The Explanatory Gap: Consciousness, Integration, and the Question Physics Cannot Answer
Figshare August 22, 2026 Irvin Vasquez
This work examines the three most developed contemporary answers to the hard problem of consciousness — functionalism, Integrated Information Theory, and panpsychism — and argues that each fails to close the explanatory gap in a structurally similar way: by relocating the gap rather than resolving it. Functionalism identifies consciousness with function at the cost of the absent qualia...