You may be surprised to learn that there is more to the theory than is conveyed in the headline to the Nautilus Q&A with the scientist who came up with it. A more accurate statement of Solms's view is that consciousness is precision adjustment within a hierarchical network of Markov blankets that self-organise to minimise free energy. You can judge for yourself whether he avoids tautology or rationalises away the hard problem, but you should probably first read his book, in which he explains the idea. Remarkably, given that this is a book about predictive coding in the brain, it is not all that taxing to read. What's more, as far as I can see, it does in fact solve the problem.