No help on the hard problem
Abstract
The hard problem of consciousness is to explain why certain physical states are conscious: why do they feel the way they do, rather than some other way or no way at all? Arthur Reber (2016) claims to solve the hard problem. But he does not: even if we grant that amoebae are conscious, we can ask why such organisms feel the way they do, and Reber’s theory provides no answer. Still, Reber’s theory may be methodologically useful: we do not yet have a satisfactory theory of consciousness, but perhaps the study of simple minds is a way to go about finding one.
Citation
Ball , D N 2016 , ' No help on the hard problem ' , Animal Sentience , vol. 2016 , no. 11 , pp. 1-3 . < http://animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/vol1/iss11/8/ >
Publication
Animal Sentience
Status
Non peer reviewed
ISSN
2377-7478Type
Journal item
Rights
Copyright 2017 the author/publisher. This is an open access article published under a CC BY-NC licence.
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