The Two Huge Mistakes Involved in Typical Talk of a "Hard Problem of Consciousness"

There are many discussions that talk about a “hard problem of consciousness,” and such discussions tend to involve two huge mistakes. The first mistake is in trying to shrink the gigantic problem of explaining human mentality into a relatively tiny problem of explaining consciousness. 

The visual below may help show what I mean. We see in the grid various diverse aspects of human mentality. There is the problem of  how humans got all these diverse mental aspects and capabilities. As shown in the grid, consciousness is merely a tiny part of human mentality. The grid below is actually a simplification, for it does not even mention many unusual aspects of human mentality that are studied by parapsychologists. 

The problem of human mentality is the problem of credibly explaining the thirty or forty most interesting types of human mental experiences, human mental characteristics and human mental capabilities. These include things such as these:

• imagination
• self-hood
• abstract idea creation
• appreciation
• memory formation
• moral thinking and moral behavior
• instantaneous memory recall
• instantaneous creation of permanent new memories
• memory persistence for as long as 50 years or more
• emotions
• speaking in a language
• understanding spoken language
• creativity
• insight
• beliefs
• pleasure
• pain
• reading ability
• writing ability
• ordinary awareness of surroundings
• visual perception
• recognition
• auditory perception
• attention
• fascination and interest
• the correct recall of large bodies of sequential information (such as when someone playing Hamlet recalls all his lines correctly)
• eyes-closed visualization
• extrasensory perception (ESP)
• dreaming
• volition
• out-of-body experiences
• apparition sightings 

Reductionist theorists love it when people do not raise the big problem of explaining human mentality but instead raise a much tinier problem of the problem of consciousness. Then such theorists can attempt to offer some little neural explanation and then say, “You see, the brain can explain consciousness.” Whenever such theorists attempt to do that, we should always point out that the problem of explaining human mentality is very many times larger and harder than a mere problem of consciousness.

When such theorists write their articles, they love to reference philosopher David Chalmers, a thinker who coined the phrase "hard problem of consciousness." One of the earliest uses by Chalmers of such a phrase was in a December 1995 Scientific American article by Chalmers. A careful look at the article reveals a great deal going wrong. 

In the article (entitled "The Puzzle of Conscious Experience")  Chalmers makes a very misguided and poorly conceived distinction between what he calls "easy problems of consciousness" and what he calls a "hard problem of consciousness."  Chalmers wrote this:

"The easy problems of consciousness include the following: How can a human subject discriminate sensory stimuli and react to them appropriately? How does the brain integrate information from many different sources and use this information to control behavior? How is it that subjects can verbalize their internal states? Although all these questions are associated with consciousness, they all concern the objective mechanisms of the cognitive system. Consequently, we have every reason to expect that continued work in cognitive psychology and neuroscience will answer them."

This was triumphalist hogwash. We do not know that brains "integrate information from many different sources and use this information to control behavior."  We simply know that humans integrate integrate information from many different sources.  There is no understanding of how a brain could control behavior, no credible theories of how a brain could store learned information, and zero reason to expect that "continued work in cognitive psychology and neuroscience" would lead to some understanding of how neurons could control behavior. The idea of identifying a "hard problem of consciousness" and calling the other problems of explaining minds "easy problems" was  very misguided, a blundering bifurcation.  Nature gave us no warrant for dividing up philosophy of mind problems into one "hard" problem and a bunch of other "easy" problems.  

There are many dozens or hundreds of very hard problems involving the explanation of human minds and human mental experiences. The attempt by Chalmers to insinuate that there was only one hard problem of explaining the mind (what he called a "hard problem of consciousness") was folly.  This is the kind of error that would tend to come from either (1) someone was not a very serious critical scholar of neuroscience and its very many shortfalls, unfounded claims and poor research practices, or (2) someone who was not a very serious and thorough scholar of psychical research and the more hard-to-explain mental phenomena such as paranormal phenomena. 

Just as ill-conceived was how Chalmers defined what he called "the hard problem of consciousness." In his 1995 Scientific American article he defined his so-called "hard problem of consciousness" like this: "The hard problem, in contrast, is the question of how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience."  Because we do not know that any physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience, and have very strong reasons for doubting that any such processes exist, it was an error to be posing such a question framed in such a way. It is a big mistake to ask questions that assume some claim that has not been proven, and that there are very good reasons for doubting. 

