Editing Hard problem of consciousness (section)

===Type-A Materialism===
{{further|Reductive materialism|A priori physicalism}}
Type-A materialism (also known as ''reductive materialism'' or ''a priori physicalism'') is a view characterised by a commitment to [[physicalism]] and a full rejection of the hard problem. By this view, the hard problem either does not exist or is just another easy problem, because every fact about the mind is a fact about the performance of various functions or behaviours. So, once all the relevant functions and behaviours have been accounted for, there will not be any facts left over in need of explanation.<ref name="Chalmers-caipin"/> Thinkers who subscribe to type-A materialism include [[Paul Churchland|Paul]] and [[Patricia Churchland]], [[Daniel Dennett]], [[Keith Frankish]], and [[Thomas Metzinger]].

Some type-A materialists believe in the reality of phenomenal consciousness but believe it is nothing extra in addition to certain functions or behaviours. This view is sometimes referred to as ''strong reductionism''.<ref name="jw-iep"/><ref name="Chalmers-caipin"/> Other type-A materialists may reject the existence of phenomenal consciousness entirely. This view is referred to as [[eliminative materialism]] or [[illusionism (consciousness)|illusionism]].<ref name="sep-elim"/><ref name="frankish-2016">{{cite journal
|last=Frankish
|first=K.
|year=2016
|title=Illusionism as a theory of consciousness
|journal=Journal of Consciousness Studies
|volume=23
|issue=11–12
|pages=11–39
}}</ref><ref name="dennett 2016">{{cite journal
| last = Dennett
| first = Daniel
| year = 2016
| title = Illusionism as the Obvious Default Theory of Consciousness
| journal = Journal of Consciousness Studies
| volume = 23
| issue = 11–12
| pages = 65–72
| url = https://philpapers.org/rec/DENIAT-3
}}
</ref>

====Strong reductionism====
Many philosophers have disputed that there is a hard problem of consciousness distinct from what Chalmers calls the easy problems of consciousness. Some among them, who are sometimes termed ''strong reductionists'', hold that [[phenomenal consciousness]] (i.e., conscious experience) does exist but that it can be fully understood as reducible to the brain.<ref name="jw-iep"/>

Broadly, strong reductionists accept that conscious experience is real but argue it can be fully understood in functional terms as an emergent property of the material brain.<ref name="jw-iep"/> In contrast to weak reductionists (see above), strong reductionists reject ideas used to support the existence of a hard problem (that the same functional organization could exist without consciousness, or that a blind person who understood vision through a textbook would not know everything about sight) as simply mistaken intuitions.<ref name="jw-iep"/><ref name="Chalmers-caipin"/>

A notable family of strong reductionist accounts are the [[higher-order theories of consciousness]].<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|first=Peter|last=Carruthers|author-link=Peter Carruthers (philosopher)|title=Higher-order theories of consciousness|encyclopedia=[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]|url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-higher/|date=2016|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University}}</ref><ref name="jw-iep"/> In 2005, the philosopher [[Peter Carruthers (philosopher)|Peter Carruthers]] wrote about "recognitional concepts of experience", that is, "a capacity to recognize [a] type of experience when it occurs in one's own mental life," and suggested that such a capacity could explain phenomenal consciousness without positing qualia.<ref name=Carruthers>{{cite book|title=Consciousness: essays from a higher-order perspective|chapter=Phenomenal concepts and higher-order experiments|last=Carruthers|first=Peter|author-link=Peter Carruthers (philosopher)|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FKI4flNaGjUC&pg=PA79|pages=79 ''ff''|isbn=978-0191535048|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2005}}</ref> On the higher-order view, since consciousness is a representation, and representation is fully functionally analysable, there is no hard problem of consciousness.<ref name="jw-iep"/>

The philosophers Glenn Carruthers and Elizabeth Schier said in 2012 that the main arguments for the existence of a hard problem—[[philosophical zombies]], [[Mary's room]], and [[What Is it Like to Be a Bat?|Nagel's bats]]—are only persuasive if one already assumes that "consciousness must be independent of the structure and function of mental states, i.e. that there is a hard problem." Hence, the arguments [[beg the question]]. The authors suggest that "instead of letting our conclusions on the thought experiments guide our theories of consciousness, we should let our theories of consciousness guide our conclusions from the thought experiments."<ref name=CarruthersSchier2012>{{cite conference|last1=Carruthers|first1=Glenn|last2=Schier|first2=Elizabeth|title=Dissolving the hard problem of consciousness|book-title=Consciousness Online fourth conference|date=2012|url=http://consciousnessonline.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/disolvinghardproblem.pdf|access-date=7 July 2014}}</ref>

