The Hard Problem of Consciousness

Consciousness:
The Hard Problem
Dualism
Physicalism
Idealism
Identifying Consciousness

Vast Minds

Identity, Self, and Other

The Question of Meaning

Consciousness. It is the one part of reality that we experience directly, rather than as a mental representation. Consciousness is the experience of existing and experiencing. When we are awake, we are conscious. When we dream, we are conscious. We are not conscious when we are sleeping dreamlessly, or when we are in a coma, or when we are dead. Without consciousness there is no color, no sound, no taste, no beauty, no meaning; only physical reality.

So what is it, and how is it possible for it to exist?

This question has been debated by philosophers and scientists for thousands of years. The very existence of consciousness seems at odds with everything else we know about reality. Nevertheless, we know it exists, and we know it absolutely, which we cannot say about anything else.

There is plenty we do know about consciousness. We know that while you are thinking or feeling or tasting something, there is activity in the neurons in your brain, and each sensation correlates with a different pattern. It is reasonable to assume that in the future, we will have machines sophisticated enough to read exactly which neurons fire, and figure out how to know what is going on in someone’s consciousness, to read their mind, just by reading the patterns in their brain.

But that is only the Easy Problem of consciousness. To understand consciousness, we have to tackle the Hard Problem: how is it possible that consciousness exists at all?

There is a famous thought experiment called the Philosophical Zombie. In this experiment, we imagine a person who looks exactly like a regular human being, who acts the same, their brain works the same, and they can have conversations with us that are just as sophisticated as with anyone. When you ask the zombie if they are conscious, they say yes. But they are wrong. They have no consciousness. There is nothing it is like to be them. They experience no color, no sound, no light, no time. They are nothing more than a bunch of matter functioning as a complex machine.

Taking this a step further, we can imagine an entire universe full of philosophical zombies. Perhaps a universe just like ours, planet for planet, particle for particle, person for person. In this imaginary universe, there is an exact copy of you, and an exact copy of me. But no one is conscious. They believe they are conscious, and have conversations about metaphysics, but they are wrong.

Our search for the nature of consciousness will take different directions depending on whether or not the Philosophical Zombie thought experiment is valid. If it is, then consciousness must be its own physical substance, different from anything else that we know of. This is known as Dualism. On the other hand, if it is impossible for a zombie universe to exist, then consciousness is not its own substance, but a property of other parts of physical reality. This is called Physicalism. As this series goes on, we will examine theories of consciousness from the perspectives of dualism, physicalism, and more.