Abstract
Please note this is a draft on which we are seeking feedback.
Substantial changes and a third author are likely be added to the next
version.
The hard problem of consciousness asks why there is something it is like
to be a conscious organism. We address this from 1st principles, by
constructing a formalism that unifies lower and higher order theories of
consciousness. We assume pancomputationalism and hold that the
environment learns organisms that exhibit fit behaviour via the
algorithm we call natural selection. Selection learns organisms that
learn to classify causes, facilitating adaptation. Recent experimental
and mathematical computer science elucidates how. Scaling this capacity
implies a progressively higher order of “causal identity’‘ facilitating
reafference and P-consciousness, then self awareness and
A-consciousness, and then meta self awareness. We then use this to
resolve the hard problem in precise terms. First, we deny that a
philosophical zombie is in all circumstances as capable as a P-conscious
being. This is because a variable presupposes an object to which a value
is assigned. Whether X causes Y depends on the choice of X, so causality
is learned by learning X such that X causes Y, not by presupposing X and
then learning if X causes Y (presupposing rather than inferring
abstractions can reduce sample efficiency in learning). However,
learning is a discriminatory process that requires states be
differentiated by value. Without objects, variables or values, there is
only quality. By this we mean an organism is attracted to or repulsed by
a physical state. Learning reduces quality into objects by constructing
policies classifying cause of affect (“representations’‘ are just
behaviour triggered by phenomenal content). Where selection pressures
require an organism classify its own interventions, that  policy (a
“1st order causal identity’‘) has a quality that persists across
interventions, and so there is something it is like to be that organism.
Thus organisms have P-consciousness because it allows them to adapt with
greater sample efficiency, and infer the cause of affect. We then argue
neither P nor A-consciousness alone are remarkable, but when
P-consciousness gives rise to A-consciousness we obtain
“H-consciousness” (what Boltuc argues is the crux of the hard
problem). This occurs when selection pressures require organism o
infer organism u’s prediction of o‘s interventions a “2nd
order causal identity” approximating intent). A-consciousness is the
contents of 2nd order causal identities, and by predicting another’s
prediction of one’s own 1st order causal identities it becomes possible
to know what one knows and feels, and act upon this information to
communicate meaning in the Gricean sense. Thus P and A-consciousness are
two aspects of H-concsiousness, the process of learning and acting in
accord with a hierarchy of causal identities that simplify the
environment into classifiers of cause and affect. We call this the
psychophysical principle of causality.