The Inherited Explanandum: What Remains of Consciousness After Functional Decomposition?

Abstract

Abstract The term consciousness is commonly treated as naming a distinct phenomenon requiring explanation. Yet many of the functions associated with consciousness—including perception, memory, recognition, temporal continuity, emotion, self-monitoring, metacognition, behavioural flexibility, and the revision of ongoing thought—can be decomposed into more specific operations. This paper asks whether the explanatory problem has sometimes been framed too early. Rather than beginning with consciousness as a presumed explanandum, it begins with the observable operations attributed to it and asks what, if anything, remains unexplained once those operations are functionally decomposed. The paper develops a methodological test: an explanatory gap should be demonstrated by an unexplained observation, not preserved by an inherited noun. It therefore distinguishes between three possibilities: that a genuine residual phenomenon remains after decomposition; that consciousness functions as a useful higher-order description of an integrated system condition; or that the term adds no further explanatory content beyond the operations from which it is constructed. The argument does not claim that consciousness has been solved, nor does it exclude biological, emergent, or metaphysical explanations. Its narrower purpose is to clarify what must still be explained before an additional explanatory entity, property, or gap is required.