Ali Khalilian Najafabadi

This paper argues that the hard problem of consciousness should be reformulated as a problem about the legitimacy of explanatory transfer across layers. The familiar question whether science can solve the hard problem is too coarse. It assumes that “solution” names a single kind of explanatory success. But consciousness science does not operate at one explanatory level. It moves among neural correlates, mechanisms of access and report, interventionist evidence, structural mappings, phenomenological descriptions, and accounts of why subjects judge consciousness to be mysterious. These are not simply different routes to the same result. They are different explanatory layers, each with its own target and standard of success. My central claim is that the ambiguity of “solution” arises from this layered structure. A theory may succeed at one layer while remaining silent, or only partially informative, at another. To identify the neural conditions of experience is not yet to explain why those conditions are experiential. To explain access and report is not yet to explain what-it-is-like-ness. To explain why subjects form hard-problem intuitions is not yet to explain, ground, or eliminate phenomenal consciousness. Yet these familiar points should not lead us to a merely negative conclusion. The more important question is not simply whether one layer fails to explain another, but under what conditions success at one layer may legitimately count as progress toward another. I call this the problem of explanatory transfer. When, if ever, can a correlational, mechanistic, interventionist, structural, phenomenological, or meta-problematic explanation travel beyond its initial layer and contribute to an explanation of experience itself? I argue that such transfer is never automatic. It requires an explicit account of what is being transferred and why. At minimum, a proposed solution must preserve the phenomenal explanandum, specify a bridge principle between layers, and show that the relation has more than accidental or merely diagnostic force. Otherwise, the theory may explain something important about consciousness while still lacking the right to present itself as a solution to the hard problem. This reframing changes the role of the hard problem. It is not merely a challenge to neuroscience, nor a declaration that subjective experience lies outside science. It is a demand for philosophical discipline inside consciousness science: a demand to say where an explanation operates, what kind of success it achieves, and what licenses its movement from one layer to another. In this sense, the hard problem is not only about the gap between brain and experience. It is also about the conditions under which any explanation is entitled to cross that gap. The paper therefore defends a layered conception of solution. A theory of consciousness does not solve the hard problem merely by succeeding at one explanatory layer. It must show why that success reaches phenomenal experience itself. The question is not only what has been explained? but how far is that explanation allowed to travel?

Ali Khalilian Najafabadi is an Iranian student and researcher working at the intersection of philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and consciousness studies. He holds a B.A. in Psychology and an M.Sc. in Cognitive Sciences, and has also completed an M.A. in Philosophy at the Global Center for Advanced Studies, College Dublin, Ireland. He is currently pursuing further master’s-level study at the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Lugano, Switzerland. He ranked first during both his B.A. studies in Psychology and his M.Sc. studies in Cognitive Sciences. His work focuses on consciousness, subjective experience, the hard problem, explanatory gaps, and the relation between empirical consciousness science and philosophical explanation. He has presented work on philosophy of mind, consciousness, and artificial intelligence, including a recent presentation at the CPS/Exeter University conference on brain-in-a-vat experience and mind-at-large approaches.