Neurophenomenal structuralism proposes that conscious experiences are best understood not as properties of individual neurons but as relationships among neural structures. The framework argues that the brain's self-organized neural maps share a structural, homomorphic mapping with the quality spaces of phenomenal experience. This approach offers a solution to the Newman problem by grounding phenomenal content in spatiotemporal relations rather than intrinsic neural features. It advocates for measurement methods that capture relationships between stimuli, such as similarity ratings and representational geometry. Philosophically, the view entails holism about phenomenal experiences and rules out inverted qualia scenarios, where color experiences could be swapped without behavioral change.
Distinguishing neural correlates that are genuinely tied to conscious experience from those that are merely coincidental requires a principled approach. The authors propose neurophenomenal structuralism, which relies on the fact that phenomenal experiences form structures of similarity and difference. By using these structures to individuate experiences in neuroscience and psychophysics, they derive a structural similarity constraint: a neural activation must preserve the structure of the associated phenomenal domain to qualify as a neural correlate of consciousness proper. An example from Brouwer and Heeger illustrates the constraint. This approach aims to refine the search for neural correlates by filtering out merely statistical associations.