How Might the “Hard Problems” of Consciousness Be Resolved? Essay Example

Consciousness has been seen, and proven to pose the hardest and baffling of problems in the science of the mind. Consciousness is a term that refers to many different phenomena. The phenomenon needs some explanations some of which are easy and some are hard. The easy problems of consciousness are those that are directly prone to the methods of cognitive science. In this case, phenomenon is explained in terms of neural and computational mechanisms (Shear, 1999, p. 9). The hard problems are those that resist the mentioned methods.The hard problem of consciousness is the difficulty of illumination why and how we have phenomenal experiences. That is how sensations acquire such attributes as tastes and color. Resolving of these hard problems is in terms of dualism. This information theory (dual) has experimental and physical aspects.

The task of solving the problem is through the integration of neuronal, intentional and computational descriptions together.The problem of reductive explanations of phenomenal consciousness into scientific terms will then be resolved. The phenomenon of having experiences will be nothing more than the performance of functions (Carruthers, 2003, p. 325). The resolution starts by first understanding that hard problems go beyond the normal problems about the performance of functions. The question here is why the performance of functions always linked to experience.Experiences arise from physical basis because inner life is not reducible to the functional attributes of physical processes. Understanding such processes will make it easy to explain certain functions of the world just like other features. A complete understanding of consciousness will provide insights into the hard problem, which can be solved through answering the easy ones.

References

Carruthers, P. (2003).Phenomenal consciousness: A naturalistic theory.Mexico: Cambridge University Press.

Shear, J. (1999).Explaining Consciousness: the hard problem.New York: MIT Press.