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[(Explaining Consciousness: The Hard Problem)] [Author: Jonathan Shear] published on
At the 1994 landmark conference "Toward a Scientific Basis for Consciousness," philosopher David Chalmers distinguished between the "easy" problems and the "hard" problem of consciousness research. According to Chalmers, the easy problems are to explain cognitive functions such as discrimination, integration, and the control of behavior; the hard problem is to explain why these functions should be associated with phenomenal experience. Why doesn't all this cognitive processing go on "in the dark," without any consciousness at all? In this book philosophers, physicists, psychologists, neurophysiologists, computer scientists, and others address this central topic in the growing discipline of consciousness studies. Some take issue with Chalmers's distinction, arguing that the hard problem is a nonproblem, or that the explanatory gap is too wide to be bridged. Others offer alternative suggestions as to how the problem might be solved, whether through cognitive science, fundamental physics, empirical phenomenology, or with theories that take consciousness as irreducible.
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First published June 13, 1997
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November 2, 2019
This book is an attempt to understand what David Chalmers dubbed "the hard problem" of consciousness, the problem of explaining experience, *what it is like* to see red, taste chocolate, hear a Beethoven sonata, or smack your thumb with a hammer.
The majority of the views in this volume take traditional views of consciousness not informed by contemporary embodied mind and dynamical system biology and not informed by non-western approaches to consciousness such as the rich traditions of India, mainly Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. That is to say that consciousness is seen here as an emergent from third-person perspectives of experience, i.e., various forms of materialist explanations such as quantum physics, neural networks, and so on. The book does include a few first-person views of consciousness which try to come to terms with experience. Other essays dismiss experience as a non-issue or attempt to ground experience in third-person explanations of matter, energy, quantum gaps, or information.
At some point we'll arrive at the nondualist view that consciousness is simply another word for awareness, mind, and interiority, all of which are simply one side of experience, the other side being exteriority in the form of spacetime, matter, and energy. Same thing, two views. In any case, the problem of consciousness is the problem of letting go of purely materialist explanations and the idea that the material world is somehow prior to, pre-exists, or generates conscious experience. Wake up and listen to the Buddhists: reality is nondual; there is no ultimate self-existent anything, anywhere, anyhow. We live and operate within relative reality which includes material reality as being one side of a duality within experience.
The majority of the views in this volume take traditional views of consciousness not informed by contemporary embodied mind and dynamical system biology and not informed by non-western approaches to consciousness such as the rich traditions of India, mainly Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. That is to say that consciousness is seen here as an emergent from third-person perspectives of experience, i.e., various forms of materialist explanations such as quantum physics, neural networks, and so on. The book does include a few first-person views of consciousness which try to come to terms with experience. Other essays dismiss experience as a non-issue or attempt to ground experience in third-person explanations of matter, energy, quantum gaps, or information.
At some point we'll arrive at the nondualist view that consciousness is simply another word for awareness, mind, and interiority, all of which are simply one side of experience, the other side being exteriority in the form of spacetime, matter, and energy. Same thing, two views. In any case, the problem of consciousness is the problem of letting go of purely materialist explanations and the idea that the material world is somehow prior to, pre-exists, or generates conscious experience. Wake up and listen to the Buddhists: reality is nondual; there is no ultimate self-existent anything, anywhere, anyhow. We live and operate within relative reality which includes material reality as being one side of a duality within experience.
September 15, 2016
Could a 1997 papers' collection still say something meaningful about the present consciousness studies state of art? Maybe not. Neuroscientific research grew quite fast in the last decade. But on a philosophical level, the issue seems to have changed quite a little, and this book is very useful to get a general picture of what it is referred to as 'the hard problem of consciousness'. Since many authors here question that physical sciences would ever be able to give any definitive answer to such problem, probably none of the most recent disruptive scientific discoveries - Higgs-Boson or gravitational fields - would change their minds anyway. The actuality of the present work became surprisingly clear to me after I saw last Chalmers' TED Talk, given in 2014, where the same basic issues are laid out; in an even more recent episode of the Waking Up Podcast, Chalmers brings on the same arguments you'll find here.
