Current Philosophy

Author: L. Silas Sterling

  • Roderick Chisholm’s View of Free Will: The Causal Double Standard

    The modern argument against free will is often built on the impressive, clockwork logic of determinism. It suggests that every event in the universe is the necessary result of the events that came before it, governed by the immutable laws of physics. If we trace the “cause” of a human action back through neurological impulses, biological instincts, and environmental triggers, we eventually find a chain that stretches back to the beginning of time. In this view, there is no room for an “agent” at the wheel; there is only the inevitable unfolding of a physical script.

    However, in his 1964 work Human Freedom and the Self, Roderick Chisholm identified a fundamental inconsistency in this dismissal. He argued that the very concept of “cause” that modern skeptics use to debunk free will is a concept we accept as “obvious,” despite it being every bit as mysterious as the free will they reject.

    The Landscape of the Debate

    To understand Chisholm’s intervention, we must first look at the two standard positions he sought to move beyond:

    1. Hard Determinism: The view, championed by modern thinkers like Sam Harris, that because every event has a prior cause, no one could ever have done otherwise. Our “will” is seen as a byproduct of subatomic and chemical interactions.
    2. Compatibilism: The view, often associated with Daniel Dennett, that we can still call ourselves “free” in a deterministic world as long as our actions align with our desires. Chisholm, however, famously dismissed this as a “misery and a subterfuge.” He argued that if your “choice” was determined by the past, then saying you “could have done otherwise” is a linguistic trick—like saying a man in a locked room is free to leave if he has the key, knowing full well he does not.

    Chisholm’s goal was to find a “third way” that provided a technical foundation for genuine authorship.

    The Dialogue of the Skeptic

    Imagine a discussion between Chisholm and a modern skeptic who states: “I don’t believe in agent causation. It is a metaphysical mystery that doesn’t fit into our scientific understanding. I only believe in event causation—the physical chain of events we see in the world.”

    Chisholm’s response would not be to defend the “mystery” of the agent, but to challenge the “obviousness” of the physical world. He would likely ask: “Then why do you believe in event causation?”

    To the skeptic, the answer seems clear: we see it everywhere. But Chisholm points out that if we look closer, that physical interaction is just as mysterious as a human being making a choice.

    The Illusion of Obviousness

    The core of Chisholm’s critique relies on an observation made by David Hume: we never actually see a cause. When we watch one billiard ball strike another, we see a sequence of events—the motion of the first ball, the contact, and then the motion of the second. We do not see the “power” that connects them. We do not see the “necessity.”

    We have become so accustomed to these sequences that we label them “obvious” and “scientific.” But Chisholm argues that event causation—the idea that one inanimate object can make another move—is a profound metaphysical mystery. We accept it not because it is transparent, but because it is familiar. We have replaced an explanation with a description.

    The Formative Foundation of Cause

    If we cannot see “causation” in the outside world, where did we get the concept? Chisholm’s central “gotcha” is that our understanding of the physical world is formative—built using the blueprint of our own agency.

    Chisholm argues that the only reason we even have a concept of “bringing something about” is that we experience it internally. When you decide to move your arm, you have a direct, first-person experience of initiation. You don’t observe this as a sequence of separate events; you experience the exertion of power.

    1. The Prototype: We experience ourselves as agents. We decide, we exert, we act. This is our primary data point.
    2. The Projection: We take this internal “agent-power” and project it onto the outside world. We see a hammer hit a nail and, because we know what it is like for us to make something move, we attribute that same power to the hammer.
    3. The Abstraction: We eventually refine this projected agency into the “laws of physics.”

    The irony of the determinist’s position is that they accept the “reflection” (the laws of physics) while calling the “source” (the experience of agency) a myth. Chisholm points out that if the experience of the agent is a hallucination, then the concept of “cause” has no foundation at all.

    The “Staff and the Stone” Mechanics

    To illustrate where these two types of causation meet, Chisholm used the classic Aristotelian example:

    • The stone is moved by the staff (Event Causation).
    • The staff is moved by the hand (Event Causation).
    • The hand is moved by the Agent (Agent Causation).

    The skeptic argues there is a prior physical event—a neurological spark—that caused the hand to move. But Chisholm insists that at some point, the chain must stop at the agent. If the agent is the ultimate source, the chain begins with them. Without this “causal break,” the man isn’t moving the stone; the universe is simply moving through the man.

