Self-Reference, Feedback, and the Explanatory Gap: The Epistemological Irreducibility of Consciousness

Summary

The subjective aspect of consciousness cannot be fully explained by functional models based on information feedback due to the self-referential nature of conscious systems. This creates an epistemological closure where attempts to explain subjectivity using internal processes are inherently limited. The paper highlights that the gap between third-person descriptions and first-person experiences is a fundamental boundary condition of self-referential systems, not evidence of a separation between mind and physical substrates.

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Abstract

This paper argues that the subjective aspect of consciousness (phenomenal consciousness) cannot be exhaustively explained by any functional model based on information feedback. This predicament does not stem from a temporary lack of empirical data, but is rooted in the self-referential structure of conscious systems: any attempt to explain the system's own subjectivity using its internal processes inevitably falls into an epistemological closure. By formally defining an "information-feedback-storage" model and introducing Gödel's incompleteness theorems as a philosophical analogy, this paper points out that the explanatory gap is essentially a self-referential dilemma—for a system to fully explain itself, it must stand outside itself, which is logically impossible. This paper does not claim to prove substance dualism, but merely reveals an unbridgeable cognitive gap between third-person informational descriptions and first-person subjective presence; this gap is a limitation of descriptive frameworks, not evidence that mind is detached from physical substrates. The conclusion is that the irreducibility of consciousness is not a theoretical failure, but a necessary boundary condition of self-referential systems.

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