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What is the hard problem of consciousness?
Dec 24, 2023 · So what exactly is the hard problem of consciousness? And why is it so hard to solve?! In this post, we’ll look at what the hard problem of consciousness is, how it differs from the ‘easy’ problem, and examine some related philosophical ideas.
In the philosophy of mind, the hard problem of consciousness is to explain why and how humans and other organisms have qualia, phenomenal consciousness, or subjective experience.
- Stating The Problem
- Underlying Reasons For The Problem
- Responses to The Problem
- References and Further Reading
a. Chalmers
David Chalmers coined the name “hard problem” (1995, 1996), but the problem is not wholly new, being a key element of the venerable mind-body problem. Still, Chalmers is among those most responsible for the outpouring of work on this issue. The problem arises because “phenomenal consciousness,” consciousness characterized in terms of “what it’s like for the subject,” fails to succumb to the standard sort of functional explanation successful elsewhere in psychology (compare Block 1995). Psycho...
b. Nagel
Thomas Nagel sees the problem as turning on the “subjectivity” of conscious mental states (1974, 1986). He argues that the facts about conscious states are inherently subjective—they can only be fully grasped from limited types of viewpoints. However, scientific explanation demands an objective characterization of the facts, one that moves away from any particular point of view. Thus, the facts about consciousness elude science and so make “the mind-body problem really intractable” (Nagel 197...
c. Levine
Joseph Levine argues that there is a special “explanatory gap” between consciousness and the physical (1983, 1993, 2001). The challenge of closing this explanatory gap is the hard problem. Levine argues that a good scientific explanation ought to deductively entail what it explains, allowing us to infer the presence of the target phenomenon from a statement of laws or mechanisms and initial conditions (Levine 2001, 74-76). Deductive entailment is a logical relation where if the premises of an...
But what it is about consciousness that generates the hard problem? It may just seem obvious that consciousness could not be physical or functional. But it is worthwhile to try and draw a rough circle around the problematic features of conscious experience, if we can. This both clarifies what we are talking about when we talk about consciousness an...
a. Eliminativism
Eliminativism holds that there is no hard problem of consciousness because there is no consciousness to worry about in the first place. Eliminativism is most clearly defended by Rey 1997, but see also Dennett 1978, 1988, Wilkes 1984, and Ryle 1949. On the face of it, this response sounds absurd: how can one deny that conscious experience exists? Consciousness might be the one thing that is certain in our epistemology. But eliminativist views resist the idea that what we call experience is equ...
b. Strong Reductionism
Strong reductionism holds that consciousness exists, but contends that it is reducible to tractable functional, nonintrinsic properties. Strong reductionism further claims that the reductive story we tell about consciousness fully explains, without remainder, all that needs to be explained about consciousness. Reductionism, generally, is the idea that complex phenomena can be explained in terms of the arrangement and functioning of simpler, better understood parts. Key to strong reductionism,...
c. Weak Reductionism
Weak reductionism, in contrast to the strong version, holds that consciousness is a simple or basic phenomenon, one that cannot be informatively broken down into simpler nonconscious elements. But according to the view we can still identify consciousness with physical properties if the most parsimonious and productive theory supports such an identity (Block 2002, Block & Stalnaker 1999, Hill 1997, Loar 1997, 1999, Papineau 1993, 2002, Perry 2001). What’s more, once the identity has been estab...
Albert, D. Z. Quantum Mechanics and Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.Armstrong, D. A Materialist Theory of Mind. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968.Armstrong, D. “What is Consciousness?” In The Nature of Mind. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981.Baars, B. A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.Oct 21, 2011 · The hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers 1995) is the problem of explaining the relationship between physical phenomena, such as brain processes, and experience (i.e., phenomenal consciousness, or mental states/events with phenomenal qualities or qualia). Why are physical processes ever accompanied by experience?
Jul 7, 2017 · Simply put, the hard problem asks the following question: how can the machinery of the brain (the neurons and synapses) produce consciousness — the colours that we see, for example, or the sounds that we hear? Look at a brain scan and you will see nothing resembling consciousness.
- Daniel Keane
Feb 15, 2016 · The easy problems of consciousness are those that seem directly susceptible to the standard methods of cognitive science, whereby a phenomenon is explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. The hard problems are those that seem to resist those methods.
Jul 30, 2018 · The hard problem ‘is the problem of experience’ [1, p. 202], accounting for ‘what it is like’ or qualia. To many researchers, this seemed like a sensible divide-and-conquer research strategy: first, we tackle all the easy problems, and then we turn our attention to the hard problem.