By 1995 there already existed the strongest reasons for doubting that "physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience." One major reason was the complete failure of anyone to explain how subjective experience (something mental) could ever be caused by something merely physical. Another major reason very well documented by 1995 was the existence of human mental experience in persons whose brain was shut down after cardiac arrest.  During near-death experiences people can have extremely vivid subjective experience while their brains have temporarily shut down because their hearts have stopped.  Many cases of that happening had been well documented by 1995. 

In his 1995 article Chalmers makes the poor reasoning below:

"I am not denying that consciousness arises from the brain. We know, for example, that the subjective experience of vision is closely linked to processes in the visual cortex. It is the link itself that perplexes, however. Remarkably, subjective experience seems to emerge from a physical process. But we have no idea how or why this is." 

Some kind of relation between the visual cortex and the "subjective experience of vision" does nothing to establish that "consciousness arises from the brain." Similarly, some kind of link between your eyeglasses and "the subjective experience of vision" does nothing to show that your eyeglasses produce consciousness. Chalmers confesses here that we "have no idea how or why this is" that subjective experience could arise from a brain, but he failed to realize the very obvious implication of such thing: that such a failure should cause us to doubt the dogma that subjective experience does arise from the brain.

What we are left with is a quotation above that sounds as silly as someone saying, "I do not doubt that extraterrestrials are manipulating the US stock market, but I don't know how or why they are doing it."  If you don't know how or why X, then you should typically doubt that you actually know X. 

Later in the same article Chalmers tells us this:

"Thus, a complete theory will have two components: physical laws, telling us about the behavior of physical systems from the infinitesimal to the cosmological, and what we might call psychophysical laws, telling us how some of those systems are associated with conscious experience. These two components will constitute a true theory of everything."

People who say things like this make me wince. Physicists sound very silly every time they talk about a "theory of everything," and philosophers sound every bit as silly when they use that term. The two things mentioned leave out almost everything to be explained in biology, astronomy, cosmology, history, sociology, chemistry and a dozen other major topics, as well as 98% of what needs to be explained to explain the human mind and its experiences (a topic of oceanic depth). Serious and very thorough scholars of the human mind and human mental experiences don't tend to talk in such a way, because they tend to be humbled by the very large variety of utterly baffling phenomena they encounter in their studies. 

At the link here (obtained from a Google Scholar search of Chalmers name) you can read a 1995 book by Chalmers entitled "The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Theory of Conscious Experience." In the second paragraph of this 391-page book, we have an unwise "we're almost finished" kind of claim that "we do not have many detailed theories of cognition, to be sure, but there are few problems of principle; the details cannot be too far off."  This is enormously false. Neuroscientists have not got much of anywhere in explaining any of the main mysteries of the mind, which are very many.  

Reading this book, I fail to get a strong impression of Chalmers being a very serious and thorough scholar of either the human brain or neuroscience (although he uses the term "brain" nearly 200 times). The fact that in the book he only refers to synapses two times (not saying anything  substantive about them) and proteins one time may indicate that when he wrote the book he had failed to do his homework very vigorously, by thoroughly studying the human brain and neuroscientist claims about it and its components, and the physical limitations and shortfalls of the human brain. In the book Chalmers also seems to show no familiarity with psychical research (research into paranormal phenomena), something that should be studied very carefully before anyone should be writing about questions of mind or consciousness. We get no mention of dendrites, no substantive mention of protein molecules, no mention of LTP or long-term potentiation, no mention of claims of engrams. We have on page 37 a false reference to "the fact that all living things are made of DNA." Physically, we are made of cells, and DNA is only one of countless components in cells. 

We get in the book statements sounding like Chalmers has bought "hook, line and sinker" some of the most groundless boasts and ill-founded dogmas of modern scientists. He repeatedly refers to a groundless tenet that there is some "causal closure of the physical," that everything physical (such as human actions) can be explained by something else physical. Such a claim is a groundless dogma.  On page 110 he seems to endorse such a dogma, making the incorrect claim that science tells us that "for every physical event, there is a physical sufficient cause." The claim that every physical event must have a physical cause is no more logically compelling than the claim that every Danish pastry must come from a Danish cook. What Chalmers advocates seems to be a "wolf in sheep's clothing" affair that he calls a dualism, but later reveals to be a "naturalistic dualism." It seems like basically something not much different from materialism.  He claims that not everything is physical, but the way he presents such an idea, it seems there is no practical difference between what he is imagining and materialism, but merely a descriptive difference.  

