Imre Török

2 papers in the library · publishing 2026

Papers

The Minimal Self and the Individuation Gap: First-Person Individuation and the Limits of Functional Explanation

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 17, 2026 Imre Török

A structural explanatory gap exists in cognitive-scientific and functionalist accounts of mind: the problem of first-personal individuation. Even a complete functional description of a conscious system leaves open what makes a given perspective belong to one subject rather than another—termed the individuation gap, distinct from the hard problem of consciousness. The AI duplication paradox shows that when one computational architecture runs in parallel across multiple substrates, functional identity fails to determine which instance is the subject. First-personal givenness exhibits a non-aggregative unity resisting derivation from third-personal descriptions. Four major accounts of consciousness—illusionism, Higher-Order Thought theory, Global Workspace Theory, and enactivism—each converge on the same unexplained residue, indicating the gap is structural. Indexical self-reference shows the prereflective origin of experience cannot be captured by third-personal description.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20973823 Philosophy of mind Individuation Argument complex analysis Identity music +20

The Minimal Self: First-Person Individuation and the Limits of Functional Explanation - The AI Duplication Paradox and the Reductive Aspirations of Physicalism

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 17, 2026 Imre Török

First-person subjectivity cannot be adequately explained in purely physical-functional terms. The AI duplication paradox shows that functionalism fails to account for the numerical individuation of a conscious subject: when the same computational architecture is instantiated across multiple substrates, neither a single shared consciousness nor an indefinite multiplicity of functionally identical subjects resolves the issue, and spatial coordinates describe only third-personal relations. This problem of subjective individuation is distinct from the hard problem of consciousness. The paper draws on the phenomenological notion of the minimal self and its constitutive mineness, which resists physical-functional decomposition, and argues that contemporary illusionist accounts leave mineness, binding, and numerical individuation unresolved.

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20736658 Individuation Physicalism Consciousness Argument complex analysis +11