Week 3: Chalmers, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness

Focus on Sections 1-5. Sections 6-8 are optional.

  1. Explain the distinction Chalmers draws, in Sections 1-3, between the ‘easy’ problems of consciousness and the ‘hard’ problem. What is it (according to Chalmers) that makes the ‘easy’ problems easy and the ‘hard’ problem hard?
  2. In Section 4, Chalmers gives several examples of how the neuroscience of consciousness has failed to address the hard problem. On p. 206, he discusses five possible responses on behalf of the neuroscientists. Which of these responses do you think is the most reasonable and why?

    [Further reading: You might find the article by Seth, a leading figure in the neuroscience of consciousness, interesting in relation to DQ2.]
  3. (Optional). In Section 5, Chalmers provocatively argues that no "purely physical account of consciousness” can solve the hard problem. At the end of Section 5, he considers a potential criticism: people used to say this about life, and they were proved wrong. Chalmers argues that the two cases (life and consciousness) are disanalogous. What does he mean by this, and is he right?

    [Further reading: Dennett makes precisely this criticism, so you might find his article relevant to DQ3.]