Self-Reference, Feedback, and the Explanatory Gap: The Epistemological Irreducibility of Consciousness
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) July 9, 2026 Junly Ma, Ruijia Ma
The subjective aspect of consciousness cannot be fully explained by any functional model based on information feedback, because any attempt by a conscious system to explain its own subjectivity using its internal processes leads to an epistemological closure. This explanatory gap is a self-referential dilemma: for a system to fully explain itself, it must stand outside itself, which is logically impossible. The paper does not claim substance dualism but reveals an unbridgeable cognitive gap between third-person informational descriptions and first-person subjective presence, which is a limitation of descriptive frameworks, not evidence that mind is detached from physical substrates. The irreducibility of consciousness is a necessary boundary condition of self-referential systems.