Consciousness and the Hard Problem

This talk by David Chalmers on the relationship between consciousness and moral status is pretty interesting. You don’t have to watch the video to …

Consciousness and moral status

— Philosophy day!

It is interesting to me what assumptions go into philosophy as though philosophy is a “total category” of activity. So many philosophers feel not need to tell us what they are up to. They just assume a common context of communication.

*******xx

Chalmer’s “Hard Problem” of consciousness is actually only a Very Difficult problem. In this way, Chalmer’s is really only asking difficult questions, which, in comparison to the actual Hard Problem, is kind of easy. Chalmers, and others, are not actually thinking very much by taking the easy road of consciousness. In this way, it is no different that modern scholasticism.

X

The Hard Problem is consciousness is: why should consciousness should have anything to do with a brain. Which is to say: What reason is there to understand other preoples brains have anything to do with consciousness?

This is a very different formulation of the problem of consciousness, Because, where the former, Chalmer’s Very Difficult Problem, is involved with given conditions which it is not concerned with or it figures is beneath or beyond contemplative worth.

The Hard Problem (not Chalmer’s version) is concerned with what actually presents itself without assumptions. This latter requires one to actually think about things that are not already given to the issue. Things that are, for a term, denied by what is assumed. The Hard Problem considers things without bias.

Why should consciousness have anything to do with a brain?