Karl Sipfle

Contemporary fundamental physics, on inspection, resolves almost entirely into relational structure. Charge, energy, mass, and quantum state each turn out, under analysis, to be conserved or covariant quantities defined by symmetry-relations rather than intrinsic properties of independently existing substances; even the fermionic “matter particles” of the Standard Model interact only through mediating gauge fields, themselves reifications of the requirement that a symmetry hold consistently across spacetime. This paper traces that dissolution to its endpoint and asks what, if anything, resists it. We argue that phenomenal experience — “what it is like” to be an occurrence — is the one candidate that a purely relational, third-person structural description cannot obviously accommodate, a structural instance of the hard problem of consciousness. We then attempt the reverse construction: beginning from a small set of axioms about what any experience must minimally be (existence, determinacy, composition, integration, transience), we derive, in outline, a structure formally analogous to relation, field-continuity, temporal process, a conserved invariant, and bounded individuation — recovering the shape of physical law from the requirements of experience rather than the reverse. We close by situating the result within Russellian/neutral monism, arguing that the physics-first and experience-first constructions are best read as two descriptions of one underlying reality rather than as competing, reducible accounts — and we are explicit about what this proposal does and does not accomplish. This paper is a work of philosophical construction, not physics or cognitive science. Its claims are speculative and offered as a structured hypothesis for evaluation, not as an established result.

Our conscious minds think and feel. Thinking deals in information. Feeling is the single defining distinction between consciousness and nonconsciousness. Known brain structures and their behaviors have been proposed as the Neural Correlates of Consciousness. To fully be so they must be plausibly associated with both the informational and the affective aspects of consciousness, especially the latter. It turns out that previously precisely specified sites in the brain for NCC are largely correct though they may have to be more inclusive, and the rationalizing theory must be extended to incorporate feeling. A full understanding requires physics and the extension of existing physics; the latter is presently required anyway for other reasons. The implications lead to world-changing technologies. Extensive supporting argument is in the references.

Consciousness and the human mind have been pondered for centuries [1,2]. Today the most fundamental, likely outlines of the explanation of consciousness are known, and from this landscape we are well-positioned to fill in the basket of specific theories that will include the correct one. However, many errors in thinking and assumptions have accumulated, and even gained fashion, that obscure our progress. It is time to eliminate these, which we do herein by enumerating the complementary true assertions. Following that we mention four principles for choosing direction for further work. We conclude with a framework for further progress.

A chief claim made against physical field theories of subjective experience is that adding a field (or sub-field) to known physics is a radical move that feeling (even though a fundamentally distinct phenomenon) does not demand. In its place is often a far more troubling addition-that a mere complexification, often only of data, magically causes the emergence of something completely different from the substrate. In the interest of objectivity we pose to ChatGPT the general question "For what reasons has it been, and will it be, necessary to add new physical fields to established physics?" Herein is its answer, shortened somewhat but otherwise unmodified. Addition of fields is in fact the standard way of extending the standard to incorporate what has become realized. Moreover, this often comes primarily from conceptual need, not quantitative need.