A Formalizable Proof of the No-Supervenience Theorem: A Diagonal Limitation on the Viability of Physicalist Theories of Consciousness

TL;DR

This paper presents a formal proof demonstrating that physicalist theories of consciousness face a fundamental limitation, showing they must be internally inconsistent when describing self-aware systems, using predicate modal logic and inference devices.

Contribution

It provides the first formalizable proof of the no-supervenience theorem using predicate modal logic and inference devices, clarifying the limitations of physicalist theories of consciousness.

Findings

Physicalist theories cannot fully account for consciousness.

Any self-aware physical system leads to internal inconsistency.

The proof formalizes the no-supervenience theorem using modal logic.

Abstract

The no-supervenience theorem limits the capacity of physicalist theories to provide a comprehensive account of human consciousness. The proof of the theorem is difficult to formalize because it relies on both alethic and epistemic notions of possibility. This article outlines a formalizable proof using predicate modal logic in which the epistemic inferences are expressed in terms of an existing mathematical formalism, the inference device (Wolpert, 2008). The resulting proof shows definitely that any physicalist theory which describes a self-aware, intelligent system must be internally inconsistent.