Of course, it only remains a hard problem if it is assumed that consciousness is an emergent property. That is a premise, and the hard problem of consciousness demonstrates that, for the time being at least, it is an unprovable premise.<p>To put it another way, it could very well be that it is a hard problem because emergence is not true. There is no evidence that excludes the possibility that consciousness is transcendent, rather than emergent. However, that may well be trying to prove a negative, which is mostly fruitless. So, the fact that it cannot presently be proven that consciousness is an emergent property, does not necessarily mean that it is not.<p>A model for consciousness that separates perception from sensory processing itself would be somewhat akin to saying that the soul is wired into the brain, and receives all of its perceptions from the brain, but that the soul is not the brain. I don't think that this can ever be proven or disproven, because it requires introspection, which is at its very nature subjective.<p>But what do I know? Let's see where the research goes...
The first five sections of Chalmers's paper explain the problem very well:<p><a href="http://consc.net/papers/facing.html" rel="nofollow">http://consc.net/papers/facing.html</a><p>(Chalmers is the philosopher who coined the distinction between "hard" and "easy" problems of consciousness.)
Not only is this problem of great philosophical interest, I always find it sociologically interesting as well: people who don't see why there is a "hard problem" are typically entrapped believers in the materialist/deterministic paradigm. I know because I was. :)<p>Put another way, if free will is an illusion, who is it an illusion to?
Nice writeup. I bought David's book on consciousness after having a long talk with him at a Consciousness and Quantum Mechanics meeting about 10 years ago. I think that this is interesting stuff. Really, why should we have evolved with the kind of inner life (qualia) consciousness? What evolutionary advantages did it give us?
here's something that looks like a solution:
<a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran07/ramachandran07_index.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran07/ramachandran0...</a>