Abstract

A unified science of mind would explain perception, cognition, agency, and consciousness within a single framework. This paper argues that such a project faces a prior methodological difficulty: consciousness is not only one object among others, but also the condition under which any investigation of the mind takes place.

The paper calls this the reflexivity problem. A scientific explanation of consciousness seems to presuppose the very conscious determinacy it seeks to explain. The task is therefore not simply to solve the explanatory gap, but to ask what conditions would make consciousness explainable without either reducing it away or treating it as primitive.

Main Idea

The paper begins from the thought that any science requires a determinate domain of objects. A mental phenomenon must be identifiable as this phenomenon rather than another if it is to become an object of explanation. This is straightforward for many cognitive processes, which can be individuated through behavior, function, computation, or neural structure.

The difficulty appears when this requirement is extended to consciousness itself. Conscious states are determinate from the first-person perspective: there is something it is like to undergo this experience rather than another. But the determinacy of experience is itself given within consciousness. Any attempt to explain it must therefore operate from within the very structure it hopes to explain.

The Reflexivity Problem

The reflexivity problem is the problem of how consciousness can become an object of explanation when it is also a condition of explanation. Third-person theories often describe neural, functional, or computational correlates of consciousness, but they do not fully explain how conscious determinacy becomes available as first-person experience. First-person approaches begin from experience itself, but risk treating consciousness as primitive and closing the explanatory circle.

The paper argues that a solution must be dual. Conscious determinacy must be intelligible from two sides at once:

  • From the first-person side, it must be recoverable as a structure given within experience.
  • From the third-person side, it must be describable as the effect of cognitive processes open to scientific explanation.

A unified science of mind is possible only if these two descriptions can be mapped onto one another.

Structural Conditions

The proposed bridge lies at the level of presentation. Cognitive processes are not directly available to consciousness, but their contents can become available within experience. Perception, imagination, memory, anticipation, and reflection all generate or modify contents that appear within a shared field of possible presentation.

On this view, a conscious state becomes determinate by being situated within a contrastive field of alternatives. To experience something as this color, this object, this thought, or this situation is to experience it against a background of possible variations. The field of contrasts is not merely hidden in the cognitive machinery; it must be at least partially available within presentation itself.

This gives the required bridge. Third-person explanation can study the cognitive processes that generate or transform the contrastive field. First-person reflection can investigate how the field structures experience from within. The same structure is therefore accessible from both sides.

Why It Matters

The paper does not claim to provide a complete theory of consciousness. Instead, it identifies a necessary condition for any unified science of mind: conscious determinacy must be reconstructible both as a first-person structure and as the effect of third-person cognitive processes.

This reframes the problem of consciousness. The central issue is not only whether consciousness can be naturalized, but whether the space in which conscious phenomena become determinate can itself be explained. If this bridge can be established, consciousness need not remain outside scientific explanation, nor be dissolved into a description that no longer resembles experience.

Citation

Moullec, Matthieu. 2026. “On the Possibility of a Unified Science of the Mind.” Working paper.

@misc{moullec2026unifiedmind,
  author = {Matthieu Moullec},
  year = {2026},
  title = {On the Possibility of a Unified Science of the Mind},
  note = {Working paper}
}

consciousness science of mind phenomenology cognition determinacy