This work introduces a framework highlighting internal agreement in self-models under irreversible time, implying coherence in experience.
This work introduces a foundational framework in which qualia are not treated as experiences, representations, or intrinsic properties, but as internal semantic rendezvous tokens required for maintaining stable self-reference under irreversible time. Systems that cannot rewind, externally verify their internal state, or fully inspect themselves must nonetheless achieve internal semantic agreement in order to remain coherent across temporal extension. On this account, phenomenological invariants arise as artifacts of temporally constrained internal self-agreement, functioning to avoid rendezvous failure within self-models subject to irreversibility. ``What-it-is-like'' is therefore not taken as a primitive, but as the irreducible cost incurred by achieving internal semantic agreement under conditions of irreversible time.
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Riaan de Beer (2026) studied this question.
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