The harder problem of consciousness

Disputatio

The hard problem T. H. Huxley famously said 'How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp.' 2 We do not see how to explain a state of consciousness in terms of its neurological basis. This is the Hard Problem of Consciousness. 3 The aim of this paper is to present another problem of consciousness. The Harder Problem as I will call it is more epistemological than the 

Topoi, 2017

2007

Abstract Those who are optimistic about the prospects of a science of consciousness, and those who believe that it lies beyond the reach of standard scientific methods, have something in common: both groups view consciousness as posing a special challenge for science. In this paper, we take a close look at the nature of this challenge.

NeuroQuantology, 2007

The problem of subjective experience remains a major topic of debate amongst researchers in both the philosophy of mind and the foundations of artificial intelligence. David Chalmers has referred to this as The Hard Problem of Consciousness, since subjective experience appears to resist most attempts at a functional description. Theories involving 60Hz oscillations in the cerebral cortex, Bose condensates, and quantum collapse in microtubules have all been proffered as offering potential solutions to The Hard Problem, while some other researchers seem eager to retain an essentially dualistic world-view. This paper proposes an even more fundamental problem, potentially disturbing to both sides of the materialist / dualist divide: given that conscious organisms exist in the world, how can it be that one of those organisms happens to be you?

2014

Consciousness and the feeling of existence have yet not been fully explained. There are interesting arguments from panpsychist as well as from eliminative materialistic (neuroscientific) positions. A panpsychist perspective is normally one where the innermost part of the physical world consists of some kind of mental entities or experiences, while the materialistic perspective claim such entities are only material (non-mental). In between these two positions there are numerous ideas how consciousness is to be explained. As long as no final explanation has been found, we can keep on presenting theories of mind. Philosophical argumentation will however not be sufficient to validate a specific standpoint. I argue in this paper that the problem of consciousness should not be isolated as a separate problem as argued by Chalmers (1995). He defines the hard problem, and also presents an outline of a theory of consciousness, claiming this covers possible solutions. Rupert Read (2008) argues...

Philosophy Study, 2017

Chalmers introduced the hard problem of consciousness as a profound gap between experience and physical concepts. Philosophical theories were based on different interpretations concerning the qualia/concept gap, such as interactive dualism (Descartes), as well as mono aspect or dual aspect monism. From a bio-psychological perspective, the gap can be explained by the different activity of two mental functions realizing a mental representation of extra-mental reality. The function of elementary sensation requires active sense organs, which create an uninterrupted physical chain from extra-mental reality to the brain and reflect the present. The function of categorizing reflection no longer needs sense organs, so that the physical chain to extra-mental reality is interrupted and now reflects the past. Whereas elementary sensation is an open system, categorizing reflection remains a closed system, separated from extra-mental reality. This creates the potentiality/reality gap, since prediction from the closed to the open system remains always uncertain. Elementary sensation is associated to specific qualia for each sense organ. Chalmers also attributed qualia to thoughts, with more neutral thought qualia. Thus at the qualia level, there is also an important gap, but now between specific sense qualia and neutral thought qualia. Since all physical concepts are simultaneously linked to neutral thought qualia, the hard problem might be explained by a qualia/qualia gap instead of a qualia/concept gap. The mental function of categorizing reflection induces the change from sense qualia to thought qualia by a categorization process. The specific sense qualia mosaic of an apple is reduced to physical concepts with neutral qualia by progressive categorization first to fruit, then to food, to chemicals and finally to calories. This might explain the gap felt in the hard problem, since specific sense qualia are completely different from neutral thought qualia, so that the hard problem could already be encountered at the qualia level. Since the gap of the hard problem is due to the interaction of different mental functions, it is compatible with a philosophical monism.

This paper is a response to the commentaries in the Journal of Consciousness Studies on my paper "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness." I have written it so that it can be understood independently of the commentaries, however, and so that it provides a detailed elaboration and extension of some of the ideas in the original paper.

Phenomenal consciousness presents a distinctive explanatory problem. Some regard this problem as ‘hard’, which has troubling implications for the science and metaphysics of consciousness. Some regard it as ‘easy’, which ignores the special explanatory difficulties that consciousness offers. Others are unable to decide between these two uncomfortable positions. All three camps assume that the problem of consciousness is either easy or hard. I argue against this disjunction and suggest that the problem may be ‘tricky’—that is, partly easy and partly hard. This possibility emerges when we recognise that consciousness raises two explanatory questions. The Consciousness Question concerns why a subject is conscious rather than unconscious. The Character Question concerns why a conscious subject’s experience has the phenomenology it has rather than some other. I explore the possibility of one or other of these explanatory challenges being hard and the other easy, and consider the dialectical ramifications this has for all sides of the debate.

In A.E. Cavanna, A. Nani, H. Blumenfeld & S. Laureys (Eds) The Neuroimaging of Consciousness, 2013

This chapter reviews some of the central theoretical challenges confronting the search for the brain basis of consciousness and develops a conceptual framework for tackling these challenges. At the heart of the search for the neural basis of consciousness is the notion of a neural correlate of consciousness. Identifying the neural correlates of consciousness requires that we acknowledge the various aspects of consciousness, for each of the aspects of consciousness raises its own set of methodological challenges. We examine the question of whether an account of the neural correlates of consciousness can be used to ascribe consciousness to creatures that lack the capacity to report their experiences, and we ask whether it is possible to go beyond the neural correlates of consciousness by providing neurally-based explanations of consciousness.