The Hard Problem

I've been interested in the "Hard Problem" of consciousness for a long time, and have decided to start blogging about my thoughts in this area.

In a nutshell, the "Hard Problem" is: why do brains experience anything?

Cognitive Science/A.I. specialists have lots of theories about how a brain can analyze a visual scene, set and accomplish goals, make predictions, etc. and this is the realm of information processing. The "Hard Problem", on the other hand, tackles what at first seems like a simpler question: why does a thinking machine "experience" the color red or the sound of a harp?

To the best of my knowledge, no-one has come close to answering this question, which is why it's so attractive. It's like Fermat's last theorem for cognitive scientists!

I'm going to try and regularly blog my theories, thought experiments, and ideas related to consciousness and the Hard Problem.

Comments

[Robert Twizell]

Daniel Dennett has formulated a very rich theory of consciousness that addresses many of the issues you are blogging about. His book 'Consciousness Explained' is one of the most complete exegeses of the materialist position on consciousness and ought to be required reading for anyone interested in the mind. In my view this is as important a theory for consciousness as 'The origin of species' was for Biology, and just as challenging to our received ideas today as Darwin was in his day.