Paper 00 · Working paper

The Identification Problem for Physicalist Theories of Experience

The accessible entry point for the IER paper programme: why physicalism and neural correlation do not by themselves identify which physical event experience is.

Status
Working paper
Author
Michael Lehotay
Date
09 August 2026

Physicalism says that experience is physical, but does not identify which physical event experience is. Paper 00 names this missing step, distinguishes identity from correlation, causation, realization, and constitution, and presents IER's recurrently organized, self-maintaining constraint regime as a criticizable physical candidate rather than a consciousness detector.