The 'Hard Problem' Of Consciousness Didn't Originate With David Chalmers In 1994
The Phrase ‘Hard Problem Of Consciousness’ Didn't Originate With David Chalmers In 1994, Although The Tag Line Did.
I am sure that you have heard the phrase, ‘hard problem of consciousness,’ which was coined by David Chalmers in a 1994 talk given at The Science of Consciousness conference held in Tucson, Arizona. The ‘hard problem’ is explaining why we have phenomenal consciousness, or subjective experience, he asserted. Chalmers, however, was not the first person to bring the issue to the fore. There was, for example, the Irish physicist, John Tyndall, who described it in detail in the 19th Century. It was in 1868, in an essay titled “Scientific Materialism,” that he brought the problem of why we have subjective experiences and are conscious of our world, each other, and ourselves, to our attention. So this problem has been with us for 158 years, not just a couple of decades, and it represents a gargantuan failure on the part of all that are working, and have worked on, 'consciousness.'