Thinking about the Mind

The hard problem of consciousness asks how inanimate and insentient matter can give rise to subjective experiences. In other words, how does a first-person perspective emerge in the universe?

Here is a short summary of the responses. Essentially, two camps formed that committed themselves to a physicalist and an anti-physicalist metaphysics. After wading through the swamp of qualia, phenomenal consciousness, philosophical zombies, the problem of other minds, solipsism, brains in vats, Boltzmann brains, Platonism, false awakenings, the noumenon, and the thought experiment of Mary’s room, these are the proposed solutions:

1. Physicalist optimism: Consciousness may currently appear mysterious; however, a deepening understanding of neuroscience will one day dispel the problem.
2. Physicalist eliminativism: Qualia, and phenomenal consciousness in general, are illusions and, as such, the problem is fictitious.
3. Extended physicalism: By adding mental properties to the physical, the problem is circumvented.
4. Idealism: The fundamental nature of reality is mental, and the physical is an illusion.
5. Dualism: Mental and physical substances are fundamentally distinct and irreconcilable.
6. Mysterianism: The problem is unsolvable.

Two explanations enjoy much popularity: eliminativism and extended physicalism. The latter encompasses panpsychism, the notion that consciousness is ubiquitous. Recently, however, proponents of idealism have been on the rise.

The Verge / Midjourney

David Chalmers proposed the hard problem in 1994 at a conference in Texas, initiating a tidal wave of research in the philosophy of mind. In 2019, at a conference in Switzerland, he remarked: “Nothing in the field of subjective consciousness is easy.” Indeed, and it does not help that philosophy, in general, is a very murky and ambiguous subject, as the following debate concerning the relationship between neutral monism and dual-aspect theory highlights: “The decision about these two types of theory — whether they are incompatible rivals, whether they are distinct but compatible, or whether they are identical — is still out.” Source.

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The above is taken from Chapter 1 of a book on the fundamental nature of reality and consciousness, which I am currently writing. See this post for more information.