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...