Experience as Integrated Relevance: A Dual-Aspect Account of Consciousness

This paper develops a dual-aspect account of experience and consciousness centered on the concept of systemic relevance. It argues that theories of consciousness often move too quickly from information to experience without adequately distinguishing information, salience, function, relevance, and meaning. Information marks difference; salience marks attentional prominence; function describes the role of a state in a process; systemic relevance describes the degree to which a difference matters for the continued organization, regulation, integrity, action-capacity, or development of a system. The central claim is that experience is the inner appearance of systemic relevance, and that consciousness is not merely integrated information but integrated relevance. Pain, for example, is not merely information about tissue damage or the function of withdrawal, but disturbed bodily integrity as negatively relevant from within. The paper introduces a multidimensional relevance matrix, distinguishing valence, urgency, action-orientation, system-level, temporal horizon, and degree of integration. It also distinguishes biological, affective, social, narrative, and existential forms of relevance. The model is situated in relation to the hard problem, dual-aspect theory, panexperientialism, Russellian monism, Integrated Information Theory, predictive processing, the Free-Energy Principle, interoception, salience research, and appraisal theories of emotion. It does not derive experience from function, but reframes experience as the inner aspect of relevance-organized systems.