Why the Problem of Consciousness Cannot Be Solved by Looking Only at the Brain and AI Performance First-Person Structure Viewed from a Physically Basic Layer

Neither brain research nor artificial intelligence alone can explain consciousness because they miss the structural core of subjectivity: how information processing becomes an event for a single subject. The paper proposes that first-person experience requires a causal sequence in which multiple possibilities are opened, contrasted, selected, and reduced to one, with unselected alternatives losing executability and the result incorporated into the history of one embodied system. It offers ten connected conditions for this 'closure of subjectivization,' including a single body, autonomous action, contrast formation, information discard, and the arrow of time. This framework reframes the problem from when complexity becomes consciousness to what causal structure closes processing into the first person.

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Abstract

Debates on consciousness often move in two directions: the detailed analysis of the brain and the increasing performance of artificial intelligence. Both are indispensable. The brain is necessary for human experience, and AI forces us to reconsider the relation between intelligence, language, self-reference, and consciousness. Yet neither direction, by itself, reaches the structural core of subjectivity. The central problem is not simply where consciousness is located in the brain, nor how advanced AI must become before it could be conscious. These questions remain incomplete unless we specify how information processing becomes an event for one subject. Neural states can be described, and AI performance can be measured, but subjectivity requires a further structure: processing must close into one body, one present, and one irreversible history. This paper calls that structure the closure of subjectivization. It argues that first-person subjectivity is not produced by complexity alone. Rather, it requires a causal sequence in which multiple possibilities are opened, contrasted, selected, and reduced to one; the unselected alternatives lose executability; and the selected result is incorporated into the history of a single embodied system. As one candidate for this structure, the paper proposes ten connected conditions: single body, embodiment-constrained processing, autonomous action, multiple behavioral candidates, contrast formation, viability-constrained elimination, information discard, Landauer-type irreversibility, the arrow of time, and single history. This proposal does not claim to explain the qualitative content of qualia. Its aim is narrower: to identify the subjective skeleton through which any content could become experience for someone. The paper therefore reframes the problem of consciousness. Instead of asking when complexity becomes consciousness, it asks what causal structure closes information processing into the first person. Without this additional layer, both brain research and AI performance evaluation remain indispensable but incomplete.