Explaining Consciousness: The Hard ProblemJonathan Shear 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. 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 doesnt 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' distinction, arguing that the hard problem is a non-problem, 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. Contributors |
Contents
Jonathan Shear | 1 |
FirstPerson Perspectives | 6 |
David J Chalmers | 9 |
Facing Backwards on the Problem of Consciousness | 33 |
Closing the Explanatory | 45 |
A NonIssue for Materialists | 61 |
There Is No Hard Problem of Consciousness | 69 |
Should We Expect to Feel as if We Understand Consciousness? | 83 |
The Nonlocality of Mind | 165 |
109 | 190 |
A Quantum Approach | 197 |
Physics Machines and the Hard Problem | 217 |
Why Neuroscience May Be Able to Explain Consciousness | 237 |
Consciousness Information and Panpsychism | 269 |
A Hard Problem within the Hard Problem | 287 |
Solutions to the Hard Problem of Consciousness | 301 |
Consciousness and Space | 97 |
Giving Up on the Hard Problem of Consciousness | 109 |
There Are No Easy Problems of Consciousness | 117 |
Incorrigibility and the MindBody Problem | 133 |
The Hardness of the Hard Problem | 149 |
The Relation of Consciousness to the Material World | 325 |
Closing the Empirical Gap | 359 |
Moving Forward on the Problem of Consciousness | 379 |