Following up to say that the thing that maps most closely to what I was thinking about (or satisfied my curiosity) is GWT.
GWT is usually intended to approach the hard problem, but the principle critique of it is that it isn’t doing that at all (I ~agree). Unfortunately, I had dozens of frustrating conversations with people telling me ‘don’t spend any time thinking about consciousness; it’s a dead end; you’re talking about the hard problem; that triggers me; STOP’ before someone actually pointed me in the right direction here, or seemed open to the question at all.
Following up to say that the thing that maps most closely to what I was thinking about (or satisfied my curiosity) is GWT.
GWT is usually intended to approach the hard problem, but the principle critique of it is that it isn’t doing that at all (I ~agree). Unfortunately, I had dozens of frustrating conversations with people telling me ‘don’t spend any time thinking about consciousness; it’s a dead end; you’re talking about the hard problem; that triggers me; STOP’ before someone actually pointed me in the right direction here, or seemed open to the question at all.