[ExI] There Is No ‘Hard Problem Of Consciousness’

[Brent Allsop]

In my mind this paragraph clearly reveals what he is missing:

"“Subjective experience,” “qualia” and “consciousness” are names of
phenomena that of course appear differently from different perspectives. It
would be strange if they didn’t. They affect the body and the brain
embodying them differently from how they affect something interacting with
them from the exterior. This is not due to a mysterious “explanatory
gap.” “Red,” as a qualia, is the name of the process we generally undergo
when we see or remember or think about the color red. We do not need to
explain why it looks red for the same reason that we do not have to explain
why the animal that we call “cat” looks like a cat. Why should we have to
explain why “red” looks red?"

We don't need to explain why "red" looks red, but we do need to understand
which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a description of
redness.  We need to know the true color quality of things, not just the
seeming qualities of things.  He's right; there is no 'hard problem' but he
is completely ignoring the most significant, though easy, problem, when it
comes to understanding consciousness.




On Fri, May 8, 2026 at 7:01 AM BillK via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> There Is No ‘Hard Problem Of Consciousness’
> Consciousness is not separate from the physical world — our “soul” is of
> the same nature as our body and any other phenomenon of the world.
> By Carlo Rovelli       May 7, 2026
>
> <https://www.noemamag.com/there-is-no-hard-problem-of-consciousness/>
> ----------------
>
> This longish essay seems relevant to our discussions of consciousness and
> to the question "Why does consciousness exist?"
>
> I asked Gemini to summarise the essay into five main points.
> BillK
>
> Gemini AI 3.1 Thinking -
>
> In the article "*There Is No Hard Problem of Consciousness*," physicist
> Carlo Rovelli argues that consciousness is not a supernatural mystery but a
> complex natural phenomenon of the same physical nature as the body and the
> rest of the universe.
>
>    -
>
>    *Rejection of Dualism:* Rovelli contends that the "hard problem" of
>    consciousness—the supposed unbridgeable gap between brain activity and
>    subjective experience—is a modern reincarnation of medieval dualism that
>    unnecessarily separates the "soul" from matter.
>    -
>
>    *A Matter of Perspective:* He explains that the difference between a
>    first-person experience (feeling "red") and a third-person scientific
>    account is merely a difference in perspective, not evidence of two distinct
>    kinds of reality.
>    -
>
>    *The Flaw in "Philosophical Zombies":* The author dismisses David
>    Chalmers' "philosophical zombie" thought experiment as a rhetorical trick,
>    arguing that it assumes a metaphysical gap from the start rather than
>    proving one exists.
>    -
>
>    *Science from the Inside:* Rovelli suggests that scientific knowledge
>    is itself a perspectival tool used by beings *within* the world,
>    meaning subjectivity is a natural feature of being an embodied part of
>    reality.
>    -
>
>    *The Natural Soul:* Ultimately, the article concludes that our "soul"
>    and spiritual life are real and precious, but they are high-level
>    descriptions of physical processes that fully belong to the natural world.
>
> -------------------------------------------
>
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