You would certainly recognise how often I disagree (in the footnotes) with authors who propose alternative views to the traditional explanation of consciousness, which roots it in neurophysiological workings. I am particularly fond of the last work of Sean Carroll, whose wit is especially precious in striking out philosophical zombies and downward causations. Nevertheless, as Chalmers' TED Talk and Sam Harris' enthusiasm reminded me, these objections are far from being defeated. My attempt with the present review is to present the arguments of the authors in the most neutral way, to be faithful with their explanation and leave any personal disagreement in the footnotes, so that you could judge by yourself how ungrounded, I believe, many of the presented arguments are. I've been a little disappointed to find out that the collection presented by Shear is not well balanced. Papers' majority falls in the category of those who sympathise with Chalmers' position; skeptics are in minority, maybe because of Shear's selection, maybe because skeptics themselves deemed such argumentation not worthy of being engaged with in the first place. Another good reason to listen to the fringe is that science is becoming increasingly conservative for the way it is structured. That is a good thing, except for the fact that discoveries are much more rare and expensive. Stretching a little these constraints is surely a good creative practice, and strengthens one's critical abilities as well.
The present review mimics the structure of the book. To Chalmers' keynote article, follow 26 different papers, all of them being previously published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, closed by a Chalmers' paper in response. From Dennett to Price, a book section called "Deflationary Perspectives", the general approach would be that of reducing the hard problem to something that physical sciences would be able to fully figure out. From McGinn to Robinson, "The Explanatory Gap" section, authors remark that the hard problem is really hard - some, that it is even insoluble. From Clarke to Bilodueau, the "Physics" section, quantum mechanics perspectives are used to shed light on the problem. From Crick and Koch to MacLennan, the "Neuroscience and Cognitive Science" section, explore some hypotheses, often speculative about the possible connection between these two realms. From Seager to Hut and Shepard, the "Rethinking Nature" section, is explored the possibility of defining consciousness as a general feature of the universe. From Velmans to Shear, in the last "First-Person Perspectives" section, it is argued that a new science of subjective phenomena is needed. The symposium is summarised in Chalmers' response paper.
Find the full review at kumarproject.com/project-type/books/
You would certainly recognise how often I disagree (in the footnotes) with authors who propose alternative views to the traditional explanation of consciousness, which roots it in neurophysiological workings. I am particularly fond of the last work of Sean Carroll, whose wit is especially precious in striking out philosophical zombies and downward causations. Nevertheless, as Chalmers' TED Talk and Sam Harris' enthusiasm reminded me, these objections are far from being defeated. My attempt with the present review is to present the arguments of the authors in the most neutral way, to be faithful with their explanation and leave any personal disagreement in the footnotes, so that you could judge by yourself how ungrounded, I believe, many of the presented arguments are. I've been a little disappointed to find out that the collection presented by Shear is not well balanced. Papers' majority falls in the category of those who sympathise with Chalmers' position; skeptics are in minority, maybe because of Shear's selection, maybe because skeptics themselves deemed such argumentation not worthy of being engaged with in the first place. Another good reason to listen to the fringe is that science is becoming increasingly conservative for the way it is structured. That is a good thing, except for the fact that discoveries are much more rare and expensive. Stretching a little these constraints is surely a good creative practice, and strengthens one's critical abilities as well.
The present review mimics the structure of the book. To Chalmers' keynote article, follow 26 different papers, all of them being previously published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, closed by a Chalmers' paper in response. From Dennett to Price, a book section called "Deflationary Perspectives", the general approach would be that of reducing the hard problem to something that physical sciences would be able to fully figure out. From McGinn to Robinson, "The Explanatory Gap" section, authors remark that the hard problem is really hard - some, that it is even insoluble. From Clarke to Bilodueau, the "Physics" section, quantum mechanics perspectives are used to shed light on the problem. From Crick and Koch to MacLennan, the "Neuroscience and Cognitive Science" section, explore some hypotheses, often speculative about the possible connection between these two realms. From Seager to Hut and Shepard, the "Rethinking Nature" section, is explored the possibility of defining consciousness as a general feature of the universe. From Velmans to Shear, in the last "First-Person Perspectives" section, it is argued that a new science of subjective phenomena is needed. The symposium is summarised in Chalmers' response paper.
Find the full review at kumarproject.com/project-type/books/
September 3, 2024
A SERIES OF ESSAYS RESPONDING TO CHALMERS' "EASY/HARD PROBLEM" DISTINCTION,
At a conference in Tucson, Arizona in 1994 on the topic, "Toward a Scientific Basis of Consciousness," philosopher David Chalmers [born 1966; author of books such as 'The Conscious Mind'] read a paper which proposed a distinction between the "easy problems" and the "hard problem" of consciousness. This book presents a 1995 paper by Chalmers elaborating on the subject, followed by two dozen responses to it, and then by Chalmers' own reply to these responses.
