Neurophenomenal structuralism. A philosophical agenda for a structuralist neuroscience of consciousness.

Neurophenomenal structuralism proposes that conscious experiences are best understood not as properties of individual neurons but as relationships among neural structures. The framework argues that the brain's self-organized neural maps share a structural, homomorphic mapping with the quality spaces of phenomenal experience. This approach offers a solution to the Newman problem by grounding phenomenal content in spatiotemporal relations rather than intrinsic neural features. It advocates for measurement methods that capture relationships between stimuli, such as similarity ratings and representational geometry. Philosophically, the view entails holism about phenomenal experiences and rules out inverted qualia scenarios, where color experiences could be swapped without behavioral change.

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Abstract

The program of "neurophenomenal structuralism" is presented as an agenda for a genuine structuralist neuroscience of consciousness that seeks to understand specific phenomenal experiences as strictly relational affairs. The paper covers a broad range of topics. It starts from considerations about neural change detection and relational coding that motivate a solution of the Newman problem of the brain in terms of spatiotemporal relations. Next, phenomenal quality spaces and their Q-structures are discussed. Neurophenomenal structuralism proclaims a homomorphic mapping of the structures of self-organized neural maps in the brain onto Q-structures, and it will be demonstrated how this leads to a new and special version of structural representationalism about phenomenal content. A methodological implication of neurophenomenal structuralism is that it proposes measurement procedures that focus on the relationships between different stimuli (as, for instance, similarity ratings or representational geometry methods). Finally, it will be shown that neurophenomenal structuralism also has strong philosophical implications, as it leads to holism about phenomenal experiences and serves to reject inverted qualia scenarios.