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

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.

Study at a glance

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.