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108-478: In The Conscious Mind Chalmers argues that (1) the physical does not exhaust the actual, so materialism is false; (2) consciousness is a fundamental fact of nature; (3) science and philosophy should strive towards discovering a fundamental law of consciousness. Every mental state can be described in psychological terms, phenomenological terms, or both. Psychological and phenomenal consciousness are often conflated. Thinkers may purport to have solved consciousness (in

216-496: A " physicalist " position, disagree with the argument in its stronger and/or weaker forms. For example, Nagel put forward a "speculative proposal" of devising a language that could "explain to a person blind from birth what it is like to see." The knowledge argument implies that such a language could not exist. David Chalmers' formulation of the hard problem of consciousness provoked considerable debate within philosophy of mind , as well as scientific research. The hard problem

324-463: A (healthy) human being the ability to discriminate, to integrate information, and to perform behavioral functions such as watching, listening, speaking (including generating an utterance that appears to refer to personal behaviour or belief), and so forth. The easy problems are amenable to functional explanation—that is, explanations that are mechanistic or behavioral—since each physical system can be explained (at least in principle) purely by reference to

432-551: A 1994 talk given at The Science of Consciousness conference held in Tucson, Arizona. The following year, the main talking points of Chalmers' talk were published in The Journal of Consciousness Studies . The publication gained significant attention from consciousness researchers and became the subject of a special volume of the journal, which was later published into a book. In 1996, Chalmers published The Conscious Mind ,

540-587: A 2020 PhilPapers survey, a majority (62.42%) of the philosophers surveyed said they believed that the hard problem is a genuine problem, while 29.72% said that it does not exist. There are a number of other potential philosophical problems that are related to the Hard Problem. Ned Block believes that there exists a "Harder Problem of Consciousness", due to the possibility of different physical and functional neurological systems potentially having phenomenal overlap. Another potential philosophical problem which

648-632: A Theory of Consciousness, Dennett responded with his own paper with the spin-off title Illusionism as the Obvious Default Theory of Consciousness. Dennett has been arguing for the illusory status of consciousness since early on in his career. For example, in 1979 he published a paper titled On the Absence of Phenomenology (where he argues for the nonexistence of phenomenal consciousness). Similar ideas have been explicated in his 1991 book Consciousness Explained . Dennett argues that

756-457: A book-length treatment of the hard problem, in which he elaborated on his core arguments and responded to counterarguments . His use of the word easy is "tongue-in-cheek". As the cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker puts it, they are about as easy as going to Mars or curing cancer. "That is, scientists more or less know what to look for, and with enough brainpower and funding, they would probably crack it in this century." The existence of

864-467: A dead and a live cat ? It seems to me that a theory of consciousness would be needed for one to square the many world view with what one actually observes. Chalmers' earlier account of consciousness is such a theory. This leaves the many-world view undoubtedly the most elegant of all interpretations of quantum mechanics (from a mathematical standpoint), albeit a counterintuitive one. The Conscious Mind has had significant influence on philosophy of mind and

972-433: A fundamental theory of consciousness would be one that (a) fits the above criteria; (b) is compatible with the data; (c) has predicative power; and (c) is elegant . Though, of course, there will likely be further considerations that arise as science progresses. Chalmers explores a number of possibilities. Chalmers believes that information will invariably play a central role in any theory of consciousness. However, Chalmers

1080-428: A hot potato". The knowledge argument, also known as Mary's Room , is another common thought experiment: A hypothetical neuroscientist named Mary has lived her whole life in a black-and-white room and has never seen colour before. She also happens to know everything there is to know about the brain and colour perception. Chalmers believes that when Mary sees the colour red for the first time, she gains new knowledge —

1188-581: A number of posthumous papers have been published, on topics ranging from truth and causation to philosophy of physics. Lewisian Themes , a collection of papers on his philosophy, was published in 2004. A two-volume collection of his correspondence, Philosophical Letters of David K. Lewis , was published in 2020. A 2015 poll of philosophers conducted by Brian Leiter ranked Lewis the fourth most important Anglophone philosopher active between 1945 and 2000, behind only Quine , Kripke , and Rawls . Lewis published five volumes containing 99 papers—almost all

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1296-473: A presidential candidate could not care less whether someone else, in another world, wins an election, but does care whether he himself could have won it (Kripke 1980, p. 45). Another criticism of the realist approach to possible worlds is that it has an inflated ontology —by extending the property of concreteness to more than the singular actual world it multiplies theoretical entities beyond what should be necessary to its explanatory aims, thereby violating

1404-633: A priori physicalism ) is a view characterized by a commitment to physicalism and a full rejection of the hard problem. By this view, the hard problem either does not exist or is just another easy problem, because every fact about the mind is a fact about the performance of various functions or behaviours. So, once all the relevant functions and behaviours have been accounted for, there will not be any facts left over in need of explanation. Thinkers who subscribe to type-A materialism include Paul and Patricia Churchland , Daniel Dennett , Keith Frankish , and Thomas Metzinger . Some type-A materialists believe in

