Lee-Youngzie, Z., Tsuchiya, N., Robinson, M., Dietz, D. & Monti, M. M. (2026). Towards a Mathematical Structure of Global Phenomenal Consciousness. Entropy 28(6): 615. doi:10.3390/e28060615. Preprint: PsyArXiv, doi:10.31234/osf.io/2u37y.
Key takeaways
From the reading, NOTE-1059.
- Two kinds of qualia structure, joined. Intra-phenomenal structures give the part–whole organization of one experience. Inter-phenomenal structures give its place among other experiences, measured by similarity judgements. A presheaf assigns to each part the measured structure of its qualia (§4.1.2).
- Binding as gluing. “Conditions for phenomenal binding are formalized as the compatibility condition for the gluing of local sections” (§5.2). Restriction to a part is read as selective attention to it, with the rule that attention never makes experiences less dissimilar, which the authors call a speculation (§4.1.3).
- Two readings of failure. Binocular rivalry is offered as a sheaf failure “diagnostic of phenomenal disunity” (§4.1.5). Narrow qualia measured in isolation that fail to glue into the measured whole show context dependence within one experience, as in the Ebbinghaus illusion (§4.1.6). The framework holds both “without presupposing that phenomenal experience is either fully decomposable or entirely unanalyzable” (§5.2), and does not say how to tell them apart.
- Global section means data. The term is reserved for “the coherent global data that results from a sheaf” (Definition A14). It is a measurement-level object, not an experience or a subject.
- Formal faults. Definition A7’s worked Alexandroff topology lists the down-sets of a diamond order, calls them the up-sets of a chain, and omits the whole set. By Definition A15, gluing applies only to sections that agree on the overlap, so rivalry is not a sheaf failure. As defined, the restriction maps match trials by label, so the gluing condition has content only as the empirical consistency radius of §5.1. Each was checked by script (NOTE-1059).
- No data. Two regions, one modality, one moment. Methods for measuring broad qualia are named as the main gap (§5.3).
Why this is here
The owner’s exchange of 2026-10-21, “Experience and interpretation”, asked whether experience is constituted by interpretation or produced by it. The exchange cited this paper for using category and sheaf theory to relate local phenomenal structures to one global experience. It begins from phenomenal structures and does not derive phenomenality from anything else. Bears on QUESTION-255 and CLAIM-153.
Correction from the reading. The exchange’s description is accurate as far as it goes. But the paper relates local qualia to a broad quale, not to “one global experience” as a subject or a unity. It formalizes binding, not unity, which it assumes always holds. So it does not hold the reading QUESTION-255 sets against A7, that unity is the existence of a global section. Its own Ebbinghaus case is a sheaf failure inside a unified experience. Its tribar is an interpretive presheaf with no global section, seen as one figure. Both bear on that question’s second answer.
Filed from this work on 2026-10-22: THEORY-875, binding as gluing of measured qualia structure, and its two readings of failure.