    The Mystery of Choice vs. The Mystery of Physics

    The most potent part of Chisholm’s critique is the leveling of the playing field. He admits that Agent Causation is hard to explain. But he insists that Event Causation is just as hard to explain.

    Why does the movement of one billiard ball have to cause the movement of another? We say it is because of the “laws of physics,” but those laws are just descriptions of what usually happens. They don’t explain the “how” of the causal power itself.

    Chisholm’s view suggests that those who reject free will because it is “mysterious” are being intellectually selective. They are comfortable with the mystery of physics because it is predictable, but they reject the mystery of the agent because it implies a degree of authorship that disrupts a purely materialist model.

    Neither Determined Nor Random

    A common objection is that if an action isn’t caused by a prior event, it must be “random.” But randomness is not freedom. If your arm twitches because of a random subatomic decay, you didn’t “choose” to move it; it just happened.

    Chisholm’s Agent Causation provides a “third way.” An act is not determined by the past, but it is also not random because it is authored by the agent. The agent is the “Prime Mover Unmoved”—a source of initiation that is neither a clockwork gear nor a roll of the dice.

    The Technical Price Tag

    Rather than preaching a conclusion, Chisholm’s work maps the logical cost of our competing worldviews:

    • The Price of Denial: If we reject Agent Causation, we align with a “neater” physicalist model, but we face an epistemological crisis: we are using a concept of “causation” that we have deemed to be an illusion at its source.
    • The Price of Acceptance: If we accept Agent Causation, we preserve the validity of our own experience, but we must admit that humans possess a power that is unique in the known physical world.

    Conclusion

    Chisholm’s view of free will is ultimately a critique of an intellectual double standard. He suggests that instead of trying to “fit” human agency into a world of physics, we should recognize that our world of physics is a simplified map of our own agency. When the skeptic asks why we should believe in the mysterious power of the agent, Chisholm’s logic invites a more fundamental question:

    How can you believe that physical events ’cause’ one another—a concept just as mysterious and unobservable?

    Suggested Reading

    Note: I am an Amazon Associate, which means I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases made through the links below. This comes at no additional cost to you and helps support the continued exploration of these topics on currentphilosophy.com

    Primary Texts & Anthologies

    Modern Perspectives on the Will

    • Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking by Daniel Dennett If you want to see the modern “Compatibilist” view—the idea that free will and a determined universe can coexist—Dennett is the essential read. He uses “intuition pumps” to argue that we can still have a version of freedom that matters.
    • Free Will by Sam Harris For a sharp, provocative look at the hard determinist critique, this book is the current standard. Harris argues that neuroscience and the chain of event causation leave no room for an independent “agent.”

    Technical Deep Dives

    The Oxford Handbook of Free Will (Edited by Robert Kane) This is for the reader who wants to dive into the heavy metaphysical weeds. It features deep-dive essays by top scholars into the technicalities of Agent Causation, Indeterminism, and Causal Theory.

  • From Sun to Shadow: How Plato’s Academy Embraced the Void

    The image most people have of Platonism is one of radiant, almost blinding certainty. If you’ve ever sat through a philosophy 101 lecture, you likely remember the “Allegory of the Cave.” Plato describes a journey out of the darkness of opinion and into the light of the Sun—the Form of the Good. For Plato, the world of the senses was a flickering shadow, while the world of the Forms was a stable, eternal reality the human mind was designed to grasp.

    I’ll be honest: when I first read Plato’s dialogues, I didn’t see a seeker; I saw a dogmatist. With few exceptions, Socrates often feels like a man with a hidden map, leading his “pupils” toward a pre-ordained conclusion. He corners them with logic until they have no choice but to admit the Forms must exist. To a modern reader, it can feel like a “my way or the highway” approach. Others were simply wrong; Plato had found the “Answers.” This rigid presentation can be off-putting, suggesting that if you don’t see the “Sun,” you are simply stuck in the mud of ignorance.

    Yet, less than eighty years after Plato’s death, the Academy he founded underwent a transformation so radical it remains one of the great “plot twists” in Western thought. The institution dedicated to Absolute Truth became the leading school of Skepticism. This was not a hostile takeover, but an internal evolution. The school of the “Sun” decided to sit in the “Shadow” for over two centuries. To understand how the fortress of the Forms became the headquarters of the Skeptics, we have to look at how the Master’s certainty was eroded by the very tools he left behind.

