Current Philosophy

Author: L. Silas Sterling

  • The Man Who Made Philosophy Hard Again: David Chalmers and the “Hard Problem”

    The Morning After Dennett

    In my last post, we explored Daniel Dennett’s world—a world where we are complex biological robots. In Dennett’s view, consciousness is essentially a biological computer running a sophisticated program. When you smell coffee or feel a breeze, your brain is simply executing “sub-routines” of data collection, self-monitoring, and linguistic reporting. To Dennett, once you’ve explained how the program runs, you’ve explained the mind. There is no “hidden magic” left over.

    It’s a clean, scientific, and intellectually tidy view. But for many of us, it leaves a lingering, cold aftertaste. It feels like a “morning after” hangover where you realize that while Dennett has explained how the software works, he has ignored the most obvious fact of your life: The fact that it feels like something to be the computer. In 1994, at a conference in Tucson, Arizona, a young, long-haired Australian philosopher named David Chalmers walked into this functionalist factory and asked the question that would halt the Materialist parade: “If we are just programs, why does the program have to ‘feel’ like anything at all on the inside?”

    The Great Divide: Easy vs. Hard

    To understand the power of Chalmers’ insight, you have to understand his most famous distinction. He argued that when we talk about “consciousness,” we are actually talking about two very different things.

    The “Easy” Problems These are the questions that occupy 99% of neuroscientists. How does the brain integrate information from the eyes? How do we categorize objects? How do we react to a loud noise? Chalmers calls these “easy” not because they are simple, but because we have a functional roadmap for them. In science, if you can explain how a system functions, you have explained the system. There is no “digestion-stuff” left over once you explain the stomach; there is no “weather-stuff” left over once you explain the atmosphere.

    The Hard Problem The “Hard Problem” is the outlier. It is the question of Subjective Experience. When you look at a red apple, your brain processes light waves and triggers certain neurons. That is the “easy” part. But then, there is the redness of the red. There is the undeniable fact that it “feels like something” to be you in that moment.

    Chalmers’ point is devastatingly simple: You could explain every physical vibration, every chemical spike, and every neural loop in the brain, and you would still have a glaring hole in your theory. You still haven’t explained why those physical movements are accompanied by a subjective “glow.”

    The Anatomy of the Philosophical Zombie

    To prove that the physical world and the mental world are not the same thing, Chalmers resurrected and modernized a classic thought experiment that had been gathering dust in the archives of philosophy: The Philosophical Zombie.

    Imagine a being that is a perfect physical duplicate of you. It has your DNA, your brain structure, and your habit of squinting when it’s sunny. If you ask it how it feels, it says, “I feel great!” Because it is a biological robot running a sophisticated program, it reacts exactly as you would. If you prick it with a needle, it yelps “Ouch!” and pulls its arm away because its “threat-detection neurons” fired.

    But there is a catch: Inside this creature, the lights are off. There is no “inner life.” It is a biological machine perfectly simulating a human being, but with zero subjective experience. It doesn’t feel the needle; it just processes the signal and moves the muscle.

    The Ultimate Question: Why aren’t we Zombies? This is what truly “woke up” Chalmers. He realized that from an evolutionary or physicalist standpoint, we should have been zombies. A Zombie-you would survive just as well as the real you. Evolution only cares about what you do, not how it feels while you are doing it.

    So why did the universe “turn the lights on”? If the physical machinery works perfectly fine in the dark, why is there a subjective “you” along for the ride? The fact that we actually experience our lives—the joy of a sunset, the sting of a needle—suggests that consciousness isn’t just a byproduct of survival; it is a fundamental fact that science cannot ignore.

    The Structural Gap

    The weight of Chalmers’ argument lies in a logical trap he calls the “Structural Gap.” He points out that all of physics is a description of structure and dynamics—how things move and interact. If you explain the structure of a car, you’ve explained the car.

