On-off synecdoche: a just good enough model of subjective experience
August 23, 2025 Mario Martinez‐saito preprint
Subjective experiences appear to flicker between conscious and unconscious phases. This work proposes that the brain is an inference engine with a generative model of the world. The brain's model of the self is an intermittent, simplified representation invoked only when needed to expedite inference. Subjective experiences arise when this internal model (d-self) is identified with the physical self (p-self). The framework merges physicalism and panpsychism into realistic monism. It predicts that only macroscopic survival-relevant information (d-self shell) becomes subjective experience, and that the hub of subjective experience is distributed along the posterior medial cortex.