Resolving the Hard Problem: Consciousness as the Collapse of Causal Separability

This article proposes a system-theoretical and thermodynamically based model for the solution of the so-called 'Hard Problem of Consciousness'. Instead of asking why neuronal processes generate subjective experience, it is shown that consciousness can be understood as the structural result of a causal collapse in self-organizing systems. The reasoning develops along three evolutionary thresholds: autopoiesis, causal poiesis, and causal collapse. Consciousness does not appear as a property, but as an epistemic state of structural indistinguishability. The article argues that the hard problem is not an unsolved puzzle, but a categorical misformulation.