1512-437: A salient solution. If both participants know that a particular co-ordination problem, say "which side should we drive on?", has been solved in the same way numerous times before, both know that both know this, both know that both know that both know this, etc. (this particular state Lewis calls common knowledge , and it has since been a frequent topic of discussion among philosophers and game theorists), then they will easily solve

1620-404: A series of alternating images. He accordingly argues that consciousness need not be what it seems to be based on introspection. To address the question of the hard problem, or how and why physical processes give rise to experience, Dennett states that the phenomenon of having experience is nothing more than the performance of functions or the production of behavior, which can also be referred to as

1728-402: A structural or functional description is a complete description. A perfect replica of a clock is a clock, a perfect replica of a hurricane is a hurricane, and so on. The difference is that physical things are nothing more than their physical constituents. For example, water is nothing more than H 2 O molecules, and understanding everything about H 2 O molecules is to understand everything there

1836-434: A thought experiment: Suppose that humanity were to encounter an alien species, and suppose it is known that the aliens do not have any c-fibers. Even if one knows this, it is not obvious that the aliens do not feel pain: that would remain an open question. This is because the fact that aliens do not have c-fibers does not entail that they do not feel pain (in other words, feelings of pain do not follow with logical necessity from

1944-448: A whole. Hacker further states that "consciousness studies", as it exists today, is "literally a total waste of time" and that "the conception of consciousness which they have is incoherent". Eliminative materialism or eliminativism is the view that many or all of the mental states used in folk psychology (i.e., common-sense ways of discussing the mind) do not, upon scientific examination, correspond to real brain mechanisms. According

2052-467: A world where I made the shot that in this world I missed, we are speaking of a world just as real as this one, and although we say that in that world I made the shot, more precisely it is not I but a counterpart of mine who was successful. Lewis had already proposed this view in some of his earlier papers: "Counterpart Theory and Quantified Modal Logic" (1968), "Anselm and Actuality" (1970), and "Counterparts of Persons and their Bodies" (1971). The theory

2160-417: Is an essentially non-subjective state (i.e., that a felt state is nothing but a functional state). In other words, we have no idea of what reductivism amounts to. He believes "every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view." In 1983, the philosopher Joseph Levine proposed that there

2268-561: Is irreducible to physical systems such as the brain. This is the topic of the next section. Chalmers believes that the hard problem is irreducible to the easy problems: solving the easy problems will not lead to a solution to the hard problems. This is because the easy problems pertain to the causal structure of the world while the hard problem pertains to consciousness, and facts about consciousness include facts that go beyond mere causal or structural description. For example, suppose someone were to stub their foot and yelp. In this scenario,

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2376-476: Is a conceptual problem, or, more accurately, a problem with our concepts." Daniel Dennett and Patricia Churchland , among others, believe that the hard problem is best seen as a collection of easy problems that will be solved through further analysis of the brain and behaviour. Consciousness is an ambiguous term. It can be used to mean self consciousness, awareness, the state of being awake, and so on. Chalmers uses Thomas Nagel 's definition of consciousness: "

2484-451: Is a hard problem." Hence, the arguments beg the question . The authors suggest that "instead of letting our conclusions on the thought experiments guide our theories of consciousness, we should let our theories of consciousness guide our conclusions from the thought experiments." The philosopher Massimo Pigliucci argued in 2013 that the hard problem is misguided, resulting from a "category mistake". He said: "Of course an explanation isn't

2592-400: Is an explanatory gap between our understanding of the physical world and our understanding of consciousness. Levine's disputes that conscious states are reducible to neuronal or brain states. He uses the example of pain (as an example of a conscious state) and its reduction to the firing of c-fibers (a kind of nerve cell). The difficulty is as follows: even if consciousness is physical, it

2700-488: Is an illusion and aims to explain why it seems to exist." Frankish concludes that illusionism "replaces the hard problem with the illusion problem—the problem of explaining how the illusion of phenomenality arises and why it is so powerful." The philosopher Daniel Dennett is another prominent figure associated with illusionism. After Frankish published a paper in the Journal of Consciousness Studies titled Illusionism as

2808-401: Is an illusion. More substantively, Frankish argues that illusionism about phenomenal consciousness is preferable to realism about phenomenal consciousness. He states: "Theories of consciousness typically address the hard problem. They accept that phenomenal consciousness is real and aim to explain how it comes to exist. There is, however, another approach, which holds that phenomenal consciousness

2916-567: Is based on his doctoral dissertation and uses concepts of game theory to analyze the nature of social conventions; it won the American Philosophical Association 's first Franklin Matchette Prize for the best book published in philosophy by a philosopher under 40. Lewis claimed that social conventions, such as the convention in most states that one drives on the right (not on the left), the convention that

