Qualia as Constraints: A Non-Libertarian Teleological Framework

This paper develops a conceptual framework at the intersection of determinism, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of physics. I argue that many discussions of determinism tacitly rely on temporal factorization: the assumption that a complete past state, together with the laws, metaphysically generates the future via an initial-value scheme. I propose an alternative global constraint conception of determinism, according to which a unique complete history is fixed as a whole by laws plus boundary and consistency conditions, without requiring that determination be exhausted by past-to-future generation. Within this setting, phenomenal experience (qualia) is introduced not as a causal influence on physical dynamics, but as a non-causal constraint on which complete histories are admissible. The aim is to avoid the standard dilemma that consciousness must be either reductively identified with physical structure or rendered epiphenomenal while preserving physical causal closure. I also sketch a minimal, non-agentive notion of teleology understood as a selection principle over admissible histories rather than a goal-directed process. The framework straightforwardly denies libertarian free will but seeks to preserve the intelligibility of meaning and agency within a globally determined world. The ambition of the paper is primarily conceptual: to articulate a coherent option in the contemporary landscape rather than to advance a specific empirical hypothesis.