The reasoning that he gives for his position is some unconvincing reasoning based largely on some armchair argument involving "philosophical zombies." In the book Chalmers uses the word "zombies" 43 times. A "philosophical zombie" is some hypothetical entity having no conscious experience but acting just like a human. Arguments based on the possibility of "philosophical zombies" are misguided and fallacious. There is no reason to think that beings could act just like humans if such beings were not conscious. 

To get some insight into the human mind, you should study in the greatest detail all of the varieties of human experiences, all of the strange things humans have reported seeing and experiencing, and all of the mental capabilities humans have seemed to have. A scholar of the mind should study and write about thousands or many hundreds of specific human beings and the specific capabilities and experiences they have had. Very little will be accomplished by avoiding specifics, and engaging in endless dry abstract philosophical talk about "consciousness," just as very little will be accomplished by a philosopher engaging in endless dry abstract philosophical talk about "existence." In Chalmers' book "The Conscious Mind" he uses the term "consciousness" 1,362 times, but seems to make very few  references to specific humans and their specific experiences.   

There are three main ways to start making some progress in the philosophy of mind: 

(1) The first way is to do a thorough study of the human brain and its components, and the physical shortfalls of the human brain and its components, as well as a thorough critical study of neuroscience and the shortfalls and defective speech customs of current neuoscientists, including a study of their poor experimental practices and their frequent use of unproven dogmatic claims. Such a study should include an exhaustive inquiry into enigmatic case histories of neuroscience, and also a deep sociological study correctly categorizing neuroscientists as members of a modern belief community resembling an organized religion. Always be asking, "What kind of physical characteristics would a brain need to have if it were the source of our minds and the storage place of memories, and does the brain actually have such characteristics?" The person doing such a study will be likely to strongly suspect that "brains make minds" explanatory boasts of neuroscientists are mainly unfounded dogmas or belief community speech customs, rather than claims well-established by observations. 

(2) The second way to start making some progress in the philosophy of mind is to make a very thorough study of the two hundred years of well-documented evidence for psychical phenomena and paranormal phenomena, which are of utmost relevance to topics in the philosophy of mind. This requires a very deep study of the specific experiences which particular humans have had. 

(3) The third way to start making some progress in the philosophy of mind is to very deeply study biology, the vast order and organization of biological systems,  the very many examples of cosmic fine-tuning that help make possible biological systems, and particularly the unsolved problem of the origin of the individual human body, something not explained by DNA, which does not specify anatomy, and does not specify the structure of any cell. A person properly studying such a topic will eventually learn that biologists currently have no credible explanation for the progression from a speck-sized zygote to the vast organization of a human body. Such a failure is of the utmost relevance to the question of how there arises a human mind. If we need a top-down explanation for the origin of human bodies (as we do), that suggests we also need a top-down explanation for the origin of human minds, an explanation different from the bottom-up explanation of mere neural activity. 

In his 1995 book Chalmers seemed to show few signs of having properly studied any of these topics to any great extent. He seemed to sound in that book rather like someone who hadn't properly studied brains and their components and their very many physical shortfalls and limitations, and hadn't properly studied the rich diversity of human mental experiences. His reasoning seems to be mainly armchair reasoning rather than the type of observation-based reasoning that should be the core of someone arguing about minds. This, alas, is what philosophers tend to do. Ignoring hundreds of extremely relevant observations that are of the utmost relevance to philosophical topics, observations requiring deep scholarly study, philosophers spend endless time discussing the armchair arguments of other philosophers. 

Searching for Chalmers' work on Google Scholar, I find a draft of a book by him called Constructing the World, which talks endlessly about the mind, but fails to even use the words "neuron" or "neural" or "brain." This reinforces my impression of someone without much interest in diving very deeply into the low-level details of brains and neuroscience. 

