Standard physicalism often makes subjective experience seem epiphenomenal, while interactionist views struggle with mental causation and energy conservation. This paper proposes that experience itself acts as a real, physically efficacious force on neural architecture, confined to the brain's structured biological information, similar to how the strong nuclear force is confined. Within the brain's open thermodynamic system, experience biases activation barriers of neural logic gates, releasing stored metabolic energy in a direction determined by the meaning of the experience and prior history. The framework reconceives subjective experience as a confined physical force essential for biological agency, offering a biophysical mechanism for meaning-driven causation.
Space and time are irreducible dimensions of nature, and life and experience are proposed as similarly irreducible dimensions, together called lifeexperience. From this dimensional ground emerges the Force of Experience, a candidate fifth fundamental force whose causal reality is evidenced by human civilization. Physics fails to explain consciousness and life by treating them as derivable from lower-level processes rather than as foundational dimensions.
Subjectivity—the first-person quality of experience—remains unexplained by neuroscience, which only describes its neural correlates. A hypothesis is proposed that undiscovered quantum fields, distinct from known fields, induce subjectivity when they interact with specific brain information. These fields would emit quantum particles that exert force on brain patterns conveying meaning, thereby generating experience. Most experience is non-conscious, continuously informing brain structure and behavior, while only intermittently becoming conscious. The article explores how non-conscious experience relates to the self and how it may become conscious, offering support and directions for testing this hypothesis, along with potential clinical applications in psychology.