    But consciousness isn’t a structure or a movement. It is a state of being. You can map the “structure” of a brain forever, but you are effectively describing the map while ignoring the territory of the felt experience. For Chalmers, this means our current science isn’t just “missing a few details”—it is using the wrong language entirely. Physics describes things from the outside, but consciousness is the inside. You cannot logically arrive at an “inside” simply by rearranging “outsides.”

    The Solution: Naturalistic Dualism

    So, if consciousness isn’t just “meat processing,” where does it come from? Chalmers is a man of science, so he doesn’t want to rely on supernatural souls. Instead, he proposes Naturalistic Dualism. To understand this, consider Isaac Newton. When he proposed “Gravity,” critics called him a mystic. They asked, “How can two planets pull on each other through empty space without touching?” Newton didn’t have a “physical” mechanism; he just accepted that gravity was a fundamental force.

    Chalmers is doing the same thing for the mind. He believes there are Psychophysical Laws—nature’s own “bridge” that dictates: “When you have this specific physical information structure, you get this specific mental experience.” It’s not magic; it’s just a law of the universe we haven’t mapped yet. By treating consciousness as a fundamental pillar of reality—just like mass or charge—Chalmers provides the first framework that actually respects the data of our own lives.

    The “Wild” Conclusion: Panpsychism

    If consciousness is a fundamental building block—like gravity—it shouldn’t just magically appear for the first time when a human brain gets big enough. It should be there, in some form, at the very bottom of reality. This leads Chalmers to a conclusion that even he admitted was “wild”: Even electrons might have a tiny spark of consciousness.

    It is important to be precise here. Chalmers does not think electrons are “thinking,” having conversations, or feeling “sad.” He distinguishes between Sapience (complex thought/emotions) and Proto-Consciousness (the raw “light” of experience).

    • Human Consciousness: A high-definition IMAX movie where the pixels are so tightly integrated they form a seamless, meaningful reality.
    • Electron Consciousness: A single, tiny pixel flickering in the dark. It doesn’t have a “story,” but it has the primitive property of being “lit.”

    He proposes a Double-Aspect Theory of Information. He suggests that Information is the ultimate substance of the universe, and it has two sides: the Outside (what it does physically—the “program”) and the Inside (what it feels like—the “glow”). If an electron processes even a tiny bit of “information” about its environment, it has a tiny bit of “inside.”

    The Reality of the Internal World

    By placing consciousness at the center of his theory, Chalmers has achieved something historic. He has validated the fact that your inner life is the most real thing you possess. In a world of “biological robots,” he has given us back our humanity by proving that our experience isn’t a “trick” or a “user illusion”—it is a fundamental property of the cosmos.

    He has moved consciousness from a “byproduct” to a “fundamental pillar.” He has shown that to understand the universe, we cannot just look through a telescope or a microscope; we have to account for the fact that there is someone looking through them in the first place. Chalmers has finally given the “glow” of existence the scientific status it deserves.

    Conclusion

    Chalmers’ view of the universe is one where the lights are always on. It is a world where information isn’t just dead data, but carries the potential for feeling and experience from the smallest atom to the largest brain. It is a rigorous, logical, and deeply satisfying answer to the most difficult question in science.

    In my next post, we will keep this journey going. We’ve seen the world as a machine (Dennett), and we’ve seen it as a fundamental duality (Chalmers). But what if there’s a third way? Next week, we’ll meet Galen Strawson, the “Realistic Monist,” who takes everything Chalmers has taught us and uses it to redefine the very meaning of “matter” itself.

    The Consciousness Library: Further Reading

    Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. If you choose to pick up any of these books through the links provided, it helps support the blog and keeps these deep-dives coming!

    If you want to move beyond the blog post and engage with these ideas at their source, these five books are the essential starting points:

  • 🧠 From Bacteria to Bach: Daniel Dennett’s Evolutionary Solution to the Mystery of Consciousness

    We have been exploring Process Philosophy and its theological application, Process Theology (PT). In PT, there is a God who is responsible for the existence of everything, but in a way that is fundamentally different from what many traditional Christians believe. The Process God acts through persuasion, not coercion, serving as a co-creator whose influence works within the intrinsic freedom of the universe itself. This view means God didn’t force the world to be the way it is.

