An introduction to consciousness

Susan Blackmore

Chapter 1: Why the mystery?

She poses the question of what is consciousness and why it is considered what is called the
hard problem of consciousness, saying that it is sounds like a simple question, but the
problem is that it is so obvious but difficult to investigate? The reason is we have to use
consciousness itself to investigate it or to remove ourself from the very thing we want to
investigate.

She says ordinary human experiences seem to be very different things and the problem how
they come together.

On the one hand there is my personal and private experiences like seeing trees, hearing
cars, eating chocolate or drinking coffee or being in love. They are qualities which we cannot
convey to anyone else.
We can never know in reality if someone’s experience of green is the same as my
experience of green.

On the other hand there is also a real physical world out there. The hand for example a
hammer how can hitting my hand with a hammer cause pain which is not physical. How can
something physical give rise to conscious experinces or ineffable qualia’s

Descartes proposed his cartisian theory of dualism and said that the mind and body consist
of two different subtances the mind is non-physical and takes no space and the body is
physical with size, dimensions etc. The trouble is how do they interact. Descartes said they
meet in the pineal glad. However, the pineal gland is physical itself. So he hasn’t explained
anything.

Thomas Nagel posed a question to materialists to explain what is meant by consciousness

and he said What is it like to be a bat?
What we mean by it is subjectivity
He says: It is no good imaging you are a bat because a speaking bat would not be normal bat
and if you were a normal bat you could not think or speak to answer your question.

When we talk about consciousness it is no good explaining perception, memory and

intelligence and so on and then claim to say you have explained consciousness.
If you are dealing with consciousness you have to some way deal with subjectivity. If you
just say consciousness is identical to physical process and that it is just an illusion then you
must explain why it appears so strongly to exist.
When ever you ask the question what is it like to be… then you are talking about
consciousness
Another issue with the debate is whether consiouness is an extra ingredient we have as
humans or is it intrinsic within us.
If it is an extra ingredient then why do we have it, if it is intrinsic then to ask the question is
nonsene because any creature that evolved to have intelligence, memory and perception is
conscious.