Explaining Consciousness

Why doesn''t all this cognitive processing go on in the dark without any consciousness at all? In this book philosophers physicists psychologists neurophysiologists computer scientists and others address this central topic in the growing discipline of consciousness studies.At the 1994 landmark conference Toward a Scientific Basis for Consciousness philosopher David Chalmers distinguished between the easy problems and the hard problem of consciousness research. According to Chalmers the easy problems are to explain cognitive functions such as discrimination integration and the control of behavior; the hard problem is to explain why these functions should be associated with phenomenal experience. Why doesnt all this cognitive processing go on in the dark without any consciousness at all? In this book philosophers physicists psychologists neurophysiologists computer scientists and others address this central topic in the growing discipline of consciousness studies. Some take issue with Chalmers'' distinction arguing that the hard problem is a non-problem or that the explanatory gap is too wide to be bridged. Others offer alternative suggestions as to how the problem might be solved whether through cognitive science fundamental physics empirical phenomenology or with theories that take consciousness as irreducible.ContributorsBernard J. Baars Douglas J. Bilodeau David Chalmers Patricia S. Churchland Thomas Clark C. J. S. Clarke Francis Crick Daniel C. Dennett Stuart Hameroff Valerie Hardcastle David Hodgson Piet Hut Christof Koch Benjamin Libet E. J. Lowe Bruce MacLennan Colin McGinn Eugene Mills Kieron OHara Roger Penrose Mark C. Price William S. Robinson Gregg Rosenberg Tom Scott William Seager Jonathan Shear Roger N. Shepard Henry Stapp Francisco J. Varela Max Velmans Richard Warner