3024-470: Is born of an overreliance on intuition, calling philosophical discussions on the topic of consciousness a form of "intuition jousting". But when the issue is tackled with "formal argumentation" and "precise semantics" then the hard problem will dissolve. The philosopher Elizabeth Irvine, in contrast, can be read as having the opposite view, since she argues that phenomenal properties (that is, properties of consciousness) do not exist in our common-sense view of

3132-687: Is closely related to Benj Hellie's vertiginous question , dubbed "The Even Harder Problem of Consciousness", refers to why a given individual has their own particular personal identity , as opposed to existing as someone else. Cognitive scientist David Chalmers first formulated the hard problem in his paper "Facing up to the problem of consciousness" (1995) and expanded upon it in The Conscious Mind (1996). His works provoked comment. Some, such as philosopher David Lewis and Steven Pinker, have praised Chalmers for his argumentative rigour and "impeccable clarity". Pinker later said, in 2018, "In

3240-416: Is considered a problem primarily for physicalist views of the mind (the view that the mind is a physical object or process), since physical explanations tend to be functional, or structural. Because of this, some physicalists have responded to the hard problem by seeking to show that it dissolves upon analysis. Other researchers accept the problem as real and seek to develop a theory of consciousness' place in

3348-509: Is considered among the most important figures of recent decades. Lewis is most famous for his work in metaphysics , philosophy of language and semantics , in which his books On the Plurality of Worlds (1986) and Counterfactuals (1973) are considered classics. His works on the logic and semantics of counterfactual conditionals are broadly used by philosophers and linguists along with a competing account from Robert Stalnaker ; together

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3456-460: Is evident in the work of many prominent philosophers of the current generation. Lewis suffered from severe diabetes for much of his life, which eventually grew worse and led to kidney failure. In July 2000 he received a kidney transplant from his wife Stephanie. The transplant allowed him to work and travel for another year, before he died suddenly and unexpectedly from further complications of his diabetes, on October 14, 2001. Since his death

3564-413: Is fully functionally analyzable, there is no hard problem of consciousness. The philosophers Glenn Carruthers and Elizabeth Schier said in 2012 that the main arguments for the existence of a hard problem— philosophical zombies , Mary's room , and Nagel's bats —are only persuasive if one already assumes that "consciousness must be independent of the structure and function of mental states, i.e. that there

3672-552: Is in part because functions and physical structures of any sort could conceivably exist in the absence of experience. Alternatively, they could exist alongside a different set of experiences. For example, it is logically possible for a perfect replica of Chalmers to have no experience at all, or for it to have a different set of experiences (such as an inverted visible spectrum, so that the blue-yellow red-green axes of its visual field are flipped). The same cannot be said about clocks, hurricanes, or other physical things. In those cases,

3780-483: Is irreducible, Chalmers believes that it, too, is fundamental. Chalmers accepts that people may be reluctant to accept this conclusion, but notes that people were initially reluctant to accept the fundamental nature of electromagnetism as well. He also accepts that his conclusion sound jarring, but notes that the brute nature of consciousness poses no more a mystery than the brute nature of electromagnetism, gravity, or any other fundamental law. So, just as scientists of

3888-446: Is merely an indexical label we give a world when we are in it. Things are necessarily true when they are true in all possible worlds. (Lewis is not the first to speak of possible worlds in this context. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and C.I. Lewis , for example, both speak of possible worlds as a way of thinking about possibility and necessity, and some of David Kaplan 's early work is on the counterpart theory. Lewis's original suggestion

3996-433: Is misguided in that it asks how consciousness can emerge from matter, whereas in fact sentience emerges from the evolution of living organisms. He states: "The hard problem isn’t a hard problem at all. The really hard problems are the problems the scientists are dealing with. [...] The philosophical problem, like all philosophical problems, is a confusion in the conceptual scheme." Hacker's critique extends beyond Chalmers and

4104-432: Is mistaken not only to believe there is a hard problem of consciousness, but to believe phenomenal consciousness exists at all. This stance has recently taken on the name of illusionism : the view that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion. The term was popularized by the philosopher Keith Frankish . Frankish argues that "illusionism" is preferable to "eliminativism" for labelling the view that phenomenal consciousness

4212-459: Is more or less arbitrary that one drives on the right in the US, for example. Lewis's main goal in the book, however, was not simply to provide an account of convention but rather to investigate the "platitude that language is ruled by convention" ( Convention , p. 1.) The book's last two chapters ( Signalling Systems and Conventions of Language ; cf. also "Languages and Language", 1975) make

4320-465: Is not clear which physical states correspond to which conscious states. The bridges between the two levels of description will be contingent , rather than necessary . This is significant because in most contexts, relating two scientific levels of descriptions (such as physics and chemistry) is done with the assurance of necessary connections between the two theories (for example, chemistry follows with necessity from physics). Levine illustrates this with

