Maibom, Marc: The Hard Problem of Consciousness: Structural Derivation of the Continuing Subject, Formal Proof of Non-Absence, and the Incoherence of Competing Theories

The hard problem of consciousness has not been resolved because it has been posed incorrectly. Every major theory — Integrated Information Theory, Global Workspace Theory, Predictive Processing, Higher-Order Theories, Functionalism — attempts to explain why processing gives rise to experience while presupposing, without deriving, the continuing subject for whom processing occurs. This generates a structural incoherence that is not empirical but logical: these theories cannot explain what they ha