The philosopher [[Massimo Pigliucci]] argued in 2013 that the hard problem is misguided, resulting from a "category mistake".<ref name=Pigliucci2013/> He said: "Of course an explanation isn't the same as an experience, but that's because the two are completely independent categories, like colors and triangles. It is obvious that I cannot experience what it is like to be you, but I can potentially have a complete explanation of how and why it is possible to be you."<ref name="Pigliucci2013"/>

In 2017, the philosopher Marco Stango, in a paper on [[John Dewey]]'s approach to the problem of consciousness (which preceded Chalmers' formulation of the hard problem by over half a century), noted that Dewey's approach would see the hard problem as the consequence of an unjustified assumption that feelings and functional behaviours are not the same physical process: "For the Deweyan philosopher, the 'hard problem' of consciousness is a 'conceptual fact' only in the sense that it is a {{em|philosophical mistake}}: the mistake of failing to see that the physical can be had as an episode of immediate sentiency."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Stango|first=Marco|date=Summer 2017|title=A Deweyan assessment of three major tendencies in philosophy of consciousness|journal=Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society|volume=53|issue=3|pages=466–490|doi=10.2979/trancharpeirsoc.53.3.06|s2cid=148690536|url=http://muse.jhu.edu/article/680916|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

The philosopher [[Thomas Metzinger]] likens the hard problem of consciousness to [[vitalism]], a formerly widespread view in biology which was not so much solved as abandoned.<ref name ="Metzinger">{{cite web|last1=Harris|first1=Sam|author-link= Sam Harris|title=Making Sense #96|url=https://samharris.org/subscriber-extras/96-nature-consciousness/|website=SamHarris.org|publisher=Sam Harris|access-date=27 August 2020|quote=(25.45) TM:I think it will not be a mystery. Life is not a mystery anymore, but a hundred and fifty years ago many people thought that this is an irreducible mystery. (25:57) Harris:So you’re not a fan anymore, if you ever were, of the framing by David Chalmers of the Hard Problem of Consciousness? Metzinger: No, that’s so boring. I mean, that’s last century. I mean, you know, we all respect Dave [Chalmers], and we know he is very smart and has got a very fast mind, no debate about that. But conceivability arguments are just very, very weak. If you have an ill-defined folk psychological umbrella term like “consciousness”, then you can pull off all kinds of scenarios and zombie thought experiments. It doesn’t really… It helped to clarify some issues in the mid 90’s, but the consciousness community has listened to this and just moved on. I mean nobody of the serious researchers in the field thinks about this anymore, but it has taken on like a folkloristic life of its own. A lot of people talk about the Hard Problem who wouldn’t be able to state what it consists in now.}}</ref> Brian Jonathan Garrett has also argued that the hard problem suffers from flaws analogous to those of vitalism.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Garrett|first1=Brian Jonathan|title=What the History of Vitalism Teaches Us About Consciousness and the 'Hard Problem'|journal=Philosophy and Phenomenological Research|date=May 2006|volume=72|issue=3|pages=576–588|doi=10.1111/j.1933-1592.2006.tb00584.x}}</ref>

The philosopher [[Peter Hacker]] argues that the hard problem is misguided in that it asks how consciousness can emerge from matter, whereas in fact sentience emerges from the evolution of living organisms.<ref name=Hacker>{{cite journal|title=Hacker's challenge|url=http://philpapers.org/rec/HACHC|last=Hacker|first=Peter|author-link=Peter Hacker|journal=The Philosophers' Magazine|volume=51|issue=51|pages=23–32|year=2010|doi=10.5840/tpm2010517|url-access=subscription}}</ref> He states: "The hard problem isn’t a hard problem at all. The really hard problems are the problems the scientists are dealing with. [...] The philosophical problem, like all philosophical problems, is a confusion in the conceptual scheme."<ref name="Hacker"/> Hacker's critique extends beyond Chalmers and the hard problem, being directed against contemporary philosophy of mind and neuroscience more broadly. Along with the neuroscientist [[Max Bennett (scientist)|Max Bennett]], he has argued that most of contemporary neuroscience remains implicitly [[Dualism (philosophy of mind)|dualistic]] in its conceptualisations and is predicated on the ''[[Mereology|mereological]] fallacy'' of ascribing psychological concepts to the brain that can properly be ascribed only to the person as a whole.<ref name="schaal-review">{{cite journal|last1=Schaal|first1=David W.|title=Naming Our Concerns About Neuroscience: A Review of Bennett and Hacker's ''Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience''|journal=Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior|date=2005|volume=84|issue=3|pages=683–692|doi=10.1901/jeab.2005.83-05|pmid=16596986|pmc=1389787}}</ref> Hacker further states that "consciousness studies", as it exists today, is "literally a total waste of time" and that "the conception of consciousness which they have is incoherent".<ref name=Hacker/>

