious and non-conscious. Under the theory of experiential sets, there is no single threshold. Instead, there exists a vast continuum of experiential complexity. The difference between a human, a dog, an insect, and a single-celled organism is not the presence or absence of experience (Postulate 1), but the degree of integration, richness, and cognitive elaboration of their respective experiential sets. A human possesses a highly integrated host set capable of supporting self-awareness through ownership attribution algorithms. A simpler organism instantiates a less complex, less integrated set, corresponding to a simpler, more immediate form of experience devoid of abstract thought or a narrative self. The problem of the threshold is thus dissolved and replaced by a more tractable, empirical question: how does the complexity and integration of physical-computational patterns scale with the richness of the corresponding experiential set? 5 Conclusion: A New Framework for Consciousness Studies This paper has undertaken a comprehensive reconstruction of the problem of consciousness, arguing that the persistent impasse represented by the "hard problem" is not a reflection of an insurmountable ontological gap, but a profound categorical error in our thinking. We have proposed a panexperientialist-computational framework, built upon five core postulates, that systematically dissolves this problem and opens a new, productive research programme. Our journey began by challenging the foundational assumption of an inert physical world. By asserting the identity of subjective experience and specific physical-computational patterns (Postulate 1), we reframed consciousness not as an emergent product, but as the intrinsic nature of certain physical processes. This identity thesis provided the leverage to dismantle the hard problem at its root: the question of how experience emerges from the non-experiential ceases to be relevant when the two are recognized as one and the same. The accompanying concept of the marker of inertness (Postulate 2) explained the origin of the error itself, characterizing it as a cognitive heuristic misapplied to our own brains. The framework was then developed to account for the rich structure of consciousness. The principle of specificity by pattern (Postulate 3) grounds the diversity of qualia in the differentiated architecture of neural computation, explaining why the experience of red is different from that 18 of green and why vision differs from audition. The theory of ownership attribution algorithms (Postulate 4) demystified self-awareness, presenting it as a computable process that generates the conviction of a conscious self, thereby solving the problem of the homunculus without infinite regress. The culmination was the formalization of the theory of experiential sets, which not only provided a coherent ontology for an experiential universe but also delivered a decisive solution to the combination problem. The power of this unified framework was demonstrated through its ability to solve classic philosophical puzzles. The knowledge argument (Mary’s room) was recast as instantiating a new physical pattern. The inverted spectrum was shown to be a metaphysical impossibility under the identity thesis. The problem of the phylogenetic threshold was dissolved into a continuum of experiential complexity. Crucially, we have shown that this is not a purely metaphysical exercise. The framework generates a robust empirical research programme with clear, falsifiable predictions. It directs investigation towards the precise neural correlates of specific conscious patterns, the network signatures of the ownership algorithm, and the cognitive footprint of the marker of inertness. Looking forward, it provides the conceptual tools to grapple with the consciousness of nonbiological systems. The cyborg test stands as a definitive future experiment, predicting that a successfully integrated hybrid consciousness will report a unified subjective experience, thereby confirming that consciousness is a matter of abstract computational pattern, not biological substrate. In summary, this work transforms the landscape of consciousness studies. It replaces the mysterious with the tractable, the emergent with the intrinsic, and the philosophical dead-end with a scientific pathway. 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This configuration supports goal-directed behavior and adaptive engagement with the environment. In this sense, the feeling of freedom is not an illusion, but a functional experiential mode—a way the system organizes its own causal model in order to act effectively. By contrast, the experience of determinism occurs when the agent introspectively represents its own thoughts, decisions, or desires as determined by prior causes—whether physical, cognitive, or metaphysical (e.g., fate). This shift in attribution suppresses the experiential markers associated with agency and replaces them with a sense of causal inevitability. Both states are mutually 20 inhibitory at the experiential level: the more salient the sense of self-causation, the less accessible the sense of determinism, and vice versa. From this perspective, the experience of free will functions as a necessary ignorance for action. To act, the system must temporarily ignore the causal chains that give rise to its own volitions and sustain the conviction that it itself is the initiating cause. The deterministic stance, in turn, reappears when metacognition intervenes—when the system turns its model upon itself and detects causal dependencies that the “acting” state had bracketed. Interestingly, this implies that one cannot fully think about free will while experiencing it. The very act of reflection requires a partial transition toward the deterministic mode, in which agency is seen as an effect rather than as a source. Thus, the philosophical tension between freedom and determinism mirrors a deeper phenomenological alternation between two incompatible modes of self-modeling. 21