4428-531: Is not physical; he is open to the idea that the explanatory gap is only an epistemological problem for physicalism. In contrast, Chalmers thinks that the hard problem of consciousness does show that consciousness is not physical. Philosophical zombies are a thought experiment commonly used in discussions of the hard problem. They are hypothetical beings physically identical to humans but that lack conscious experience. Philosophers such as Chalmers, Joseph Levine, and Francis Kripke take zombies as impossible within

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4536-504: Is often construed as a problem uniquely faced by physicalist or materialist theories of mind. The philosopher Thomas Nagel posited in his 1974 paper "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" that experiences are essentially subjective (accessible only to the individual undergoing them—i.e., felt only by the one feeling them), while physical states are essentially objective (accessible to multiple individuals). So he argued we have no idea what it could mean to claim that an essentially subjective state just

4644-410: Is the problem of why and how those processes are accompanied by experience. It may further include the question of why these processes are accompanied by this or that particular experience, rather than some other kind of experience. In other words, the hard problem is the problem of explaining why certain mechanisms are accompanied by conscious experience. For example, why should neural processing in

4752-475: Is to know about water. But consciousness is not like this. Knowing everything there is to know about the brain, or any physical system, is not to know everything there is to know about consciousness. Consciousness, then, must not be purely physical. Chalmers's idea contradicts physicalism , sometimes labelled materialism . This is the view that everything that exists is a physical or material thing, so everything can be reduced to microphysical things. For example,

4860-459: Is unsure whether or not information will ultimately play a conceptual role or an ontological one. Chalmers further constraints the role of information by concluding that it must only be phenomenally realised if it is physically realised; in other words, the information system must be active (otherwise a computer that's turned off may qualia). So causation may also play a role. Interestingly, this account of consciousness has predictive power within

4968-581: Is what Chalmers attempts to do in The Conscious Mind . The hard problem is hard, by Chalmers account, because conscious experience is irreducible to lower order physical facts. He supports this conclusion with three main lines of argument, which are summarised below. The conclusion of all these arguments is the same: consciousness is irreducible to physical facts alone. The only things that are irreducible to lower level facts are fundamental laws of nature (e.g., space and time). Since consciousness

5076-402: The easy problems and the hard problem . The easy problems are amenable to reductive inquiry. They are a logical consequence of lower-level facts about the world, similar to how a clock's ability to tell time is a logical consequence of its clockwork and structure, or a hurricane being a logical consequence of the structures and functions of certain weather patterns. A clock, a hurricane, and

5184-428: The higher-order theories of consciousness . In 2005, the philosopher Peter Carruthers wrote about "recognitional concepts of experience", that is, "a capacity to recognize [a] type of experience when it occurs in one's own mental life," and suggested that such a capacity could explain phenomenal consciousness without positing qualia. On the higher-order view, since consciousness is a representation, and representation

5292-412: The "other" category. In the 2020 PhilPapers survey, 51.93% of philosophers surveyed indicated that they "accept or lean towards" physicalism and 32.08% indicated that they reject physicalism. 6.23% were "agnostic" or "undecided". Different solutions have been proposed to the hard problem of consciousness. The sections below taxonomizes the various responses to the hard problem. The shape of this taxonomy

5400-499: The "structure and dynamics" that underpin the phenomenon. Proponents of the hard problem argue that it is categorically different from the easy problems since no mechanistic or behavioral explanation could explain the character of an experience, not even in principle. Even after all the relevant functional facts are explicated, they argue, there will still remain a further question: "why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?" To bolster their case, proponents of

5508-401: The 2020 PhilPapers survey, 4.51% of philosophers surveyed subscribe to eliminativism. While Patricia Churchland and Paul Churchland have famously applied eliminative materialism to propositional attitudes , philosophers including Daniel Dennett , Georges Rey , and Keith Frankish have applied it to qualia or phenomenal consciousness (i.e., conscious experience). On their view, it

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5616-496: The Limit assumption should be included in the accompanying logic. Linguist Angelika Kratzer has developed a competing theory for counterfactual or subjunctive conditionals, "premise semantics", which aims to give a better heuristic for determining the truth of such statements in light of their often vague and context-sensitive meanings. Kratzer's premise semantics does not diverge from Lewis's for counterfactuals but aims to spread

5724-476: The Plurality of Worlds , 2005, pp. 135–137). He defends and elaborates his theory of extreme modal realism, while insisting that there is nothing extreme about it, in On the Plurality of Worlds (1986). Lewis acknowledges that his theory is contrary to common sense, but believes its advantages far outweigh this disadvantage, and that therefore we should not be hesitant to pay this price. According to Lewis, "actual"

5832-718: The Presbyterian missionary and Hindi expert Samuel H. Kellogg . Lewis attended Oberlin High School , where he attended college lectures in chemistry . He went on to Swarthmore College and spent a year at Oxford University (1959–60), where he was tutored by Iris Murdoch and attended lectures by Gilbert Ryle , H. P. Grice , P. F. Strawson , and J. L. Austin . His year at Oxford played an important role in his decision to study philosophy. Lewis received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1967, where he studied under W. V. O. Quine , whose views he would later dispute. It

