The Explanatory Revolution: Beyond the Semantic Gap - A Radical Reconceptualization of Explanation and Qualia

The deepest objections to consciousness theories—including Processual Experiential Realism—center on whether any framework can truly explain rather than merely redescribe the phenomenon of subjective experience. This paper argues that these objections reveal a fundamental misconception about the nature of explanation itself. The apparent "semantic gap" between physical and phenomenal concepts is not a barrier to explanation but rather points toward a more radical reconceptualization of what explanation means in the context of consciousness. I propose that the traditional model of explanation—reducing the unfamiliar to the familiar, the complex to the simple, the qualitative to the quantitative—is itself the source of the hard problem. Instead, I develop a "participatory explanation" model where consciousness is not explained by stepping outside it but by recognizing our explanatory activity as itself a form of conscious experience. This dissolves the hard problem not by solving it within traditional explanatory frameworks, but by showing that consciousness requires a fundamentally different kind of understanding that transcends the subject-object dichotomy underlying all traditional explanation.