Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness
David J. Chalmers
Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 2, No. 3
Summary
The paper that coined 'the hard problem of consciousness.' Chalmers distinguishes between the easy problems of consciousness — explaining cognitive functions like attention, memory, and behavioral control — and the hard problem: why physical processes give rise to subjective experience at all. Argues that standard reductive and functionalist approaches cannot solve the hard problem, and that a new theoretical framework treating experience as fundamental is required. The most-cited single paper in philosophy of mind and the foundational reference for DECUR's consciousness science thread.
Abstract
Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain. This paper distinguishes between the easy problems of consciousness — explaining cognitive functions such as the ability to discriminate stimuli, integrate information, report mental states, and focus attention — and the hard problem: explaining why these functions are accompanied by experience. The easy problems are tractable by standard methods of cognitive science and neuroscience, reducing them to mechanisms and functions. The hard problem is not tractable by these methods. Even a complete functional account of the brain would not tell us why there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. Reductive explanation fails because phenomenal properties cannot be derived from functional properties alone. This paper argues that we must approach consciousness as a fundamental feature of the world, irreducible to anything more basic, and proposes principles for a nonreductive theory of consciousness including the principle of structural coherence and the double-aspect theory of information.
Citation
David J. Chalmers. (1995). Journal of Consciousness Studies. Vol. 2. No. 3