    We confront the work of philosopher Daniel Dennett. If Dennett is right, there is no God, and the universe consists only of physical substances and physical properties. This leads to a profound question: If we are merely physical machines, how is it that humans are conscious, subjective beings? Dennett’s theory is designed to answer this by showing that consciousness is not a deep mystery requiring a soul or special mental properties, but an evolutionary trick. Dennett often calls himself an Illusionist, a term that is frequently misinterpreted. He is not arguing that consciousness is unreal or that subjective experiences don’t exist; rather, he is demonstrating that the widely held belief that these experiences must be philosophically irreducible to physical mechanisms is the profound illusion.

    The Cartesian Intuition: The Historical Problem

    Dennett recognizes that his work must begin by confronting the powerful, intuitive beliefs nearly all people share about consciousness. This feeling—that we are a separate, immaterial core observing the world from inside our head—is the Cartesian intuition.

    This intuition is rooted in Substance Dualism, the historical idea that the mind (the immaterial, non-physical soul) and the body (physical matter) are two fundamentally different substances. While this view has largely been dismissed by neuroscience, the powerful feeling of a centralized observer persists. Dennett’s task is to dismantle this illusion and show that the feeling itself is merely a convincing trick.

    However, Dennett’s primary debate is not with this older, historical error. His major project is dedicated to confronting the modern, sophisticated defense of mind/body separation championed by contemporary philosophers.

    Part I: The Materialist Mandate and the Attack on Property Dualism

    Dennett is an unapologetic materialist. For him, all phenomena, including the mind, must be explained using the physical laws of nature, neuroscience, and—crucially—Darwinian evolution.

    A key strength of Dennett’s functional approach is its independence from specific biology. For Dennett, consciousness is a form of highly sophisticated information processing—an evolved algorithm—which means it is not substrate-dependent. The human brain, being carbon-based, is simply the first system we know of to run this “software.” Dennett would readily agree that consciousness could evolve on a world with completely different biology (silicon, plasma, etc.), provided the substrate allows for the requisite complexity, storage, and parallel processing.

    This commitment requires Dennett to confront Property Dualism, a widely defended contemporary position. Property Dualists, such as David Chalmers, concede that the brain is entirely physical (rejecting Substance Dualism), but they maintain that the brain generates unique, non-physical properties known as qualia (the subjective, raw feeling of “redness” or “pain”). They argue that no physical description can logically account for the existence of subjective experience, pointing to the Explanatory Gap.

    Dennett’s counter-argument is that the belief in irreducible qualia is a profound mistake. He views the claim that these subjective qualities cannot be logically reduced to objective physical properties as an intellectual surrender—a willingness to accept a permanent, irreducible mystery. He believes that to claim qualia are irreducible is simply to say, “We don’t know how that happens, and it’s fundamentally unexplainable by the methods of science.” The specific illusion he targets is the belief that our first-person experiences are fundamentally irreducible to physical, functional processes.

    Clarifying “Batness”: Dennett agrees with Thomas Nagel that there is “something it is like to be a bat,” but he denies that this “batness” is a magical, inaccessible truth. The bat’s consciousness is a different physical phenomenon—a chaotic, constantly updated stream of sensory data. The illusion he is dispelling is the powerful, but mistaken, interpretation that this feeling requires a special, non-physical property.

    Part II: The Mechanics: Drafts, Minions, and Competence

    If there is no central stage where decisions are made, how does the brain work? Dennett’s theory relies on two core mechanical concepts:

    1. The Multiple Drafts Model

    Dennett suggests the brain is not a theater but the chaotic, parallel editorial room of a giant news agency.

