EVERY THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS FAILS THE SAME WAY

By Aamir Butt

Blog 2/12 of #QuantumSurvivalTheory series

Scientists and philosophers have been working on the Hard Problem — why does physical brain activity produce subjective experience at all? —  for decades. They’ve produced some genuinely brilliant theories. And every single one of them, when you push it hard enough, breaks at the same point.

Let me show you.

Theory 1: Global Workspace Theory

The idea: consciousness happens when information gets broadcast widely across the brain, like a spotlight illuminating a stage. Information that makes it into the “global workspace” becomes conscious; information that doesn’t stays unconscious.

This is backed by solid neuroscience. Brain imaging shows exactly this pattern. The problem? It only tells you what information is doing when you’re conscious of it. It doesn’t explain why that broadcasting feels like anything. 

You can imagine a system doing all the same broadcasting in complete darkness, with nobody home. The theory describes the easy problems beautifully and sidesteps the hard one.

Theory 2: Integrated Information Theory

The idea: consciousness equals integrated information, measured by a quantity called Φ (phi). The more a system integrates information into a unified whole, the more conscious it is.

It’s mathematically elegant. But it solves the Hard Problem by definition — declaring that integrated information is experience. 

Okay, but why? Declaring the mystery solved by fiat isn’t the same as solving it.

Theory 3: Panpsychism

The idea: consciousness doesn’t magically emerge from complex matter. It was there all along, as a fundamental property of physics. Electrons have a flicker of experience. Atoms have a flicker. You are what happens when trillions of flickers combine.

This beautifully avoids the emergence problem. But it crashes into a new one: the Combination Problem. 

How do micro-experiences combine? Why don’t you feel like a trillion separate sparks? 

Nobody knows.

Theory 4: Higher-Order Theories

The idea: a mental state becomes conscious when you have a thought about that mental state. Consciousness is thinking about thinking.

The problem: why does a second-order thought produce experience when a first-order thought doesn’t? 

The mystery is pushed up one level, not resolved.

Theory 5: Orch OR

The idea: consciousness arises from quantum computations in structures called microtubules inside neurons.

This is creative and bold, and we’ll come back to it in later posts. But in its original form, it mainly moves the mystery: why should quantum collapse in a microtubule feel like something when quantum collapse in a rock doesn’t?

Theory 6: Illusionism

The idea: there is no “Hard Problem”. Phenomenal consciousness is an illusion generated by our introspective mechanisms.

The problem with this should be obvious: the illusion of experience is itself an experience. Denying consciousness exists might be, as one philosopher put it, the least defensible claim in all of philosophy.

Theory 7: Predictive Processing

The idea: consciousness arises from the brain’s attempt to constantly predict its sensory input, minimising surprise.

Powerful framework for perception. Same gap as Global Workspace: a prediction machine could minimise surprise perfectly well without any inner experience at all.

💬 Every theory of consciousness does one of four things: redescribes the mystery, declares it solved by definition, moves it somewhere else, or denies it exists. None actually explain it. #QuantumSurvivalTheory

The Pattern

Do you see it? Every theory performs one of exactly four moves:

• Redescription: Here’s what the brain does when you’re conscious (but not why it feels like something).

• Postulation: Consciousness just IS this property (but we can’t explain why).

• Relocation: The mystery isn’t here, it’s over there (but it’s still a mystery).

• Denial: The phenomenon doesn’t exist (but it obviously does).

Seven theories, four evasion strategies, zero explanations.

That kind of systematic failure doesn’t happen by accident. It suggests these theories all share a hidden assumption — something so deeply embedded that nobody notices it.

In the next post, I’ll show you what it is. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.