Abstract
Chalmers’ meta-problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining “problem reports”; i.e. reports to the effect that phenomenal consciousness has the various features that give rise to the hard problem. Chalmers (Journal of Consciousness Studies 25: 6–61, 2018, 8) suggests that solving the meta-problem will likely “shed significant light on the hard problem.” Against this, I argue that work on the meta-problem will likely fail to make the hard problem any easier. For each of the main stances on the hard problem can provide an account of problem reports, and we have no way of deciding which of these accounts gives the correct explanation of an individual’s problem reports without presupposing a stance on the hard problem. We thus cannot determine which of the available solutions to the meta-problem is correct without having already solved the hard problem.
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Notes
A great deal depends, of course, on what one means by “shed significant light on.” My criticisms apply only to interpretations according to which “shedding significant light on” the hard problem requires ruling out at least one of the general stances on it discussed below. It may be that Chalmers means something much weaker than this, in which case he might accept the bulk of the following discussion.
Some might prefer to describe these as “reactions” to the hard problem, reserving the term “solution” for accounts that explain why certain physical events give rise to the particular phenomenal states that they do without appealing to brute, inexplicable psychophysical correlations. This would in effect be to say that any solution to the hard problem must be reductive realist in form; on this view, dualism/non-reductive realism and eliminativism are merely ways of claiming that the hard problem is unsolvable or illusory. Those who prefer this way of putting things should substitute “reaction” for “solution” throughout. Put in these terms, my basic contention is that while Chalmers’ meta-problem might be useful in ruling out certain kinds of solutions to the hard problem (when the term “solution” is restricted to reductive realist accounts), this kind of test will not enable us to rule out any of the three main reactions to the hard problem entirely, and (importantly) it is the choice between these three reactions that is of primary interest to us in addressing the hard problem. This latter point is the reason why I think “shedding significant light on” the hard problem requires ruling at least one of these reactions out.
Reductive realists might hold differing views on whether this explanation is accessible to us. More on this below.
Frankish (2016, 11-2, 21-2) is reluctant to associate the strong illusionist view he defends with eliminativism, as the latter term carries certain connotations that he sees as inessential to strong illusionism. Here I am interested in eliminativism solely as the view that phenomenal consciousness does not exist. I associate the two positions (eliminativism and strong illusionism) solely on the basis of their shared commitment to this thesis.
Chalmers (2018, 41) notes that realists also have the option of holding that the meta-problem simply has no solution. I set this option aside, as I’m interested in the solutions that realism, weak illusionism, and strong illusionism can provide to the meta-problem.
Chalmers (2018, 21-2; 2007) and Frankish (2016, 25-6) both criticize the phenomenal concept strategy on the grounds that any account of phenomenal concepts will make such concepts either (a) too thin to explain our problem intuitions and qualify as genuinely phenomenal, or (b) too robust to be explainable in a way that is compatible with reductive realism. Balog (2012), Papineau (2007, 136-43), and Carruthers and Veillet (2007) provide responses to Chalmers that seem to apply to Frankish’s objections as well.
Carruthers (2000, 62-4) explicitly rejects this second option. Papineau (2002, 178, 197) seems to as well. I’m unsure whether McGinn would associate his view with the phenomenal concept strategy in the manner suggested above. My intention, however, is merely to note one potential position that weak illusionists might adopt, which agrees with McGinn in viewing the explanatory gap as both purely epistemic in nature and as something that we may be unable to bridge, due to certain constraints on how we think. (The central idea is expressed in McGinn’s (1989, 361-2) claim that “the nature of the psychophysical connection has a full and non-mysterious explanation in a certain science, but… this science is inaccessible to us as a matter of principle.”) Another advocate of this approach might be found in Levine (2001), whose combined endorsement of materialism and “modest qualophilia” seems to commit him to something along these lines.
Levine (2001, chaps.1, 5) argues against dualism/non-reductive realism and eliminativism on these grounds. Frankish (2016, 25) also draws attention to the dualist/non-reductive (or, in his terms, “radical”) realist’s problems in avoiding the “threat of epiphenomenalism.” Papineau (2002, chap.1) and Carruthers (2000, 2-3) reject dualism/non-reductive realism for similar reasons.
Frankish’s criticisms are actually focused on what I’m calling the reductive realist solution to the hard problem, but I expect he would see these as carrying over to the associated weak illusionist solution to the meta-problem as well.
Frankish (2016, 28) further notes that “in so far as we can check [the accuracy of our introspective representations of phenomenal states], through external inspection of our brain states, they appear to be non-veridical; the properties represented do not show up from other perspectives.”
Chalmers cites Mørch (2018) as advocating a position of this sort, although she is concerned not with problem reports but rather with the avoidance and pursuing behavior produced by experiences of pain and pleasure. It’s unclear whether Mørch would accept (a). The closest she comes to affirming something like it is on p.309, where she states that “it is not clear whether there are any physical powerful qualities with the same explanatory features as phenomenal powerful qualities.” But there she is contrasting the epistemically contingent connection between physical qualities and their powers with the kind of “intelligible connection” that she posits between experiences of pain or pleasure and avoidance or pursuit (which she suggests is “not revealed by physics or the physical sciences, but rather only by first-person experience”) (p.310). This is compatible with the thesis that the avoidance and pursuing behavior produced by pain and pleasure could be produced by other, non-conscious means as well.
The same cannot be said of strong illusionist solutions, which must insist that problem reports are never produced in the way that realists or weak illusionists suggest in order to maintain consistency with their associated eliminativist stance on the hard problem. Weak illusionists must likewise deny that problem reports are ever produced in the way that realists suggest in order to maintain consistency with reductive realism.
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White, B. The Hard Problem Isn’t Getting any Easier: Thoughts on Chalmers’ “Meta-Problem”. Philosophia 49, 495–506 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00210-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-020-00210-9