The philosophy of mind has produced an astonishing variety of theories, yet it has barely established agreement on what exactly needs to be explained. Instead, conceptual distinctions are repeatedly transformed into ontological problems.

Consider the classical mind and body problem. Physiological and psychological descriptions of the same living organism are treated as though they referred to two different kinds of existence. Philosophy then spends centuries trying to reunite what it has separated conceptually.

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) proceeds from formal properties of causal integration to claims about consciousness. But mathematical integration does not explain the biological genesis of experience.

In interpretations of the Free Energy Principle (FEP), mathematical descriptions of adaptive processes are elevated into explanations of cognition, sometimes even consciousness. A formal model is mistaken for a causal mechanism.

Functionalism defines mental states by their functional roles and assumes that reproducing these roles can reproduce the states themselves. Computationalism similarly risks identifying the formal processing of information with the actual processes of a living organism.

The underlying error is remarkably consistent. Description is confused with causation, functional equivalence with ontological identity, and mathematical modeling with physical explanation.

Metaphysics then becomes a means of concealing these category errors rather than resolving them.

But there is an even more fundamental problem: the failure to understand the difference between nonliving matter and life.
Life is an autocatalytic cycle, a self-producing and self-maintaining organization of matter. It cannot be understood by reducing it to the categories of physics alone. Physical laws apply to living systems, but they do not, by themselves, explain the emergence and organization of life. Physics describes the material processes involved. Biology must explain how these processes constitute a living system.
Anyone who ignores this distinction and attempts to derive consciousness directly from physical, computational, or informational properties has already missed the phenomenon that needs to be explained.

My own starting point is different. Consciousness is a vital function of living organisms with sufficiently differentiated nervous systems. It is not an independent entity, nor a property that can simply be assigned to any system displaying the appropriate functional organization.

The scientific and philosophical task is therefore to reconstruct the causal genesis of consciousness within biological evolution. We need to explain how the relevant organization develops, not merely describe the properties of an already developed system.

My question is simple: Has philosophy of mind lost the methodological discipline required to distinguish its own descriptions from the reality it seeks to explain?

I would welcome a critical discussion of this question.