Is There a Hard Problem of Consciousness?

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There's the so called easy problem of what is it like to see something and hear a word. The hard problem is, how does experience happen? How does consciousness exist? We try to build bridges between these two problems in our everyday lives. But i do think that addressing the hard problem head on is not the most productive way for a science of consciousness to develop.

Shermer and Seth discuss: “mind” and “consciousness” in context of understanding how molecules and matter give rise to such nonmaterial processes • controlled hallucinations • the hard problem of consciousness • the self and other minds • consciousness and self-awareness as emergent properties • Where does consciousness go during general anaesthesia? After death? • Star Trek TNG episode 138 “Ship in a Bottle”: a VR inside a VR that is indistinguishable from reality • Are we living in a simulation that itself is inside a simulation? • Does Deep Blue know that it beat the great Gary Kasparov in chess? • Does Watson know that it beat the great Ken Jennings in Jeopardy!? • Is Data on Star Trek sentient, conscious, and with feelings? • Can AI systems be conscious? • free will, determinism, compatibilism, and panpsychism.

Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, where he co-directs of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science. He is also Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Program on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness, and of the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme: From Sensation and Perception to Awareness. Dr. Seth is Editor-in-Chief of Neuroscience of Consciousness (Oxford University Press) and he sits on the Editorial Board of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B and on the Advisory Committee for 1907 Research and for Chile’s Congreso Futuro. His new book is Being You: A New Science of Consciousness.