Experience as Integrated Relevance: A Dual-Aspect Account of Consciousness (Short Version)

This short version presents the core argument of a dual-aspect account of experience and consciousness centered on systemic relevance. The central claim is that experience is the inner appearance of systemic relevance, and that consciousness is not merely integrated information but integrated relevance. 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. 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 the basic relevance matrix and distinguishes biological, affective, social, narrative, and existential forms of relevance. It situates the model in relation to the hard problem, dual-aspect theory, Integrated Information Theory, predictive processing, the Free-Energy Principle, panexperientialism, Russellian monism, interoception, salience research, and appraisal theories of emotion. The aim is not to derive experience from function, but to reframe experience as the inner aspect of relevance-organized systems.