Editing Hard problem of consciousness (section)

===Neural correlates of consciousness===
{{further|Neural correlates of consciousness}}
Since 1990, researchers including the molecular biologist [[Francis Crick]] and the neuroscientist [[Christof Koch]] have made significant progress toward identifying which neurobiological events occur concurrently to the experience of subjective consciousness.<ref name="KochEtAl">{{cite journal|last1=Koch|first1=Christof|last2=Massimini|first2=Marcello|last3=Boly|first3=Melanie|last4=Tononi|first4=Giulio|title=Neural correlates of consciousness: Progress and problems|journal=Nature Reviews Neuroscience|date=April 2016|volume=17|issue=5|pages=307–321|doi=10.1038/nrn.2016.22|pmid=27094080|s2cid=5395332|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301567963|access-date=14 April 2018}}</ref> These postulated events are referred to as ''neural correlates of consciousness'' or NCCs. However, this research arguably addresses the question of ''which'' neurobiological mechanisms are linked to consciousness but not the question of ''why'' they should give rise to consciousness at all, the latter being the hard problem of consciousness as Chalmers formulated it. In "On the Search for the Neural Correlate of Consciousness", Chalmers said he is confident that, granting the principle that something such as what he terms "global availability" can be used as an indicator of consciousness, the neural correlates will be discovered "in a century or two".<ref name="chalmers-ncc">{{cite encyclopedia|last=Chalmers|first=David|editor1-last=Hameroff|editor1-first=Stuart|editor1-link=Stuart Hameroff|editor2-last=Kaszniak|editor2-first=Alfred|editor3-first=Alwyn|editor3-last=Scott|encyclopedia=Toward a Science of Consciousness II|title=On the Search for the Neural Correlate of Consciousness|year=1998|publisher=MIT Press|location=Cambridge, MA|isbn=9780262082624|url=http://consc.net/papers/ncc.pdf|access-date=17 April 2018}}</ref> Nevertheless, he stated regarding their relationship to the hard problem of consciousness:

<blockquote>One can always ask why these processes of availability should give rise to consciousness in the first place. As yet we cannot explain why they do so, and it may well be that full details about the processes of availability will still fail to answer this question. Certainly, nothing in the standard methodology I have outlined answers the question; that methodology assumes a relation between availability and consciousness, and therefore does nothing to explain it. [...] So the hard problem remains. But who knows: Somewhere along the line we may be led to the relevant insights that show why the link is there, and the hard problem may then be solved.<ref name="chalmers-ncc"/></blockquote>

The neuroscientist and Nobel laureate [[Eric Kandel]] wrote that locating the NCCs would not solve the hard problem, but rather one of the so-called easy problems to which the hard problem is contrasted.<ref name="Kandel">{{cite book|author=Kandel Eric R.|year=2007|title=In search of memory: The emergence of a new science of mind|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|isbn=978-0393329377|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PFnRwWXzypgC|pages=380–382}}</ref> Kandel went on to note Crick and Koch's suggestion that once the [[binding problem]]—understanding what accounts for the unity of experience—is solved, it will be possible to solve the hard problem empirically.<ref name="Kandel"/> However, neuroscientist [[Anil Seth]] argued that emphasis on the so-called hard problem is a distraction from what he calls the "real problem": understanding the neurobiology underlying consciousness, namely the neural correlates of various conscious processes.<ref name="seth-aeon">{{cite web|last1=Seth|first1=Anil|author-link=Anil Seth| title=The real problem|url=https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-is-a-distraction-from-the-real-one|website=Aeon|access-date=22 April 2018|date=November 2016}}</ref> This more modest goal is the focus of most scientists working on consciousness.<ref name="Kandel"/> Psychologist [[Susan Blackmore]] believes, by contrast, that the search for the neural correlates of consciousness is futile and itself predicated on an erroneous belief in the hard problem of consciousness.<ref name="blackmore">{{cite web|last1=Blackmore|first1=Susan|title=The Neural Correlates of Consciousness|url=https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25457|website=Edge.org|access-date=22 April 2018|date=2014}}</ref>