Chalmers explains, "At the start, it is useful to divide the associated problems of consciousness into 'hard' and 'easy' problems. 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. The easy problems ... include those of explaining the following phenomena: the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli... the deliberate control of behaviour; the difference between wakefulness and sleep... There is no real issue about whether THESE phenomena can be explained scientifically... Getting the details right will probably take a century or two of difficult empirical work. Still, there is every reason to believe that the methods of cognitive science and neuroscience will succeed. The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of EXPERIENCE... Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does. If any problem qualifies as THE problem of consciousness, it is this one." (Pg. 9-11)
Later, he argues, "The facts about experience cannot be an automatic consequence of any physical account, as it is conceptually coherent that any given process could exist without experience. Experience may ARISE from the physical, but it is not ENTAILED by the physical. The moral of all this is that you can't explain conscious experience on the cheap." (Pg. 18)
He adds, "Nothing in physics tells us why there is matter in the first place, but we do not count this against theories of matter. Certain features of the world need to be taken as fundamental by any scientific theory... The same goes for a theory of experience. This position qualifies as a variety of dualism... But it is an innocent version of dualism, entirely compatible with a scientific view of the world." (Pg. 20)
One respondent to Chalmers' essay said, "Are the easy problems known to be easier than The Hard Problem? Is the hard/easy division grounded in fact?... it is important to acknowledge that for none of the so-called 'easy' problems, do we have an understanding of their solution..." (Pg. 40)
Two other respondents state, "we will defend the claims of cognitive psychology... by arguing that the hard problem [HP]... is not a serious problem. For a problem to be a genuine problem, some sort of idea of a solution must be available (e.g. some way of recognizing a solution when one stumbles across one), whereas all discussion of HP seems to preclude any sort of answer being given." (Pg. 70)
Still another says, "No theory of the sort Chalmers suggests can explain why physical events, of any sort, produce consciousness. The proper conclusion to draw... is that there simply is no solution to the truly hard problem of consciousness." (Pg. 115)
Chalmers wrote in his own response, "Because of the unexpected influence of the 'hard problem' formulation, I have occasionally received far more credit than I deserve. So let me state the obvious: the reason the formulation has caught on is that everyone knew what the hard problem was all along. The label just makes it a little harder to avoid... All my paper really contributes is a catchy name, a minor reformulation of philosophically familiar points, and a specific approach to dealing with them." (Pg. 379)
This is a very broad collection of writings, with a very diverse variety of critical viewpoints represented. This book will be "must reading" for any serious student of the philosophy of mind.
At a conference in Tucson, Arizona in 1994 on the topic, "Toward a Scientific Basis of Consciousness," philosopher David Chalmers [born 1966; author of books such as 'The Conscious Mind'] read a paper which proposed a distinction between the "easy problems" and the "hard problem" of consciousness. This book presents a 1995 paper by Chalmers elaborating on the subject, followed by two dozen responses to it, and then by Chalmers' own reply to these responses.
Chalmers explains, "At the start, it is useful to divide the associated problems of consciousness into 'hard' and 'easy' problems. 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. The easy problems ... include those of explaining the following phenomena: the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli... the deliberate control of behaviour; the difference between wakefulness and sleep... There is no real issue about whether THESE phenomena can be explained scientifically... Getting the details right will probably take a century or two of difficult empirical work. Still, there is every reason to believe that the methods of cognitive science and neuroscience will succeed. The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of EXPERIENCE... Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does. If any problem qualifies as THE problem of consciousness, it is this one." (Pg. 9-11)
Later, he argues, "The facts about experience cannot be an automatic consequence of any physical account, as it is conceptually coherent that any given process could exist without experience. Experience may ARISE from the physical, but it is not ENTAILED by the physical. The moral of all this is that you can't explain conscious experience on the cheap." (Pg. 18)
He adds, "Nothing in physics tells us why there is matter in the first place, but we do not count this against theories of matter. Certain features of the world need to be taken as fundamental by any scientific theory... The same goes for a theory of experience. This position qualifies as a variety of dualism... But it is an innocent version of dualism, entirely compatible with a scientific view of the world." (Pg. 20)
One respondent to Chalmers' essay said, "Are the easy problems known to be easier than The Hard Problem? Is the hard/easy division grounded in fact?... it is important to acknowledge that for none of the so-called 'easy' problems, do we have an understanding of their solution..." (Pg. 40)
Two other respondents state, "we will defend the claims of cognitive psychology... by arguing that the hard problem [HP]... is not a serious problem. For a problem to be a genuine problem, some sort of idea of a solution must be available (e.g. some way of recognizing a solution when one stumbles across one), whereas all discussion of HP seems to preclude any sort of answer being given." (Pg. 70)
Still another says, "No theory of the sort Chalmers suggests can explain why physical events, of any sort, produce consciousness. The proper conclusion to draw... is that there simply is no solution to the truly hard problem of consciousness." (Pg. 115)
Chalmers wrote in his own response, "Because of the unexpected influence of the 'hard problem' formulation, I have occasionally received far more credit than I deserve. So let me state the obvious: the reason the formulation has caught on is that everyone knew what the hard problem was all along. The label just makes it a little harder to avoid... All my paper really contributes is a catchy name, a minor reformulation of philosophically familiar points, and a specific approach to dealing with them." (Pg. 379)
This is a very broad collection of writings, with a very diverse variety of critical viewpoints represented. This book will be "must reading" for any serious student of the philosophy of mind.
