Introspection and the Limits of Physicalism in Consciousness Studies: Toward an Analytic Idealist Framework
Contemporary Issues in Social Sciences and Management Practices March 31, 2026 Muhammad Javid, Muhammad Jawwad
Consciousness remains a major puzzle for philosophy and cognitive science. While neuroscience and artificial intelligence successfully describe neural mechanisms and behavior, they struggle to explain the subjective, qualitative essence of conscious experience. Functionalist and physicalist approaches are flawed because they rely on third-person methods and neglect the first-person nature of consciousness. Phenomenological introspection reveals aspects like intentionality, temporality, self-consciousness, and the human search for meaning, which is a constitutive aspect of consciousness, not an accidental byproduct. The paper proposes Analytic Idealism, arguing consciousness is ontologically primary and the external world is an appearance of internal processes. Advancing consciousness studies requires combining empirical research with first-person introspective inquiry and a metaphysics positioning consciousness as fundamental.