Hard and soft consciousness

David Chalmers

David Chalmers is an Australian philosopher who used to have long hair. He is famous as the originator of the phrase – “The hard problem of consciousness”.

The soft problem of consciousness involves gradually discovering its neurological correlates. This is the functionalist approach and the theme has its own acronym – NCC (neurological correlates of consciousness).

The hard problem can be stated as "why does the feeling which accompanies awareness of sensory information exist at all?"

The difference between the easy problems and the hard problem is that the former are at least theoretically answerable via the standard strategy in philosophy of mind: functionalism. Chalmers argues for an "explanatory gap" from the objective to the subjective, and criticizes physical explanations of mental experience, making him a dualist.

The existence of a "hard problem" is controversial and has been disputed by some philosophers. Further questions include, but are not limited to,

• whether being conscious could be wholly described in physical terms, such as the aggregation of neural processes in the brain.
• If consciousness cannot be explained exclusively by physical events, it must transcend the capabilities of physical systems - and require an explanation of nonphysical means.
• For philosophers who assert that consciousness is nonphysical, there remains a question about what outside of physical theory is required to explain consciousness.

I have been sidestepping the issue by referring to the ‘mindbrain’. The idea is that any cerebration that appears in consciousness (thought, feeling, mood) has an NCC. Note that the opposite is not true. Most cerebrations remain in the unconscious.

Article informed by Wikipedia