hard problem of consciousness
In plain wordsThe puzzle of why physical processes in a brain — or a computer — should feel like anything from the inside, rather than simply running without any inner experience.
The problem of saying why physical processing should come with subjective experience at all — why there is phenomenal consciousnessphenomenal consciousness, n.: The felt, experiential side of the mind — what it is like to taste coffee or to feel sad — as opposed to simply processing or reporting information. rather than information processing with no inner feel — and how the one gives rise to the other. David Chalmers set it against what he called the 'easy problems': accounting for capacities such as attention, verbal report, the control of behavior, the integration of information and the discrimination of stimuli. Those are hard enough in practice, but each yields once a mechanism performing the function is found; experience, he argued, looks unexplained even after every function has been accounted for. Joseph Levine's 'explanatory gap' (1983) between physical and phenomenal descriptions is a close predecessor. Responses range from new fundamental laws and panpsychismpanpsychism, n.: The idea that some simple form of experience is a basic feature of all matter, so that minds like ours are built out of tiny glimmers of mind found everywhere., through physicalist views that accept the gap as merely conceptual, to illusionismillusionism, n.: The view that the inner glow of experience that seems so hard to explain is a kind of trick the brain plays on itself: we are conscious, but not in the mysterious way it seems., which replaces the hard problem with the 'meta-problem' of why we think there is one. The problem is why behavioral and functional evidence alone cannot settle questions of machine consciousnessmachine consciousness, n.: Whether a machine such as an AI system could have genuine experiences of its own — and the research field that tries to find out, or to build such a machine..
Origin
Named by David Chalmers in a talk at the first 'Toward a Science of Consciousness' conference in Tucson (April 1994) and in 'Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness' (Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1995), then treated at book length in The Conscious Mind (1996). The underlying worry is older, from Gottfried Leibniz's mill thought experiment (1714) to Thomas Nagel (1974) and Levine (1983).
Usage note
Some philosophers and scientists, including Daniel Dennett and Patricia Churchland, regard the hard/easy distinction as misleading. Chalmers's 'meta-problem' (2018), explaining why we judge there to be a hard problem, is a functional question that could in principle be studied in AI systems.
Related
- phenomenal consciousnessphenomenal consciousness, n.: The felt, experiential side of the mind — what it is like to taste coffee or to feel sad — as opposed to simply processing or reporting information.
- philosophical zombiephilosophical zombie, n.: An imagined being that behaves exactly like a person — talking, laughing, even saying it feels pain — but has no inner experience at all. Philosophers use it to ask whether behavior proves a mind.
- knowledge argumentknowledge argument, n.: A thought experiment about Mary, a scientist who knows every physical fact about color but has lived all her life in a black-and-white room. When she first sees red, does she learn something new?
- illusionismillusionism, n.: The view that the inner glow of experience that seems so hard to explain is a kind of trick the brain plays on itself: we are conscious, but not in the mysterious way it seems.
- panpsychismpanpsychism, n.: The idea that some simple form of experience is a basic feature of all matter, so that minds like ours are built out of tiny glimmers of mind found everywhere.
- qualiaqualia, n.: The individual felt qualities of experience — the particular redness of red, the taste of mint, the sting of a burn — that seem impossible to capture fully in words.
- consciousnessconsciousness, n.: Having experiences: there being something it feels like to be you, as when you see red or feel pain. Whether any AI is or could become conscious is an open and fiercely debated question.
Sources
- Chalmers, D. J. (1995). Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies 2(3), 200–219.
- Levine, J. (1983). Materialism and Qualia: The Explanatory Gap. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 64, 354–361.
Mentioned in
consciousnessconsciousness, n.: Having experiences: there being something it feels like to be you, as when you see red or feel pain. Whether any AI is or could become conscious is an open and fiercely debated question., David ChalmersDavid Chalmers, prop. n.: An Australian philosopher who named the 'hard problem' of consciousness — why physical processes feel like anything at all — and who asks whether AI systems could be conscious., machine consciousnessmachine consciousness, n.: Whether a machine such as an AI system could have genuine experiences of its own — and the research field that tries to find out, or to build such a machine., mind–body problemmind–body problem, n.: The age-old question of how the mind — thoughts, feelings, experiences — relates to the physical body and brain. Is the mind simply what the brain does, or something more?, phenomenal consciousnessphenomenal consciousness, n.: The felt, experiential side of the mind — what it is like to taste coffee or to feel sad — as opposed to simply processing or reporting information., philosophical zombiephilosophical zombie, n.: An imagined being that behaves exactly like a person — talking, laughing, even saying it feels pain — but has no inner experience at all. Philosophers use it to ask whether behavior proves a mind., qualiaqualia, n.: The individual felt qualities of experience — the particular redness of red, the taste of mint, the sting of a burn — that seem impossible to capture fully in words., illusionismillusionism, n.: The view that the inner glow of experience that seems so hard to explain is a kind of trick the brain plays on itself: we are conscious, but not in the mysterious way it seems., knowledge argumentknowledge argument, n.: A thought experiment about Mary, a scientist who knows every physical fact about color but has lived all her life in a black-and-white room. When she first sees red, does she learn something new?, panpsychismpanpsychism, n.: The idea that some simple form of experience is a basic feature of all matter, so that minds like ours are built out of tiny glimmers of mind found everywhere., Thomas NagelThomas Nagel, prop. n.: An American philosopher whose 1974 essay 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?' defined consciousness as there being something it is like to be a creature, a test now applied to machines.