Mick Hartley

Here's evolutionary biologist and professor of psychology David Barash, on his response when asked what he thought was the most difficult unsolved question in science:

I answered without hesitation: How the brain generates awareness, thought, perceptions, emotions, and so forth, what philosophers call “the hard problem of consciousness.”

It’s a hard one indeed, so hard that despite an immense amount of research attention devoted to neurobiology, and despite great advances in our knowledge, I don’t believe we are significantly closer to bridging the gap between that which is physical, anatomical and electro-neurochemical, and what is subjectively experienced by all of us ….

To be sure, there are lots of other hard problems, such as the perennial one of reconciling quantum theory with relativity, whether life exists on other planets, how action can occur at a distance (gravity, the attraction of opposite charges), how cells differentiate, and so forth. But in these and other cases, I can at least envisage possible solutions, even though none of mine actually work.

But the hard problem of consciousness is so hard that I can’t even imagine what kind of empirical findings would satisfactorily solve it. In fact, I don’t even know what kind of discovery would get us to first base, not to mention a home run. Let’s say that a particular cerebral nucleus was found, existing only in conscious creatures. Would that solve it? Or maybe a specific molecule, synthesized only in the heat of subjective mental functioning, increasing in quantity in proportion as sensations are increasingly vivid, disappearing with unconsciousness, and present in diminished quantity from human to hippo to herring to hemlock tree. Or maybe a kind of reverberating electrical circuit. I’d be utterly fascinated by any of these findings, or any of an immense number of easily imagined alternatives. But satisfied? Not one bit.

I write this as an utter and absolute, dyed-in-the-wool, scientifically oriented, hard-headed, empirically insistent, atheistically committed materialist, altogether certain that matter and energy rule the world, not mystical abracadabra. But I still can’t get any purchase on this “hard problem,” the very label being a notable understatement.

I myself, though neither an evolutionary biologist nor a professor of psychology, have been known to wonder aloud – with friends, after a few drinks – what a solution to the supposed problem of consciousness might look like, and I too have been unable to come up with anything. Unlike Barash, though, that particular thought experiment persuaded me not that the problem was indeed hugely difficult, but rather that the problem wasn't a real problem at all – or at least, wasn't a problem that could be solved by science. To the extent that it is a problem, it's surely a philosophical rather than a scientific one.

Mind you, I can't really think what a philosophical answer might look like either. However interesting a book like Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained might be, you knew beforehand that the title was going to be an empty claim. But at least it's the place to start. Because this is not an empirical question that needs to be answered by experiment, but a way of thinking about something which needs to be clarified by examining the conceptual basics. As that something is what we're doing our thinking with, it may just be a conundrum too far to unravel the whole business.

My solution to the hard problem of consciousness is to stop worrying about it. Stop asking the question and soon enough we'll forget there was ever a problem. That's the power of the mind for you.