Search Results

This chapter begins with a brief description of different spaces of conscious experience. It then distinguishes between the contents of consciousness and states of consciousness. This is followed by the discussion of the four different points of view (‘stances’) that one can adopt towards the problem of consciousness. The first (‘naïve’) stance is taken by all of us before we have thought much about consciousness. This stance takes conscious experience for granted, as the firm ground from which to approach all other problems. The second (‘normal science’) stance is taken by a large number of scientists and philosophers, some of whom have thought about consciousness very little, others a great deal. The third (‘new theory’) stance accepts the importance of these normal-science problems. The fourth (‘non-scientific’) stance agrees with the new-theory stance that there is a Hard Problem, but rejects the likelihood that this will find a solution within science.

This chapter examines the Hard Problem of consciousness at a finer level of detail, by considering the nature of the gap between consciousness and brain activity. It argues that intentionality can attach to processes that are achieved unconsciously. Thus, it is unlikely that a deeper scrutiny of the properties of intentionality will lead ipso facto to a solution of the Hard Problem of consciousness. The laws of physics and chemistry plus the principles of cybernetics are able in principle to accommodate, without residual mystery, intentionality and representation. These conclusions free us to look at what consciousness per se brings to the party, over and above these powerful but comprehensible capacities of the unconscious brain/mind.

Two strategies are used to review the many efforts to solve (or resolve or dissolve) the Hard Problem. One searches for the neurocorrelates of consciousness, the effort to answer the question: “How does the brain make the mind?” The other looks for the first appearance of true consciousness in phylogenesis. Both approaches are reviewed and found wanting. The reason is they all begin with human consciousness and use it as the basis for the explorations. This, it is argued, has lead to a “category error” where the H. sap. mind is treated as a distinct type and not as a token on the same existential continuum as other minds. It also reveals the existence of the “emergentist’s dilemma” or the difficulty of determining how consciousness could spring into existence when one cosmic moment before, it didn’t exist. The chapter ends by anticipating criticism of these arguments and of the CBC and providing prophylactic arguments.

The feverish modernity, in the last few chapters, of neuroscience and quantum mechanics has perhaps obscured the hoary antiquity of the problems we are dealing with: the nature of consciousness, the reality of the external world, and so on. The questions tackled in this chapter are no less hoary. They keep steady company with the Hard Problem. Whose consciousness is it anyway? What is this mysterious ‘self’ to which conscious experiences are automatically attributed?

This chapter’s discussion puts to task the views developed in previous chapters in an attempt to solve four famous philosophical puzzles: the Puzzle of Mary, the Explanatory Gap, the Hard Problem of Consciousness, and the Possibility of Zombies. How is it possible for Mary, in the famous thought experiment, to make a discovery when she leaves her black-and-white room? In what form does the explanatory gap consist and how can it be bridged? How can the hard problem of consciousness be solved? How are zombies possible? These are all questions that are addressed in this chapter.

Chapter 2 introduces REC’s Equal Partner Principle, according to which invoking neural, bodily, and environmental factors all make equally important contributions when it comes to explaining cognitive activity. In line with that principle, it is made clear how REC can accept that cognitive capacities depend on structural changes that occur inside organisms and their brains, without understanding such changes in information processing and representationalist terms. This chapter explicates the Hard Problem of Content, aka the HPC, as basis for a compelling argument for REC. The HPC is a seemingly intractable theoretical puzzle for defenders of unrestricted CIC. A straight solution to the HPC requires explaining how it is possible to get from informational foundations that are noncontentful to a theory of mental content using only the resources of a respectable explanatory naturalism that calls on the resources of the hard sciences. It is revealed how the need to deal with the HPC can be avoided by adopting REC’s revolutionary take on basic cognition, and why going this way has advantages over other possible ways of handling the HPC.

Physics explains why things do what they do by identifying their powers, abstracting from things’ qualitative natures. The silence of physics on the qualitative nature of things does not mean that physics eschews qualities thereby marginalizing qualities of conscious experiences along with all the rest. Accepting that properties, including the properties of quarks and leptons, are empowering qualities opens the way to the possibility of understanding of how conscious experiences might comport with the universe as characterized by physics. The distinctively private, subjective character of conscious experiences—and the ‘first-’ versus ‘third-person perspectives’—are taken to be expressions of the difference between an agent’s being in a given state and someone’s observing the agent’s being in that state.