>>9060911The idea is that there are "easy problems" of consciousness (how the brain computes numbers, how we change our attention, etc, the mechanistic HOWs), and then theres the "hard problem" of consciousness, which is how all those mechanistic operations form "qualia" and "experiences".
The reason I (and Dan Dennet, and Stanislas Dehaene, and Pat Churchland, and everyone in the field) think it's a nonsense "problem" can best be explained by analogy.
The terms used... "qualia" and "phenomenal experience" are the same as "vital energy" and "phlogiston". They're used as shortcut terms to describe the whole processes happening as a result of the "easy problems".
An analogy would be:
"The easy problems of life are things like 'how does the heart pump blood, how do the muscles contract, etc, mechanistic questions... but the hard problem of life is 'how do those mechanistic processes form the 'elan vital' in all living things and the 'phlogistic fire of our metabolism'.
Point is... proponents of the hard problem are taking for granted that "qualia" exists simply because "it's obvious!". But I'm saying that the answers to the easy problems, once we have them all (which we don't yet)... will explain fully how consciousness works just like the easy problems of life explain fully how the "elan vital" works (in other words, how we are alive).
