Consciousness as Interpretive Response: _A Phenomenological Approach to the Hard Problem of Consciousness_

The so-called Hard Problem of consciousness addresses the question of why physical processes give rise to subjective experience. While neuroscience and information-theoretic approaches successfully model the mechanisms of perception and cognition, they do not explain why these processes are accompanied by felt experience. This paper proposes an ontological reframing: experience is not an added feature emerging from physical processing but the intrinsic mode of operation of self-conscious interpretive systems. Conscious experience arises necessarily wherever stimuli are interpreted within a self-referential perspective.