Consciousness and the Failure of Decomposition

Abstract

This paper argues that consciousness is identical to unified, non-decomposable mediation within self-maintaining systems. The standard formulation of the hard problem presupposes that a system’s behaviour can be exhaustively specified in decomposed terms while leaving open the question of why such a system should have an experiential aspect. This paper rejects that presupposition. Where behaviour depends on a structure that cannot be factorised into independently sufficient components, no such complete decomposed description exists. The apparent gap between structure and experience is therefore not an ontological remainder, but a mismatch between the organisation of the system and the form of description imposed upon it.