    Every sensation, memory, and decision is written down simultaneously by different processes (different brain regions). These reports are constantly being edited, revised, and rewritten—these are the “multiple drafts.” There is no single finish line where a report is stamped “FINAL” and declared conscious. Consciousness is simply the result of these competing narratives being utilized by other systems in the brain.

    2. Competence without Comprehension

    Dennett answers the question of how complex tasks are performed by non-conscious parts of the brain with the principle of competence without comprehension.

    The brain is full of billions of “minions”—simple, mindless processes—that are incredibly good at specific jobs, but never need to comprehend the big picture. This principle allows Dennett to explain how the high-level illusion of consciousness can be built using only ground-level, algorithmic “cranes,” rather than resorting to magical “skyhooks” (non-physical properties) to bridge the gap between matter and mind.

    Part III: The Functional Self and Free Will

    If the brain is just a chaotic committee of drafts and minions, why does it feel so powerfully unified, and who is responsible for its actions?

    Dennett argues that the solution is functional: we must adopt the Intentional Stance toward ourselves—treating a complex system as if it had beliefs and intentions, even if we know those terms are shorthand for physical processes.

    This leads directly to the core concept of the self: the Center of Narrative Gravity. The self is an abstract fictional point around which all the stories, memories, decisions, and actions of the brain cohere.

    The Dennettian View of Freedom

    Dennett is a compatibilist, arguing that free will and determinism are, in fact, compatible. He redefines free will functionally and ethically:

    We are “free” not because we violate causality, but because we are highly evolved systems that possess the capacity for reflection and adaptation. Freedom, for Dennett, is not a supernatural property; it is a skill and a social status conferred upon the most sophisticated, reflective mechanisms.

    Part IV: The Memetic Self and the Cultural Leap

    To create the unified Center of Narrative Gravity (the “I”), the brain needs the tools of culture, primarily memes. Dennett adopts the term meme (a unit of cultural transmission) to explain how human consciousness evolved beyond mere biological capacity.

    The unique aspect of human consciousness—the ability to think about thinking—is largely a result of the brain being infected by linguistic memes. The brain provides the hardware, but language provides the powerful software that can run a linear, internal narration on the brain’s naturally parallel architecture.

    • The Self is the protagonist of this internal narrative. This story is built out of social and moral concepts (memes).
    • The continued use of the pronoun “I” in conversation and thought reinforces and stabilizes the chaotic “multiple drafts,” creating the coherent illusion of the Cartesian Self.

    This sophisticated narrative capacity provides the basis for moral responsibility. We don’t hold the soul responsible; we hold the narrative-creating system responsible. By holding individuals accountable, society is providing a high-level feedback mechanism to modify the programming of that self-editing, narrative system.

    Conclusion

    Dennett asks us to abandon our intuitive idea of the soul and embrace a profound biological humility. We are not spirits piloting biological machines; we are the biological machine’s self-description—the most convincing magic trick in the universe.

    The self is real, but only as a narrative structure and a social agent. By understanding this illusion, Dennett provides a way forward, ensuring that our concept of consciousness and freedom remains firmly rooted in the physical, evolutionary world, free from the necessity of special non-physical properties.

    If we think of the brain as sophisticated computer hardware running the software of consciousness, the illusion becomes clear. The software creates a beautiful, unified user interface (the Ego) that hides the chaotic complexity of the billions of lines of code (the Multiple Drafts and Minions) running underneath. Our feeling that our experience is irreducible is simply the phenomenal experience of that elegant user interface, leading us to mistake a functional achievement for a magical, non-physical truth.

    📚 Recommended Reading on Consciousness and the Mind

    Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are Amazon Associate links, and I will earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through these links. This commission comes at no extra cost to you. I recommend these books because I believe they are truly helpful and valuable, not because of the small commissions I may receive. Your support helps keep this site running.

