Addressing your claims: Formalism, Computationalism, Physicalism, are all in opposition to EN. EN says, that maybe existence itself is not a fundamental category, but soundness. This means that the idea of things existing and not existing is a symbol of the brain.
EN doesn’t attempt to explain why a physical or computational process should “feel like” anything — because it denies that such feeling exists in any metaphysical sense. Instead, it explains why a system like the brain comes to believe in qualia. That belief arises not from phenomenological fact, but from structural necessity: any self-referential, self-regulating system that is formally incomplete (as all sufficiently complex systems are) will generate internally undecidable propositions. These propositions — like “I am in pain” or “I see red” — are not verifiable within the system, but are functionally indispensable for coherent behavior.
The “usefulness” of qualia, then, lies in their regulatory role. By behaving AS IF having experience, the system compresses and coordinates internal states into actionable representations. The belief in qualia provides a stable self-model, enables prioritization of attention, and facilitates internal coherence — even if the underlying referents (qualia themselves) are formally unprovable. In this view, qualia are not epiphenomenal mysteries, but adaptive illusions, generated because the system cannot...
NOW
I understand that you invoke the “Phenomenological Objection,” as I also, of course, “feel” qualia. But under EN, that feeling is not a counterargument — it’s the very evidence that you are part of the system being modeled. You feel qualia because the system must generate that belief in order to function coherently, despite its own incompleteness. You are embedded in the regulatory loop, and so the illusion is not something you can step outside of — it is what it feels like to be inside a model that cannot fully represent itself. The conviction is real; the thing it points to is not.
”because there is no reason a physical process should feel like anything from the inside.”
The key move EN makes — and where it departs from both physicalism and computationalism — is that it doesn’t ask, “Why should a physical process feel like anything from the inside?” It asks, “Why must a physical system come to believe it feels something from the inside in order to function?” The answer is: because a self-regulating, self-modeling system needs to track and report on its internal states without access to its full causal substrate. It does this by generating symbolic placeholders — undecidable internal propositions — which it treats as felt experience. In order to say “I am in pain,” the system must first commit to the belief that there is something it is like to be in pain. The illusion of interiority is not a byproduct — it is the enabling fiction that lets the system tell itself a coherent story across incomplete representations.
OKAY since you made the right question I will include this paragraph in the Abstract.
Survival.
Addressing your claims: Formalism, Computationalism, Physicalism, are all in opposition to EN. EN says, that maybe existence itself is not a fundamental category, but soundness. This means that the idea of things existing and not existing is a symbol of the brain.
EN doesn’t attempt to explain why a physical or computational process should “feel like” anything — because it denies that such feeling exists in any metaphysical sense. Instead, it explains why a system like the brain comes to believe in qualia. That belief arises not from phenomenological fact, but from structural necessity: any self-referential, self-regulating system that is formally incomplete (as all sufficiently complex systems are) will generate internally undecidable propositions. These propositions — like “I am in pain” or “I see red” — are not verifiable within the system, but are functionally indispensable for coherent behavior.
The “usefulness” of qualia, then, lies in their regulatory role. By behaving AS IF having experience, the system compresses and coordinates internal states into actionable representations. The belief in qualia provides a stable self-model, enables prioritization of attention, and facilitates internal coherence — even if the underlying referents (qualia themselves) are formally unprovable. In this view, qualia are not epiphenomenal mysteries, but adaptive illusions, generated because the system cannot...
NOW
I understand that you invoke the “Phenomenological Objection,” as I also, of course, “feel” qualia. But under EN, that feeling is not a counterargument — it’s the very evidence that you are part of the system being modeled. You feel qualia because the system must generate that belief in order to function coherently, despite its own incompleteness. You are embedded in the regulatory loop, and so the illusion is not something you can step outside of — it is what it feels like to be inside a model that cannot fully represent itself. The conviction is real; the thing it points to is not.
”because there is no reason a physical process should feel like anything from the inside.”
The key move EN makes — and where it departs from both physicalism and computationalism — is that it doesn’t ask, “Why should a physical process feel like anything from the inside?” It asks, “Why must a physical system come to believe it feels something from the inside in order to function?” The answer is: because a self-regulating, self-modeling system needs to track and report on its internal states without access to its full causal substrate. It does this by generating symbolic placeholders — undecidable internal propositions — which it treats as felt experience. In order to say “I am in pain,” the system must first commit to the belief that there is something it is like to be in pain. The illusion of interiority is not a byproduct — it is the enabling fiction that lets the system tell itself a coherent story across incomplete representations.
OKAY since you made the right question I will include this paragraph in the Abstract.