Chalmers wrote very much on mind-related problems during the 25  years following his 1995 Scientific American article. But in a 2018 paper, he sounded rather like he hadn't learned much about the shortfalls of neuroscience, the extreme overconfidence of neuroscientists, the physical limitations and shortfalls of the human brain, and the vast complexities of the human mind and human mental experience, a topic of oceanic depth. In a 2018 paper by Chalmers entitled "The Meta-Problem of Consciousness," we read this very erroneous statement: 

"The hard problem of explaining phenomenal consciousness is one of the most puzzling in all of science and philosophy, and at the present time there are no solutions that command any sort of consensus. The hard problem contrasts with the easy problems of explaining various objective behavioural or cognitive functions such as learning, memory, perceptual integration, and verbal report. The easy problems are easy because we have a standard paradigm for explaining them." 

What an erroneous statement that is at the end. Problems don't become easy because you have some simplistic "this explains everything" paradigm such as "it's all caused by neurons." When you have bad explanations for things, explanations that do not hold water, you have not made very hard problems "easy." And neuroscientists have nothing but bad explanations for "learning, memory, perceptual integration, and verbal report," explanations that do not hold water, for reasons discussed at great length in the posts on this blog. Part of the problem is that the brain bears no resemblance to a device for instantly storing memories, retaining learned information for decades, and allowing the instant retrieval of such information. From our work with computers, humans know the kind of characteristics that such a device would have; and the human brain has no such characteristics (as discussed here and here). 

A position stated so often by Chalmers is one that makes no sense. It is the position that we can believe explaining things like learning and memory are "easy problems," because the neuroscientists claim some progress in understanding them, but that we must regard explaining consciousness as a "hard problem" because no progress has been made in solving it. But the neuroscientists have made just as many boasts about explaining consciousness as they have about explaining memory. So if our neuroscientists are not credible in their claims about having an explanation for consciousness, why should we think that they are credible about having an explanation for learning and memory? A very careful and impartial study of the claims of neuroscientists about having a neural explanation for learning and memory will reveal that they are as groundless as their claims of having an explanation for consciousness. 

On page 5 of the document here, Chalmers states this:

"It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis,

but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. 

Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life

at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet 

it does." 

How very erroneous, to believe in something "objectively unreasonable," without having any "how" or "why," apparently because "it is widely agreed." Much better to get some idea of the mind that does not require you to believe in things "objectively unreasonable," no matter how much such an idea may defy the prevailing speech customs in academia. 

I cannot claim to have well-studied Chalmers writings other than the few documents I have referred to, so who knows, maybe elsewhere there is some much better insight to be found in his writings, or much better scholarship on some of the topics I have mentioned. Indeed, a 2021 paper by him suggests he may be gaining some better insight. Some of the quotes I have made above may refer to one or more positions that Chalmers no longer holds.  

To summarize, there are two gigantic mistakes involved in typical talk of a "hard problem of consciousness" when such talk cites Chalmers:

(1) Is it a huge mistake to be claiming that a problem of explaining consciousness is a "hard problem," and that the other problems of explaining human minds are "easy problems." Most of the other problems involved in explaining human minds are just as hard as the problem of explaining consciousness. If you think otherwise, you have probably failed to properly study the many physical shortfalls of the brain, and you have probably accepted without adequate critical scrutiny some unfounded explanatory boasts of neuroscientists that are not supported by robust evidence.  

(2) Is it a huge mistake to be posing a "hard problem of consciousness" as a problem of "how does the brain give rise to consciousness?" We do not know that the brain does give rise to consciousness, and have very strong reasons (discussed in the posts of this site) for disbelieving that the main aspects of human mentality (such as consciousness and memory) can be explained as being caused by brains. 

Reading the countless repetitions in writings by others of Chalmers' very faulty claim of a single "hard problem of consciousness," I sometimes ask myself: why do people keep repeating reasoning so erroneous? I think the answer is that in such a claim we have a "the job is almost finished" legend, and people just love "the job is almost finished" legends, just as they love "light at the end of the tunnel" stories. We find a comparable "the job is almost finished" legend in the groundless boast that Darwinism has explained all biological origins except the origin of life. A more careful study may cause you to realize that such a boast is triumphalist baloney, and that neither the origin of any biologically innovative species nor the origin of any human body is plausibly explained by Darwinist theory (for reasons discussed here, here, here,  here and here).