====Eliminative materialism / Illusionism====
{{main|Eliminative materialism}}

Eliminative materialism or eliminativism is the view that many or all of the [[mental states]] used in [[folk psychology]] (i.e., common-sense ways of discussing the mind) do not, upon scientific examination, correspond to real brain mechanisms.<ref name="sep-elim">{{cite encyclopedia|last=Ramsey|first=William|editor-last=Zalta|editor-first=Edward N.|editor-link=Edward N. Zalta|encyclopedia=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|title=Eliminative Materialism|year=2019|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/|access-date=1 April 2019}}</ref> According the 2020 [[PhilPapers]] survey, 4.51% of philosophers surveyed subscribe to eliminativism.<ref name="philpapers2020" />

While [[Patricia Churchland]] and [[Paul Churchland]] have famously applied eliminative materialism to [[propositional attitudes]], philosophers including [[Daniel Dennett]], [[Georges Rey]], and [[Keith Frankish]] have applied it to [[qualia]] or [[phenomenal consciousness]] (i.e., conscious experience).<ref name="sep-elim"/> On their view, it is mistaken not only to believe there is a hard problem of consciousness, but to believe phenomenal consciousness exists at all.<ref name="frankish"/>{{r|dennett 2016}}

This stance has recently taken on the name of ''illusionism'': the view that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion. The term was popularized by the philosopher [[Keith Frankish]].<ref name="frankish-2016" /> Frankish argues that "illusionism" is preferable to "eliminativism" for labelling the view that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion. More substantively, Frankish argues that illusionism about phenomenal consciousness is preferable to realism about phenomenal consciousness. He states: "Theories of consciousness typically address the hard problem. They accept that phenomenal consciousness is real and aim to explain how it comes to exist. There is, however, another approach, which holds that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion and aims to explain why it seems to exist."<ref name="frankish"/> Frankish concludes that illusionism "replaces the hard problem with the illusion problem—the problem of explaining how the illusion of phenomenality arises and why it is so powerful."<ref name="frankish"/>

The philosopher [[Daniel Dennett]] was another prominent figure associated with illusionism. After Frankish published a paper in the [[Journal of Consciousness Studies]] titled ''Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness,''<ref name="frankish-2016" /> Dennett responded with his own paper humorously titled ''Illusionism as the Obvious Default Theory of Consciousness.''<ref name="dennett 2016"/> Dennett had been arguing for the illusory status of consciousness since early on in his career. For example, in 1979 he published a paper titled ''On the Absence of [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|Phenomenology]]'' (where he argues for the nonexistence of phenomenal consciousness).<ref>{{cite book
| last = Dennett
| first = Daniel C.
| year = 1979
| chapter = On the Absence of Phenomenology
| editor-first = Donald F.
| editor-last = Gustafson
| editor2-first = Bangs L.
| editor2-last = Tapscott
| title = Body, Mind, and Method
| publisher = Kluwer Academic Publishers
| pages = 93–113
}}</ref> Similar ideas have been explicated in his 1991 book [[Consciousness Explained]].<ref name="Dennett1991">{{cite book
| last = Dennett
| first = Daniel C.
| title = Consciousness Explained
| year = 1991
| publisher = Penguin Books
}}</ref> Dennett argues that the so-called "hard problem" will be solved in the process of solving what Chalmers terms the "easy problems".<ref name=Dennett/> He compares consciousness to stage magic and its capability to create extraordinary illusions out of ordinary things.<ref name=Dennett3/> To show how people might be commonly fooled into overstating the accuracy of their introspective abilities, he describes a phenomenon called [[change blindness]], a visual process that involves failure to detect scenery changes in a series of alternating images.<ref name=Dennett2/>{{page needed|date=January 2021}} He accordingly argues that consciousness need not be what it seems to be based on introspection. To address the question of the hard problem, or how and why physical processes give rise to experience, Dennett states that the phenomenon of having experience is nothing more than the performance of functions or the production of behaviour, which can also be referred to as the easy problems of consciousness.<ref name=Dennett/> Thus, Dennett argues that the hard problem of experience is included among—not separate from—the easy problems, and therefore they can only be explained together as a cohesive unit.<ref name=Dennett3/>

