The Hard Problem of Consciousness
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The hard problem of consciousness is the challenge of explaining why we have subjective, qualitative experiences. Why do we have feelings, sensations, and a rich inner world? This is in contrast to the so-called 'easy problems' of consciousness, which deal with the brain's functions like processing information, learning, and memory. While these problems are complex, they are considered 'easy' because they can, in principle, be solved by understanding the brain's mechanisms. The hard problem, however, seems to resist such explanations. As David Chalmers, the philosopher who formulated the problem in his 1995 paper "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness", argues, even if we understood everything about the brain's physical processes, the question of why these processes are accompanied by subjective experience would still remain. This is often referred to as the explanatory gap.
Qualia
Qualia are the subjective, qualitative properties of experience. They are the 'what it is like' aspect of our mental states. For example, the redness of red, the taste of a lemon, or the feeling of pain are all qualia.
Example: Imagine two people looking at the same red apple. While they both agree it is red, there is no way to know if their subjective experience of the color red is the same. This individual, subjective quality of the experience is what philosophers call qualia.
The explanatory gap is the difficulty that physicalist theories of mind have in explaining how physical properties give rise to the way things feel when they are experienced. In other words, it's the gap between the physical world and our subjective experience of it.
What is the core of the 'hard problem' of consciousness?