Part II: Identity Thesis

The Standard Formulation

Introduction
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The Standard Formulation

The “hard problem” of consciousness asks: given a complete physical description of a system, why is there something it is like to be that system? How does experience arise from non-experience?

Formally, let Dphys\mathcal{D}^{\text{phys}} be a complete physical description of a system—its particles, fields, dynamics, everything describable in third-person terms. The hard problem asserts:

Dphys⇏Dphen\mathcal{D}^{\text{phys}} \not\Rightarrow \mathcal{D}^{\text{phen}}

where Dphen\mathcal{D}^{\text{phen}} is a description of the system’s phenomenal properties (what it’s like to be it). The claim is that no amount of physical information logically entails phenomenal information.

This formulation rests on a crucial assumption: that physics constitutes a privileged ontological base layer. All other descriptions (chemical, biological, psychological, phenomenal) are "higher-level" and must reduce to or supervene on the physical description. What is "really real" is what physics describes.

I reject this.