Eliminativists differ on the role they believe [[intuition|intuitive]] judgement plays in creating the apparent reality of consciousness. The philosopher [[Jacy Reese Anthis]] is of the position that this issue is born of an overreliance on intuition, calling philosophical discussions on the topic of consciousness a form of "intuition jousting".<ref name="anthis">{{cite book|last1=Anthis|first1=Jacy|title=Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures 2021|chapter=Consciousness Semanticism: A Precise Eliminativist Theory of Consciousness|series=Studies in Computational Intelligence|date=2022|volume=1032|pages=20–41|doi=10.1007/978-3-030-96993-6_3|isbn=978-3-030-96992-9|chapter-url=https://philarchive.org/rec/ANTCSA|access-date=7 August 2022}}</ref> But when the issue is tackled with "formal argumentation" and "precise semantics" then the hard problem will dissolve.<ref name="anthis" /> The philosopher Elizabeth Irvine, in contrast, can be read as having the opposite view, since she argues that phenomenal properties (that is, properties of consciousness) do not exist in our [[folk psychology|common-sense view of the world]]. She states that "the hard problem of consciousness may not be a genuine problem for non-philosophers (despite its overwhelming obviousness to philosophers)."<ref>{{cite book|last=Irvine|first=Elizabeth|date=2013|title=Consciousness as a scientific concept: a philosophy of science perspective|series=Studies in brain and mind|volume=5|location=Dordrecht; New York|publisher=[[Springer-Verlag]]|isbn=9789400751729|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=jO4HNB7OoUgC&pg=PA167 167]}}</ref>

A complete illusionist theory of consciousness must include the description of a [[Mechanism (biology)|mechanism]] by which the illusion of subjective experience is had and reported by people. Various philosophers and scientists have proposed possible theories.<ref name="meta-problem">{{cite journal|last1=Chalmers|first1=David|title=The Meta-Problem of Consciousness|journal=Journal of Consciousness Studies|date=2018|volume=25|issue=9–10|pages=6–61|url=http://consc.net/papers/metaproblem.pdf|access-date=6 February 2019}}</ref> For example, in his book ''Consciousness and the Social Brain'' neuroscientist [[Michael Graziano]] advocates what he calls [[attention schema theory]], in which our perception of being conscious is merely an error in perception, held by brains which evolved to hold erroneous and incomplete models of their own internal workings, just as they hold erroneous and incomplete models of their own bodies and of the external world.<ref name="Consciousness as engineering"/><ref name="Consciousness as engineering2"/>

===== Criticisms =====
The main criticisms of eliminative materialism and illusionism hinge on the counterintuitive nature of the view. Arguments of this form are called ''Moorean Arguments''. A Moorean argument seeks to undermine the conclusion of an argument by asserting that the [[negation]] of that conclusion is more certain than the [[premise]]s of the argument.<ref>{{cite journal
| last = Scarfone
| first = Matthew
| year = 2022
| title = Using and Abusing Moorean Arguments
| journal = Journal of the American Philosophical Association
| volume = 8
| issue = 1
| pages = 52–71
| doi = 10.1017/apa.2020.47
| s2cid = 239672728
| url = https://philpapers.org/rec/SCAUAA-2
}}</ref>

The roots of the Moorean Argument against illusionism extend back to [[Augustine of Hippo]] who stated that he could not be deceived regarding his own existence, since the very act of being deceived secures the existence of a being there to be the recipient of that deception.<ref group="note">"But, without any delusive representations of images or phantasms, I am most certain that I am, and that I know and delight in this. In respect to these truths I am not at all afraid of the arguments of the Academians, who say, What if you are deceived? For if I am deceived, I am. For he who is not, cannot be deceived..."</ref><ref>{{cite book
| last = Augustine of Hippo
| title = City of God
| chapter = Book 11, Chapter 26
}}</ref>

