Subject-Centered Approach in Consciousness Science: Persistent Asymmetry, Intrinsic Causation, and the Realization of Conscious Systems

Abstract

Contemporary theories of consciousness often explain conscious systems in terms of computation, information processing, representational structure, or statistical organization. While such approaches provide accounts of conscious states and contents, they leave open the question of what makes a physical system an experiencing subject. This paper develops a subject-centered framework in which the experiencing subject, rather than consciousness itself, is treated as the primary explanatory target.The central claim is that changing the explanatory target changes the nature of the problem. Conscious experiences vary continuously with changing inputs, whereas the experiencing subject exhibits continuity across those changes. Consequently, theories centered on conscious contents tend to focus on transient informational properties, whereas theories centered on the experiencing subject require an account of the conditions that sustain subjecthood through time.To address this issue, the paper introduces persistent asymmetry as a defining characteristic of the experiencing subject and proposes intrinsic causation as a candidate mechanism for realizing such asymmetry. Intrinsic causation is developed using systems that partially share physical substrates while maintaining a hierarchical asymmetry between macro- and micro-level organization. The framework also distinguishes consciousness from awareness by interpreting awareness as information available to an already realized experiencing subject.The significance of the proposal lies in the methodological shift it introduces. By treating the experiencing subject as the primary explanatory target, the focus of investigation moves from transient computational processes to the physical conditions under which persistent asymmetry can be realized.