    If you are intrigued by Dennett’s materialist explanation of consciousness and wish to explore the major arguments for and against his position, the following texts are highly recommended for delving deeper into this philosophical and neuroscientific system:

    • Dennett, Daniel C. Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds Dennett’s definitive and most recent book, presenting his complete theory of how the evolutionary process, driven by natural selection and cultural memes, constructs the human mind without relying on any magical or spiritual component.
    • Chalmers, David J. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory The essential counter-argument to Dennett. Chalmers argues that subjective experience (qualia) is a non-physical, irreducible property that constitutes “The Hard Problem,” which materialism cannot solve.
    • Dennett, Daniel C. Consciousness Explained Dennett’s classic 1991 work, where he first introduced the revolutionary Multiple Drafts Model and first systematically attempted to dismantle the popular concept of the Cartesian Theater (the central viewing screen in the brain).
    • Searle, John R. The Mystery of Consciousness A brief but powerful critique from a rival materialist. Searle argues that while consciousness is entirely biological (a physical feature of the brain), Dennett’s “Illusionism” mistakenly explains away the real, intrinsic quality of subjective experience.
    • Seth, Anil. Being You: A New Science of Consciousness A contemporary neuroscientist’s approach to the topic, supporting the functionalist view. Seth argues that consciousness is best understood as a “controlled hallucination”—the brain’s predictive, best-guess model of the world and the self.

  • A Relational God: Why Process Philosophy Demands a New Theology

    In our first installment, we established the radical metaphysical premise of Process Philosophy: pretty much everyone assumes the world is made up of enduring objects, and that these objects are fundamentally real. However, in the system developed by Alfred North Whitehead, objects are not the final real things. Instead, it is the momentary, perishing units called Actual Occasions that possess ultimate reality. Everything we commonly think of as being a stable object—from a mountain to a human mind—is viewed as a Society of these actual occasions. This fundamental shift from a static world of substances to a dynamic world of events and becoming has profound implications, nowhere more so than in theology, where the nature of God must be reimagined from the ground up.

    The first point of divergence is the most shocking: Process Theology fundamentally rejects the traditional, static conception of God, especially as held in much of Evangelical and classical theology. The traditional God is defined by immutability (He cannot change) and omnipotence (He has absolute, total power over every event). But if the universe is truly dynamic, then God cannot be an exception. This is because Process Philosophy entails a form of panexperientialism: every fundamental unit of reality, the Actual Occasion, is a momentary drop of experience, and all objects are Societies of these experiencing occasions. This means a human is a complex, hierarchical organization—a multitude of societies (atoms, cells, molecules) all coordinating under a Dominant Nexus (the mind). If reality itself is made of experience, then the ultimate Actual Entity, God, must also be a being who changes, experiences, and participates in the world. This means the Process God is not a fixed King ruling from outside of time, but a relational companion who literally feels the joy and suffering of every moment in the universe.

    To fully grasp this revolution, it helps to understand the theologian behind it. Alfred North Whitehead was deeply rooted in the Christian tradition. His father was an Anglican pastor, and while Whitehead’s own faith evolved dramatically throughout his life, he consistently identified as a Christian who took religious belief seriously. However, as one of the great mathematicians and philosophers of science of his era (co-authoring Principia Mathematica with Bertrand Russell), he concluded that the traditional Christian concept of God—derived from Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover and formalized as the unchanging, transcendent Substance—was metaphysically incoherent and entirely incompatible with modern physics. The universe, as described by Quantum Mechanics and relativity, is fundamentally a domain of uncertainty, relationality, and dynamic change—not static, predictable objects. For Whitehead, Process Theology was not an effort to dismantle faith, but to rescue it by providing a concept of God that was rationally defensible and fully engaged with the dynamic, scientific universe.