5940-544: The Social Brain neuroscientist Michael Graziano advocates what he calls attention schema theory , in which our perception of being conscious is merely an error in perception, held by brains which evolved to hold erroneous and incomplete models of their own internal workings, just as they hold erroneous and incomplete models of their own bodies and of the external world. David Lewis (philosopher) David Kellogg Lewis (September 28, 1941 – October 14, 2001)

6048-559: The Stalnaker–Lewis theory of counterfactuals has become perhaps the most pervasive and influential account of its type in the philosophical and linguistic literature. His metaphysics incorporated seminal contributions to quantified modal logic , the development of counterpart theory , counterfactual causation , and the position called "Humean supervenience ". Most comprehensively in On the Plurality of Worlds , Lewis defended modal realism :

6156-465: The analysis between context and similarity to give more accurate and concrete predictions for counterfactual truth conditions. What made Lewis's views about counterfactuals controversial is that whereas Stalnaker treated possible worlds as imaginary entities, "made up" for the sake of theoretical convenience, Lewis adopted a position his formal account of counterfactuals did not commit him to, namely modal realism . On Lewis's formulation, when we speak of

6264-447: The bounds of nature but possible within the bounds of logic. This would imply that facts about experience are not logically entailed by the "physical" facts. Therefore, consciousness is irreducible. In Chalmers' words, "after God (hypothetically) created the world, he had more work to do." Daniel Dennett, a philosopher of mind, criticised the field's use of "the zombie hunch" which he deems an "embarrassment" that ought to "be dropped like

6372-399: The brain lead to the felt sensations of, say, feelings of hunger? And why should those neural firings lead to feelings of hunger rather than some other feeling (such as, for example, feelings of thirst)? Chalmers argues that it is conceivable that the relevant behaviours associated with hunger, or any other feeling, could occur even in the absence of that feeling. This suggests that experience

6480-402: The case that a population's use of a language consists of conventions of truthfulness and trust among its members. Lewis recasts in this framework notions such as truth and analyticity, claiming that they are better understood as relations between sentences and a language rather than as properties of sentences. Lewis went on to publish Counterfactuals (1973), which gives a modal analysis of

6588-419: The easy problems are mechanistic explanations that involve the activity of the nervous system and brain and its relation to the environment (such as the propagation of nerve signals from the toe to the brain, the processing of that information and how it leads to yelping, and so on). The hard problem is the question of why these mechanisms are accompanied by the feeling of pain , or why these feelings of pain feel

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6696-418: The easy problems of consciousness. Thus, Dennett argues that the hard problem of experience is included among—not separate from—the easy problems, and therefore they can only be explained together as a cohesive unit. Eliminativists differ on the role they believe intuitive judgement plays in creating the apparent reality of consciousness. The philosopher Jacy Reese Anthis is of the position that this issue

6804-399: The easy problems of consciousness. Some among them, who are sometimes termed strong reductionists , hold that phenomenal consciousness (i.e., conscious experience) does exist but that it can be fully understood as reducible to the brain. Broadly, strong reductionists accept that conscious experience is real but argue it can be fully understood in functional terms as an emergent property of

6912-508: The easy problems, are all the sum of their parts (as are most things). The easy problems relevant to consciousness concern mechanistic analysis of the neural processes that accompany behaviour. Examples of these include how sensory systems work, how sensory data is processed in the brain, how that data influences behaviour or verbal reports, the neural basis of thought and emotion, and so on. They are problems that can be analyzed through "structures and functions". The hard problem, in contrast,

7020-538: The end I still think that the hard problem is a meaningful conceptual problem, but agree with Dennett that it is not a meaningful scientific problem. No one will ever get a grant to study whether you are a zombie or whether the same Captain Kirk walks on the deck of the Enterprise and the surface of Zakdorn. And I agree with several other philosophers that it may be futile to hope for a solution at all, precisely because it

7128-507: The feeling of what it is like to be something." Consciousness, in this sense, is synonymous with experience. . . .even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience—perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report—there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? The problems of consciousness, Chalmers argues, are of two kinds:

7236-414: The firing of c-fibers). Levine thinks such thought experiments demonstrate an explanatory gap between consciousness and the physical world: even if consciousness is reducible to physical things, consciousness cannot be explained in terms of physical things, because the link between physical things and consciousness is a contingent link. Levine does not think that the explanatory gap means that consciousness

7344-455: The hard problem by over half a century), noted that Dewey's approach would see the hard problem as the consequence of an unjustified assumption that feelings and functional behaviors are not the same physical process: "For the Deweyan philosopher, the 'hard problem' of consciousness is a 'conceptual fact' only in the sense that it is a philosophical mistake : the mistake of failing to see that

7452-430: The hard problem frequently turn to various philosophical thought experiments, involving philosophical zombies (which, they claim, are conceivable) or inverted qualia , or the claimed ineffability of colour experiences , or the claimed unknowability of foreign states of consciousness, such as the experience of being a bat . The terms "hard problem" and "easy problems" were coined by the philosopher David Chalmers in

7560-410: The hard problem is a real problem then physicalism must be false, and if physicalism is true then the hard problem must not be a real problem. Though Chalmers rejects physicalism, he is still a naturalist . The hard problem of consciousness has scholarly antecedents considerably earlier than Chalmers. Chalmers himself notes that "a number of thinkers in the recent and distant past" have "recognised

7668-714: The hard problem is disputed. It has been accepted by some philosophers of mind such as Joseph Levine , Colin McGinn , and Ned Block and cognitive neuroscientists such as Francisco Varela , Giulio Tononi , and Christof Koch . On the other hand, its existence is denied by other philosophers of mind, such as Daniel Dennett , Massimo Pigliucci , Thomas Metzinger , Patricia Churchland , and Keith Frankish , and by cognitive neuroscientists such as Stanislas Dehaene , Bernard Baars , Anil Seth , and Antonio Damasio . Clinical neurologist and skeptic Steven Novella has dismissed it as "the hard non-problem". According to

7776-409: The hard problem, being directed against contemporary philosophy of mind and neuroscience more broadly. Along with the neuroscientist Max Bennett , he has argued that most of contemporary neuroscience remains implicitly dualistic in its conceptualizations and is predicated on the mereological fallacy of ascribing psychological concepts to the brain that can properly be ascribed only to the person as

7884-417: The hard problem. As of the 2020 survey results, it seems that the majority of philosophers (62.42%) agree that the hard problem is real, with a substantial minority that disagrees (29.76%). Attitudes towards physicalism also differ among professionals. In the 2009 PhilPapers survey, 56.5% of philosophers surveyed subscribed to physicalism and 27.1% of philosophers surveyed rejected physicalism. 16.4% fell into

7992-612: The importance in our world of tails to kangaroos remaining upright, in the most similar worlds to ours where they have no tails they presumably topple over more frequently and so the counterfactual comes out true. This treatment of counterfactuals is closely related to an independently discovered account of conditionals by Robert Stalnaker , and so this kind of analysis is called Stalnaker-Lewis theory . The crucial areas of dispute between Stalnaker's account and Lewis's are whether these conditionals quantify over constant or variable domains (strict analysis vs. variable-domain analysis) and whether

8100-583: The issue and for leaving his critics with "few points to make" that Chalmers "hasn't made already". Lewis has characterised The Conscious Mind as "exceptionally ambitious and exceptionally successful", considering it "the best book in philosophy of mind for many years." Steven Pinker has hailed The Conscious Mind as an "outstanding contribution" to consciousness studies, stating that Chalmers argued his thesis "with impeccable clarity and rigor". Patricia and Paul Churchland have criticised Chalmers claim that everything but consciousness logically supervenes on

8208-496: The knowledge of "what red looks like" — which is distinct from, and irreducible to, her prior physical knowledge of the brain or visual system. A stronger form of the knowledge argument claims not merely that Mary would lack subjective knowledge of "what red looks like," but that she would lack knowledge of an objective fact about the world: namely, "what red looks like," a non-physical fact that can be learned only through direct experience (qualia). Others, such as Thomas Nagel, take

8316-414: The material brain. In contrast to weak reductionists (see above), strong reductionists reject ideas used to support the existence of a hard problem (that the same functional organization could exist without consciousness, or that a blind person who understood vision through a textbook would not know everything about sight) as simply mistaken intuitions. A notable family of strong reductionist accounts are

8424-404: The now standard "would" conditional operator ◻→ to capture these conditionals' logic. A sentence of the form A ◻→ C is true on Lewis's account for the same reasons given above. If there is a world maximally similar to ours where kangaroos lack tails but do not topple over, the counterfactual is false. The notion of similarity plays a crucial role in the analysis of the conditional. Intuitively, given

8532-428: The original caller will re-call if a phone conversation is interrupted, etc., are solutions to so-called "'co-ordination problems'". Co-ordination problems were at the time of Lewis's book an under-discussed kind of game-theoretical problem; most game-theoretical discussion had centered on problems where the participants are in conflict, such as the prisoner's dilemma . Co-ordination problems are problematic, for, though

8640-517: The papers he published in his lifetime. They discuss his counterfactual theory of causation , the concept of semantic score , a contextualist analysis of knowledge, and a dispositional value theory , among many other topics. Lewis's monograph Parts of Classes (1991), on the foundations of mathematics , sketched a reduction of set theory and Peano arithmetic to mereology and plural quantification . Very soon after its publication, Lewis became dissatisfied with some aspects of its argument; it

8748-437: The participants have common interests, there are several solutions. Sometimes one of the solutions is "salient", a concept invented by the game-theorist and economist Thomas Schelling (by whom Lewis was much inspired). For example, a co-ordination problem that has the form of a meeting may have a salient solution if there is only one possible spot to meet in town. But in most cases, we must rely on what Lewis calls "precedent" for

