Hard Problem of Consciousness
The elephant in the room in scientific inquiry
Prompt ChatGPT or Google Bard “hardest unresolved problems in science” and you will see consciousness listed in the top 5.
Bard listed it at #3 as following for me, when writing this post:
“The nature of consciousness: What is consciousness? How does it arise? These are questions that have been debated by philosophers and scientists for centuries, and there is still no consensus.”
There is scientific consensus on the neural correlates of consciousness, but there isn’t one on how (or if) the brain causes consciousness.
Founder of quantum mechanics and Nobel Prize winner (Physics) Max Planck stated [1]:
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
Other than being so fundamental to our experience, one reason it is tricky to pin down consciousness is because it intersects many fields, including physics, biology, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, computer science and others.
This is a very complex topic, and it would be impossible to cover it with sufficient depth in a medium-sized article. In addition, I don’t claim to be an expert in this subject. This post is a humble attempt to touch on the high-level generalized perspectives on consciousness, and trigger curiosity in the reader’s mind (or consciousness).
What is Consciousness?
First, let’s define consciousness for the context of this post. In his seminal paper, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat”, American philosopher Thomas Nagel stated [2]:
“…consciousness has essential to it a subjective character, a what it is like aspect. He writes, “an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism — something it is like for the organism.”….”
Consciousness is an internal and subjective first-person experience that has a qualitative characteristic. According to Nagel, any attempt to reduce it to objective/physical/materialistic characteristics would be leaving out the very definition of consciousness.
What is hard about Consciousness?
The term, Hard Problem of Consciousness was coined by Philosopher David Chalmers. It captures the how and why parts of our subjective conscious experience. He distinguishes it from the easy problem of consciousness, which can explain the physical systems that enable humans/animals to process information. According to him [3]:
“…even if we have solved all easy problems about the brain and experience, the hard problem will still persist”
Quantum Mechanics & Consciousness
Ever since I took a course in Quantum Computing in graduate school, I have been intrigued by the relationship between properties of matter at the quantum level and consciousness, and its implications for the overall nature of reality. I do want to clarify the course was mostly math and didn’t dwell on the ontology of reality or philosophy. But it’s not hard to see the connection.
A notable interpretation (Neumann-Wigner interpretation) of the famous double-slit quantum experiment [4–5] confirms that a conscious observer or measurement that is later observed (by a conscious observer) collapses a superposition (possibilities) into a particular state of the sub-atomic particle. In other words, a particle is rendered in a particular way by the act of observation.
I cannot overstate the implications of this for science at the sub-atomic level, as science relies on objective measurement. But if consciousness and/or the act of measurement [6] in quantum mechanics itself influences the outcome of the measurement, then we have a major challenge.
If you are interested in learning more about the relationship between quantum mechanics and consciousness, check out the following posts on quantum mechanics linked below.
Artificial Intelligence & Consciousness
Historian and author of the best-seller book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari says people (including scientists) often conflate intelligence with consciousness. Consciousness is the ability to suffer, be happy, experience color, taste chocolate, etc. Intelligence, on the other hand, is the ability to solve problems without the subjective element.
Yuval Noah Harari and AI pioneer and Turing Award laureate Yann LeCun recently debated on the impact of AI [7]. Harari stated that humans possess consciousness and intelligence and use both to solve problems, whereas AI only has intelligence. On the contrary, LeCun has stated that sentience (consciousness) is an emergent property of computational devices [8], and it is a matter of time before AI systems develop consciousness [7]. Based on his book, 21 lessons for the 21st Century, Harari is skeptical but open to the idea of consciousness arising from information/matter, whereas LeCun is more certain.
If you are interested in learning more about problems solved by AI, checkout the post linked below.
Dualism
The mind-body dualism is the attempt to solve the relationship between mind (consciousness) and matter (body/brain). It states that mind (subjective experience) and matter (objective properties) are distinct and separate from each other. Essentially, one cannot be reduced and explained in terms of the other. French philosopher and scientist René Descartes supported dualism and linked mind with consciousness and distinguished it from the brain [9].
Non-Dualism
Non-duality considers consciousness to be fundamental and objective attributes to be derived from consciousness. Traditions in the East have a history in non-duality [10]. It has some overlaps with concepts in Idealism [11] in the West.
American cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman supports the consciousness before matter view [12]:
“Consciousness didn’t emerge from a prior physical process of evolution. Consciousness is fundamental and so we have to rethink the whole history of the universe actually from this point of view, from The Big Bang up through evolution.”
Summary
The jury is still out on how/if the brain (physical matter) generates consciousness. To summarize the theories across the wide spectrum of disciplines from physics to philosophy, there are three camps of explanations.
Resources
- https://bigthink.com/words-of-wisdom/max-planck-i-regard-consciousness-as-fundamental/
- What Is It Like to Be a_Bat — Wikipedia
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
- Quantum Mechanics and its Implications for Reality
- What is a Quantum Computer?
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measurement_problem
- Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens) vs Yann LeCun (Meta) on artificial intelligence — https://amp.lepoint.fr/2519782
- https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1539455515822112769?lang=en
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism
- https://evolutionnews.org/2023/01/brain-scientist-consciousness-didnt-evolve-it-creates-evolution/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_correlates_of_consciousness
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Nagel
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chalmers
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_D._Hoffman
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Wigner_interpretation