{{Wikisource|Discourse on the Method/Part 4|Descartes' Discourse on the Method/Part 4}}
In the Early-Modern era, these arguments were repopularized by [[René Descartes]], who coined the now famous phrase ''"Je pense, donc je suis"'' ("I think, therefore I am").<ref>{{cite book
| last = Descartes
| first = René
| year = 1637
| title = Discourse on the Method
| chapter = 4
}}</ref> Descartes argued that even if he was maximally deceived (because, for example, an evil demon was manipulating all his senses) he would still know with certainty that his mind exists, because the state of being deceived requires a mind as a prerequisite.<ref>{{cite book
| last = Descartes
| first = René
| year = 1641
| title = Meditations on First Philosophy
| chapter = Second Meditation
}}</ref>

This same general argumentative structure is still in use today. For example, in 2002 David Chalmers published an explicitly Moorean argument against illusionism. The argument goes like this: The reality of consciousness is more certain than any theoretical commitments (to, for example, physicalism) that may be motivating the illusionist to deny the existence of consciousness. The reason for this is because we have direct "acquaintance" with consciousness, but we do not have direct acquaintance with anything else (including anything that could inform our beliefs in consciousness being an illusion). In other words: consciousness can be known directly, so the reality of consciousness is more certain than any philosophical or scientific theory that says otherwise.<ref name="chalmers202-illusionism">{{cite journal
| last = Chalmers
| first = David
| year = 2020
| title = Debunking Arguments for Illusionism
| journal = Journal of Consciousness Studies
| volume = 27
| issue = 5–6
| pages = 258–281
| url = https://philpapers.org/rec/CHADAF-2
}}</ref> Chalmers concludes that "there is little doubt that something like the Moorean argument is the reason that most people reject illusionism and many find it crazy."<ref name="chalmers2020-illusionism">{{cite journal| last = Chalmers| first = David| year = 2002| title = Debunking Arguments for Illusionism| journal = Journal of Consciousness Studies| volume = 27| issue = 5–6| pages = 258–281| url = https://philpapers.org/rec/CHADAF-2}}</ref>

Eliminative materialism and illusionism have been the subject of criticism within the popular press. One highly cited example comes from the philosopher [[Galen Strawson]] who wrote an article in the [[New York Review of Books]] titled "The Consciousness Deniers". In it, Strawson describes illusionism as the "silliest claim ever made", next to which "every known religious belief is only a little less sensible than the belief that the grass is green."<ref>
{{cite web
|last=Strawson
|first=G.
|year=2018
|title=The Consciousness Deniers
|url=https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/13/the-consciousness-deniers/
|website=The New York Review of Books
}}</ref> Another notable example comes from [[Christof Koch]] (a neuroscientist and one of the leading proponents of [[Integrated Information Theory]]) in his popular science book ''The Feeling of Life Itself''. In the early pages of the book, Koch describes eliminativism as the "metaphysical counterpart to Cotard's syndrome, a psychiatric condition in which patients deny being alive."<ref>
{{cite book
|last=Koch
|first=Christof
|year=2019
|title=The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness is Everywhere But Can't be Computed
|publisher=MIT Press
|pages=2
}}</ref> Koch takes the prevalence of eliminativism as evidence that "much of twentieth-century analytic philosophy has gone to the dogs".<ref>
{{cite book
|last=Koch
|first=Christof
|year=2019
|title=The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness is Everywhere But Can't be Computed
|publisher=MIT Press
|pages=3
}}</ref>

Frankish has responded to such criticisms by asserting that "qualia realists" have to conceive of qualia as being either observational or theoretical in nature. If conceived of as observational, then realists cannot claim that illusionists are leaving anything out of their theories of consciousness, as such a claim would presuppose qualia as having certain theoretical components. If conceived of as theoretical, then illusionists are simply denying the theoretical components of qualia but not the mere fact that they exist, which is what they're attempting to explain in the first place.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Frankish |first=Keith |date=2022-12-02 |title=A dilemma for illusionists — and another for realists! |url=https://www.keithfrankish.com/blog/a-dilemma-for-illusionists-and-another-for-realists/ |access-date=2025-02-01 |website=Keith Frankish |language=en-GB}}</ref>