Paper: Facing the Problem of Consciousness: The Challenge of Neuroscience and Metaphysical Dualism

The present article introduces and formalizes the epistemological distinction between the 'easy' problems of consciousness (those susceptible to explanation through computational or neural mechanisms, such as the discrimination of stimuli, the integration of information or the reporting of internal states) and the 'hard problem'. The hard problem is to explain how and why the physical processes of the brain give rise to subjective phenomenal experience (qualia). I argue that no functionalist or reductionist materialist explanation can close the explanatory gap, since it is conceptually coherent to conceive of functionally identical systems lacking internal experience (philosophical zombies).