8856-513: The particular difficulties of explaining consciousness." He states that all his original 1996 paper contributed to the discussion was "a catchy name, a minor reformulation of philosophically familiar points". Among others, thinkers who have made arguments similar to Chalmers' formulation of the hard problem include Isaac Newton , John Locke , Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , John Stuart Mill , and Thomas Henry Huxley . Likewise, Asian philosophers like Dharmakirti and Guifeng Zongmi discussed

8964-425: The particular way that they do. Chalmers argues that facts about the neural mechanisms of pain, and pain behaviours, do not lead to facts about conscious experience. Facts about conscious experience are, instead, further facts , not derivable from facts about the brain. An explanation for all of the relevant physical facts about neural processing would leave unexplained facts about what it is like to feel pain. This

9072-446: The past have sought fundamental laws of gravity and electromagnetism, so too should scientists of the present seek fundamental laws of consciousness. So, after providing the disclaimer that he is "most likely to be entirely wrong", Chalmers puts forward possible ways in which the search for a theory may be constrained: Similarly, Chalmers puts forward a number of "open questions" that a fundamental theory must answer: Good contenders for

9180-569: The phenomenological sense) when really all they have solved are certain aspects of psychological consciousness. To use Chalmers words: they claim to have solved the " hard problem of consciousness ", when really all they have solved are certain "easy problems of consciousness". Chalmers believes that an adequate theory of consciousness can only come by solving both the hard and easy problems. On top of discovering brain states associated with conscious experience, science must also discover why and how certain brain states are accompanied by experience. This

9288-413: The physical can be had as an episode of immediate sentiency." The philosopher Thomas Metzinger likens the hard problem of consciousness to vitalism , a formerly widespread view in biology which was not so much solved as abandoned. Brian Jonathan Garrett has also argued that the hard problem suffers from flaws analogous to those of vitalism. The philosopher Peter Hacker argues that the hard problem

9396-443: The physical, and that such failures of supervenience mean that materialism must be false. Heat and luminescence, for instance, are both physical properties that logically supervene on the physical. Others have questioned the premise that a priori entailment is required for logical supervenience. Daniel Dennett has labelled Chalmers a "reactionary", and calls the invocation of philosophical zombies "an embarrassment". By his account,

9504-565: The principle of parsimony, Occam's razor . But the opposite position could be taken on the view that the modal realist reduces the categories of possible worlds by eliminating the special case of the actual world as the exception to possible worlds as simple abstractions. Possible worlds are employed in the work of Kripke and many others, but not in the concrete sense Lewis propounded. While none of these alternative approaches has found anything near universal acceptance, very few philosophers accept Lewis's brand of modal realism. At Princeton, Lewis

9612-404: The problem of how consciousness arises from unconscious matter. The mind–body problem is the problem of how the mind and the body relate. The mind-body problem is more general than the hard problem of consciousness, since it is the problem of discovering how the mind and body relate in general, thereby implicating any theoretical framework that broaches the topic. The hard problem, in contrast,

9720-402: The problem. That they have solved the problem successfully will be seen by even more people, and thus the convention will spread in the society. A convention is thus a behavioral regularity that sustains itself because it serves the interests of everyone involved. Another important feature of a convention is that a convention could be entirely different: one could just as well drive on the left; it

9828-460: The reality of phenomenal consciousness but believe it is nothing extra in addition to certain functions or behaviours. This view is sometimes referred to as strong reductionism . Other type-A materialists may reject the existence of phenomenal consciousness entirely. This view is referred to as eliminative materialism or illusionism . Many philosophers have disputed that there is a hard problem of consciousness distinct from what Chalmers calls

9936-402: The realm of quantum theory . Namely, it addresses objections made by the physicist [[Roger �]] regarding the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics : I do not see why a conscious being need be aware of only "one" of the alternatives in a linear superposition. What is it about consciousnesses that says that consciousness must not be "aware" of that tantalising linear combination of both

10044-551: The rings of Saturn are a physical thing because they are nothing more than a complex arrangement of a large number of subatomic particles interacting in a certain way. According to physicalism, everything, including consciousness, can be explained by appeal to its microphysical constituents. Chalmers's hard problem presents a counterexample to this view and to other phenomena like swarms of birds, since it suggests that consciousness, like swarms of birds, cannot be reductively explained by appealing to their physical constituents. Thus, if

10152-430: The same as an experience, but that's because the two are completely independent categories, like colors and triangles. It is obvious that I cannot experience what it is like to be you, but I can potentially have a complete explanation of how and why it is possible to be you." In 2017, the philosopher Marco Stango, in a paper on John Dewey 's approach to the problem of consciousness (which preceded Chalmers' formulation of

