Editing Hard problem of consciousness (section)

====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/>