Subjective experience can be objectively explained in physical terms by moving beyond cognitive functions and understanding how experience is structured. Integrated information theory provides a framework to account for both the essential properties of every experience and the specific properties that make particular experiences feel the way they do, avoiding the fallacy that only objective properties should be explained by science.
The hard problem of consciousness challenges scientific explanations of subjective experience. Central to it is the structure and dynamics (S&D) argument, which David Chalmers used to claim that physical accounts cannot explain phenomenal experience. This essay argues that Chalmers' S&D argument relies on a limited conception of extrinsic structure and dynamics. Drawing on complexity sciences and Integrated Information Theory (IIT), the author introduces intrinsic structure and dynamics as a broader class of properties. These properties may naturally and scientifically explain phenomenal experience and the relationship between syntactic, semantic, and intrinsic information. The hope is to vindicate certain explanations from the S&D argument and dissolve the hard problem by showing that not all structure and dynamics are equal.