Structure & Quality: Conceptual and Formal Foundations for the Mind-Body Problem
arXiv Preprint Archive April 23, 2025 preprint
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Qualitative |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Consciousness Neuroscience/q-bio.nc Artificial intelligence/cs.ai Mind-body problem Qualia/phenomenology |
| Key points | Proposes a five-fold categorization of possible relationships between structural and qualitative properties, derived from a novel Q-S space, with implications for debates on consciousness. |
Abstract
This paper explores the hard problem of consciousness from a different perspective. Instead of drawing distinctions between the physical and the mental, an exploration of a more foundational relationship is examined: the relationship between structure and quality. Information-theoretic measures are developed to quantify the mutual determinability between structure and quality, including a novel Q-S space for analyzing fidelity between the two domains. This novel space naturally points toward a five-fold categorization of possible relationships between structural and qualitative properties, illustrating each through conceptual and formal models. The ontological implications of each category are examined, shedding light on debates around functionalism, emergentism, idealism, panpsychism, and neutral monism. This new line of inquiry has established a framework for deriving theoretical constraints on qualitative systems undergoing evolution that is explored in my companion paper, Qualia & Natural Selection.