December 18, 2020
The basis of this text is David Chalmers' essay "Facing up to the hard problem of consciousness" in which he defines the "hard problem" (why is there experience?) and outlines a framework for addressing it. This essay is a clear and concise summary of his dense and sprawling text "The Conscious Mind"; if you've not read that work, don't. Read this essay first and if your interest is piqued, by all means wade into it for all the details and extraneous meanderings (of which there are *many*).
The bulk of this book is a collection of responses to Chalmers' keynote essay, and includes samplings from many schools of thought on the subject of consciousness including "deflationary" approaches (there either isn't a thing called consciousness at all, or it's fully entailed and explicated by functional neurology), and then there are non-reductive theories, dual-aspect approaches, defeatist perspectives (we're never gonna figure this stuff out so why bother?), and, of course, several ideas shrouded in the spooky mists of quantum physics.
I'm fairly convinced there's nothing special about consciousness; that it is likely simply the interface by which systems with complex and sophisticated cognitive processing necessarily access and manipulate information. In this sense, Chalmers and others are categorically wrong when they claim that consciousness does not logically supervene on the material world (that it's possible to imagine a world physically identical with ours, but whose inhabitants are devoid of conscious experience). This claim is not obviously true, quite possibly false, and either way is begging the question; and, yet, Chalmers' entire enterprise rests on it.
Consciousness has this effect on otherwise very smart people: it seems to infects their intuition to the point that they can't reason about it in any unbiased way. Some go so far as to propose that first-person experience is the primary ontology of the universe, and that third-person objective reality (like deadly viruses and meteors) is some derivative baggage. And of course, because consciousness is bizarre and so is quantum mechanics, they must be intimately connected. Subjective experience is somehow due to wavefunction collapse in neuron microtubules, because of course it is. Maximum spookiness FTW!
In all, this was still an enjoyable read. Certainly slow at times, and, while, none of the essays arguing for non-reductionist theories of consciousness were convincing, some were entertaining. It's a bit like peering under a rock under a soggy leaf pile, or visiting with distant relatives for the holidays. Lots of nutty ideas, lots of eccentric gesticulating, but all in all a good experience.
The bulk of this book is a collection of responses to Chalmers' keynote essay, and includes samplings from many schools of thought on the subject of consciousness including "deflationary" approaches (there either isn't a thing called consciousness at all, or it's fully entailed and explicated by functional neurology), and then there are non-reductive theories, dual-aspect approaches, defeatist perspectives (we're never gonna figure this stuff out so why bother?), and, of course, several ideas shrouded in the spooky mists of quantum physics.
I'm fairly convinced there's nothing special about consciousness; that it is likely simply the interface by which systems with complex and sophisticated cognitive processing necessarily access and manipulate information. In this sense, Chalmers and others are categorically wrong when they claim that consciousness does not logically supervene on the material world (that it's possible to imagine a world physically identical with ours, but whose inhabitants are devoid of conscious experience). This claim is not obviously true, quite possibly false, and either way is begging the question; and, yet, Chalmers' entire enterprise rests on it.
Consciousness has this effect on otherwise very smart people: it seems to infects their intuition to the point that they can't reason about it in any unbiased way. Some go so far as to propose that first-person experience is the primary ontology of the universe, and that third-person objective reality (like deadly viruses and meteors) is some derivative baggage. And of course, because consciousness is bizarre and so is quantum mechanics, they must be intimately connected. Subjective experience is somehow due to wavefunction collapse in neuron microtubules, because of course it is. Maximum spookiness FTW!
In all, this was still an enjoyable read. Certainly slow at times, and, while, none of the essays arguing for non-reductionist theories of consciousness were convincing, some were entertaining. It's a bit like peering under a rock under a soggy leaf pile, or visiting with distant relatives for the holidays. Lots of nutty ideas, lots of eccentric gesticulating, but all in all a good experience.
