Torin Alter

Hard problem of consciousness

As I type these words, cognitive systems in my brain engage in visual and auditory information processing. This processing is accompanied by subjective states of consciousness, such as the auditory experience of hearing the tap-tap-tap of the keyboard and the visual experience of seeing the letters appear on the screen. How does the brain’s activity generate such experiences? Why should it be accompanied by conscious experience in the first place? This is the hard problem of consciousness.

Churchland on Arguments Against Physicalism

In “Consciousness and the Introspection of ‘Qualitative Simples’” Paul Churchland criticizes a familiar family of anti-physicalist arguments, including Thomas Nagel’s (1974) “What is it like to be a bat?” argument, Frank Jackson’s (1982, 1986, 1995) knowledge argument, and related arguments developed by David Chalmers (1996, 2010) and others. In Churchland’s view, those arguments lead to the pessimistic view that science can shed no light on the qualitative features of conscious experience. He provides good reasons to reject that pessimistic view. However, I will argue, he is wrong to associate it with at least two of the anti-physicalist arguments he considers: the knowledge and conceivability arguments. Proponents of those arguments can share Churchland’s more optimistic view about the science of consciousness. Indeed, at least some proponents, including Chalmers, advocate a similar view. Churchland also attacks the anti-physicalist arguments more directly, identifying and criticizing assumptions that he sees as underlying them. But, I will argue, those attacks are at best inconclusive, at least with respect to the knowledge and conceivability arguments.