10260-517: The scientific study of consciousness, as is evidenced by Chalmers easy/hard problem distinction having become standard terminology within relevant philosophical and scientific fields. Chalmers has expressed bewilderment at the book's success, writing that it has "received far more attention than I reasonably could have expected." David Lewis is a proponent of materialism whose views are criticised numerous times throughout The Conscious Mind . Despite this, Lewis praises Chalmers for his understanding of

10368-459: The so-called "hard problem" will be solved in the process of solving what Chalmers terms the "easy problems". He compares consciousness to stage magic and its capability to create extraordinary illusions out of ordinary things. To show how people might be commonly fooled into overstating the accuracy of their introspective abilities, he describes a phenomenon called change blindness , a visual process that involves failure to detect scenery changes in

10476-552: The thought experiment hinges on a "hunch" and begs the question . He argues that the mysterious nature of consciousness amounts to nothing more than a cognitive illusion, and that philosophers ought to drop "the zombie like a hot potato". Chalmers responds to critics in his 2010 book The Character of Consciousness and on his website . The Conscious Mind has been reviewed in journals such as Foundations of Physics , Psychological Medicine , Mind , The Journal of Mind and Behavior , and Australian Review of Books . The book

10584-417: The truth conditions of counterfactual conditionals in possible world semantics and the governing logic for such statements. According to Lewis, the counterfactual "If kangaroos had no tails they would topple over" is true if in all worlds most similar to the actual world where the antecedent "if kangaroos had no tails" is true, the consequent that kangaroos in fact topple over is also true. Lewis introduced

10692-631: The view that possible worlds exist as concrete entities in logical space, and that our world is one among many equally real possible ones. Lewis was born in Oberlin, Ohio , to John D. Lewis, a professor of government at Oberlin College , and Ruth Ewart Kellogg Lewis, a medieval historian . He was the grandson of the Presbyterian minister Edwin Henry Kellogg and the great-grandson of

10800-457: The world . She states that "the hard problem of consciousness may not be a genuine problem for non-philosophers (despite its overwhelming obviousness to philosophers)." A complete illusionist theory of consciousness must include the description of a mechanism by which the illusion of subjective experience is had and reported by people. Various philosophers and scientists have proposed possible theories. For example, in his book Consciousness and

10908-464: The world that can solve it, by either modifying physicalism or abandoning it in favour of an alternative ontology (such as panpsychism or dualism ). A third response has been to accept the hard problem as real but deny human cognitive faculties can solve it. PhilPapers is an organization that archives academic philosophy papers and periodically surveys professional philosophers about their views. It can be used to gauge professional attitudes towards

11016-426: Was a mentor of young philosophers and trained dozens of successful figures in the field, including several current Princeton faculty members, as well as people now teaching at a number of the leading philosophy departments in the U.S. Among his prominent students were Robert Brandom , L. A. Paul , J. David Velleman , Peter Railton , Phillip Bricker , Cian Dorr , and Joshua Greene . His direct and indirect influence

11124-499: Was an American philosopher. Lewis taught briefly at UCLA and then at Princeton University from 1970 until his death. He is closely associated with Australia , whose philosophical community he visited almost annually for more than 30 years. Lewis made significant contributions in philosophy of mind , philosophy of probability , epistemology , philosophical logic , aesthetics , philosophy of mathematics , philosophy of time and philosophy of science . In most of these fields he

11232-430: Was described by The Sunday Times as "one of the best science books of the year." Hard problem of consciousness#Chalmers' formulation 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 . It is contrasted with the "easy problems" of explaining why and how physical systems give

11340-416: Was first introduced by Chalmers in a 2003 literature review on the topic. The labelling convention of this taxonomy has been incorporated into the technical vocabulary of analytic philosophy, being used by philosophers such as Adrian Boutel, Raamy Majeed, Janet Levin, Pete Mandik & Josh Weisberg, Roberto Pereira, and Helen Yetter-Chappell. Type-A materialism (also known as reductive materialism or

11448-582: Was that all possible worlds are equally concrete, and the world in which we find ourselves is no realer than any other possible world.) This theory has faced a number of criticisms. In particular, it is not clear how we could know what goes on in other worlds. After all, they are causally disconnected from ours; we can't look into them to see what is going on there. A related objection is that, while people are concerned with what they could have done, they are not concerned with what people in other worlds, no matter how similar to them, do. As Saul Kripke once put it,

11556-531: Was there he took a seminar with the Australian philosopher J. J. C. Smart . Smart recalled, "I taught David Lewis, or rather, he taught me." Lewis joined the philosophy department at the University of California, Los Angeles , in 1966. In 1970, he moved to Princeton University , where he spent the remainder of his career. Lewis's first monograph was Convention: A Philosophical Study (1969), which

11664-419: Was widely considered implausible, but Lewis urged that it be taken seriously. Most often the idea that there exist infinitely many causally isolated universes, each as real as our own but different from it in some way, and that alluding to objects in this universe as necessary to explain what makes certain counterfactual statements true but not others, meets with what Lewis calls the "incredulous stare" (Lewis, On

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