December 29, 2021
A well-curated collection of academic essays tackling consciousness, where most are responses to Chalmers' distinction between "the easy problems" of consciousness and "the hard problem" (i.e. explaining behavior in reference to physical mechanisms vs why these mechanisms give rise to experience). While a few of the essays are duds - I'm looking at you, physicists and neuroscientists - most are great, a few are mind-blowing, and Chalmers' original continues to shine as one of the best.
Some of my favorites:
"The Hornswoggle Problem" (P. Churchland): just because we can imagine philosophical zombies doesn't mean they're physically possible, and just because we can't imagine a reductive explanation of of consciousness doesn't make it not so.
"Function and Phenomenology: Closing the Explanatory Gap" (T. Clark): consciousness simply is what it's like for a complex information system to be in a certain state.
"Should We Expect to Feel as if We Understand Consciousness?" (M. Price): the hard problem might be something we shouldn't expect to 'feel' like we understand, even once fully explained.
"Consciousness, Information, and Panpsychism" (W.Seager): the hard problem is a generation problem (i.e. how does matter generate experience?). Panpsychism doesn't solve the problem, but replaces it with an easier generation problem (i.e. how do small amounts of consciousness "add up" to generate higher-level consciousness?).
"The Hard Problem: Closing the Empirical Gap": we should address the hard problem empirically, e.g. by studying meditation and the development of subjectivity in children.
Be warned that this is not a casual introduction to philosophy. It me the better part of a year to chew my way through (recipe: read for half an hour before bed, reflect while you fall asleep). Having studied philosophy is certainly not a pre-requisite, but unless it's in, say, your "top 5 other degrees I considered", this book is likely is not for you.
Some of my favorites:
"The Hornswoggle Problem" (P. Churchland): just because we can imagine philosophical zombies doesn't mean they're physically possible, and just because we can't imagine a reductive explanation of of consciousness doesn't make it not so.
"Function and Phenomenology: Closing the Explanatory Gap" (T. Clark): consciousness simply is what it's like for a complex information system to be in a certain state.
"Should We Expect to Feel as if We Understand Consciousness?" (M. Price): the hard problem might be something we shouldn't expect to 'feel' like we understand, even once fully explained.
"Consciousness, Information, and Panpsychism" (W.Seager): the hard problem is a generation problem (i.e. how does matter generate experience?). Panpsychism doesn't solve the problem, but replaces it with an easier generation problem (i.e. how do small amounts of consciousness "add up" to generate higher-level consciousness?).
"The Hard Problem: Closing the Empirical Gap": we should address the hard problem empirically, e.g. by studying meditation and the development of subjectivity in children.
Be warned that this is not a casual introduction to philosophy. It me the better part of a year to chew my way through (recipe: read for half an hour before bed, reflect while you fall asleep). Having studied philosophy is certainly not a pre-requisite, but unless it's in, say, your "top 5 other degrees I considered", this book is likely is not for you.
April 4, 2021
thus ends one of my longest reading journeys in goodreads. i started this in july of 2020 and ended it only today, this 4th of april 2021. i am almost sad that such a long voyage is now finished.
still, there are highlights. as befits all types of books of this calibre, there is a breadth of opinions and perspectives here. it would not be amiss if i say that some essays are more interesting than others and i have no doubt that it is from my own deficiencies that i took this long to even finish it. this book is a collection of a wide variety of intellectuals coming from separate fields coming together to talk about that one experience common to us all: consciousness. we have here physicists discoursing with philosophers and cognitive scientists debating with phenomenologists. it is a tour de force and an achievement of the human intellect to try and understand that which remains murky to us. as expected, some of the finer nuances escape my amateur mind—especially whenever those physicists draw out their formulas, of which there are quite more than i expected when i started this books—yet that does not detract from the effort altogether.
still, there are highlights. as befits all types of books of this calibre, there is a breadth of opinions and perspectives here. it would not be amiss if i say that some essays are more interesting than others and i have no doubt that it is from my own deficiencies that i took this long to even finish it. this book is a collection of a wide variety of intellectuals coming from separate fields coming together to talk about that one experience common to us all: consciousness. we have here physicists discoursing with philosophers and cognitive scientists debating with phenomenologists. it is a tour de force and an achievement of the human intellect to try and understand that which remains murky to us. as expected, some of the finer nuances escape my amateur mind—especially whenever those physicists draw out their formulas, of which there are quite more than i expected when i started this books—yet that does not detract from the effort altogether.
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