    To resolve the apparent contradiction of a God who must be both stable (the source of order) and dynamic (the experiencer of the world), Process Theology asserts that God is a single, complex Actual Entity possessing a dual nature. First is God’s Primordial Nature. This is God’s unchanging mental pole: it is the realm of eternal possibilities and logical consistency. The Primordial Nature is the source of all novel ideas and ideal forms, luring every actual occasion toward its “best possible next step” through gentle persuasion, never coercion. Second is God’s Consequent Nature. This is God’s changing physical pole, which is constantly growing and evolving because it literally prehends (takes account of) every single actual occasion that perishes in the universe. This ensures that God is not merely static potential, but the perfect, ever-expanding memory of the entire cosmic process—a fellow-sufferer who truly understands the joy, pain, and history of the world.

    If the human being is ultimately a Society of Actual Occasions—a persistent pattern of fleeting experiences—then the notion of a single, non-material Substance Soul that detaches from the body at death is metaphysically incoherent in the Process system. The traditional idea of a static, eternal heaven is also rendered impossible, as existence itself is fundamentally dynamic change. So, where does human value and immortality reside? Process Theology answers that our genuine immortality lies not in a separate soul, but in God’s Consequent Nature. Every experience, feeling, and decision made by every actual occasion in the universe is objectively immortalized as part of God’s perfect, ever-expanding memory. Our influence and value are not lost; they are eternally preserved in the divine life, ensuring that nothing meaningful ever truly perishes.

    Beyond its structural coherence, Process Theology offers compelling answers to deep spiritual and ethical problems that often trouble traditional Christianity. It is crucial to note that these satisfying answers were not Whitehead’s deliberate goal; his primary aim was to replace the scientifically obsolete Aristotelian metaphysics. However, by successfully creating a dynamic metaphysics, Process Theology naturally resolves major issues. The most critical is the Problem of Evil: God is not omnipotent in the coercive sense and cannot force every Actual Occasion to choose good. Evil is a necessary byproduct of creation’s freedom when it resists God’s persuasive Lure toward greater harmony. This framework also allows believers to critique ethically ambiguous biblical passages. For instance, the Old Testament regulated practices like slavery (Exodus 21:2–7) because God had to work within the “hardness of heart” of human culture. This idea is explicitly affirmed by Jesus when discussing marriage and divorce, stating that the Mosaic Law permitted divorce “because of your hardness of heart” (Matthew 19:8)—implying that the Law was a cultural compromise, not God’s perfect, eternal will. The Lure in action is revealed when Jesus consistently and radically affirms the personhood of women and the marginalized. In an era when women and enslaved people were often treated as property, Jesus engaged them as theological discussion partners and moral agents, modeling the true ideal of relational equality. By affirming their dignity and personhood, Jesus embodied God’s gentle persuasion toward a higher ethical reality, showing that genuine revelation is always a developmental process that respects human freedom while constantly urging us toward justice.

    Ultimately, taking Process Theology seriously transforms one’s entire religious and moral life. This is where the concept of the Lure comes into play: God’s influence is never a command or a coercive force, but a gentle, ceaseless pull—an ever-present persuasion originating from the Primordial Nature that guides every actual occasion toward its most valuable and creative outcome. This is where originality and creativity become central to morality. Since every Actual Occasion makes a genuine choice about how to integrate its past experiences, the possibility for novelty is baked into the structure of reality. God does not demand obedience; He lures creation toward novel goodness. To live a life based on Process Theology is to recognize that we are co-creators with God in every moment. We are morally responsible for how we respond to that Lure, knowing that our actions are not lost but are eternally woven into the very being of God’s Consequent Nature. By choosing creative novelty, beauty, and justice, we are literally enriching the divine life, partnering with the fellow-sufferer who understands, and giving meaning to the fleeting nature of our own existence.

    📚 Recommended Reading on Process Theology

    Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are Amazon Associate links, and I will earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through these links. This commission comes at no extra cost to you. I recommend these books because I believe they are truly helpful and valuable, not because of the small commissions I may receive. Your support helps keep this site running.

    If the ideas of a relational God and co-creation resonate with you, the following texts are highly recommended for delving deeper into this philosophical system: