The Meta-Problem of Consciousness

The meta-problem of consciousness is (to a first approximation) the problem of explaining why we think that there is a problem of consciousness.1 Just as metacognition is cognition about cognition, and a metatheory is a theory about theories, the metaproblem is a problem about a problem. The initial problem is the hard problem of consciousness: why and how do physical processes in the brain give rise to conscious experience? The relevant sort of consciousness here is phenomenal consciousness. A system is phenomenally conscious if there is something it is like to be that system, from the first-person point of view. The meta-problem is roughly the problem of explaining why we think phenomenal consciousness poses a hard problem, or in other terms, the problem of explaining why we think consciousness is hard to explain. The hard problem of consciousness is one of the most puzzling in all of science and philosophy, and at the present time, there are no solutions that command any sort of consensus. The hard problem contrasts with the easy problems of explaining various behavioral functions such as learning, memory, perceptual integration, and verbal report. The easy problems are easy because we have a standard paradigm for explaining them. To explain a behavioral function, we just need to find an appropriate neural or computational mechanism that performs that function. We know how to do this at least in principle. In practice, the cognitive sciences have been making steady progress on the easy problems. On this analysis, the hard problem is hard because explaining consciousness requires more than explaining behavioral functions. Even after we have explained all the behavioral functions that we like, there may still remain a further question: why is all this functioning accompanied by conscious experience? When a system is set up to perform those functions, from the objective point of view, why is there something it is like to be the system, from the subjective point of view? Because of this further question, the standard methods in the cognitive sciences have difficulty in 1This is an early draft. For comments, thanks to Francois Kammerer, Uriah Kriegel, and Luke Muehlhauser.