    The Seeds of Doubt in the Socratic Method

    To understand this shift, we must look at Plato’s own teacher: Socrates. There are really two “Platos” in the dialogues. There is the Plato of the Republic, who builds a massive, certain metaphysical system. But there is also the “Early Plato,” who depicts a Socrates who claims to know nothing.

    This Socratic method—the elenchus—was a tool of demolition. Socrates would take a person certain about a definition and show them their beliefs were riddled with contradictions. He didn’t offer a better definition; he simply left his opponent in a state of aporia—an intellectual impasse born from realizing one’s own ignorance.

    When Plato died in 348 BC, his successors (the “Old Academy”) tried to preserve the Master’s systems. They turned the Forms into rigid mathematical principles, growing brittle as they protected a museum of truth. Around 266 BC, Arcesilaus became the head of the Academy and decided to “back off” from these dogmatic structures. He argued that the true heritage of Plato was not a set of “Answers,” but a commitment to the “Question.” He effectively hit the reset button, returning the Academy to its Socratic roots: the pursuit of truth through the admission of ignorance.

    The Exception: Plato’s Self-Critique

    Plato himself may have planted these seeds. In the Parmenides, one of his most difficult dialogues, Plato actually dismantles his own theory. The elderly philosopher Parmenides subjects a young Socrates to a series of devastating critiques of the Theory of Forms, including the “Third Man” argument—a logical loop suggesting that if the Forms require a “standard” to be understood, you’d need an infinite series of standards to explain them.

    Plato doesn’t provide an easy answer, leaving the reader in the dark. It is a rare moment where the mask of certainty slips. Arcesilaus and his followers likely looked at dialogues like the Parmenides and concluded that the “true” Plato was the one brave enough to doubt his own creations.

    The Clash with the Stoics: The Catalyst for Skepticism

    The turn toward skepticism was also a professional rivalry with the Stoics. While the Academy was drifting toward math, the Stoic school was becoming the dominant force in Athens. The Stoics were “Dogmatists” who believed humans could achieve perfect knowledge through “cataleptic impressions”—sensory experiences so clear they “grasped” the mind, making doubt impossible. To a Stoic, if the light was good and your eyes were healthy, your perception of a tree was an undeniable link to reality.

    Arcesilaus saw this as an intellectual surrender. To defend the integrity of the mind, he had to dismantle this claim to “easy” certainty. He argued that for every “certain” impression, one could imagine a false impression that was indistinguishable from it. If a twin can be mistaken for his brother, or a dream can feel as real as waking life, then no impression can guarantee truth. By the mid-3rd century BC, the Academy moved into Acatalepsy: the position that nothing can be known with absolute certainty. They realized that by “backing off” from the demand for certainty, they became more intellectually honest.

    Carneades and the “New Academy”

    If Arcesilaus turned the Academy toward doubt, Carneades (who took over around 155 BC) turned it into a sophisticated system of living. Carneades was so effective that when sent to Rome as an ambassador, he gave two public lectures on justice: on the first day, he praised it; on the second, he refuted every argument he had made the day before. The Roman senator Cato the Elder was so unsettled by this ability to argue both sides that he lobbied to have Carneades sent home.

    Carneades realized that radical skepticism—the idea that you can’t know anything—makes living almost impossible. If you don’t know if a cliff is real, how do you know not to walk off it? To solve this, he developed Probabilism (or pithanon).

    He argued that while we can never be certain of the truth, some impressions are more “persuasive” or “trustworthy” than others. He suggested we shouldn’t ask “Is this True?” but rather “Is this reliable enough to act upon?” He used the example of a coiled rope in a dark room. You don’t know for certain if it’s a snake, but you act on the probability that it might be, without needing to claim absolute truth.

    By moving from “Certainty” to “Probability,” Carneades allowed the Platonists to function in the world without surrendering their integrity. They became “probabilists” rather than “dogmatists,” acting on what seemed most likely while maintaining the humility that they might be wrong. This was the ultimate “backing off” maneuver—admitting we live in a world of shadows, but learning to navigate them with skill.

    The Pendulum Swings Back: The Return to the Sun

    How long did this skeptical “detour” last? Surprisingly long. The Academy remained officially skeptical for about two hundred years—roughly from 266 BC until the early 1st century BC. This was the dominant character of the Academy for nearly half its history.

    But as with all intellectual movements, the pendulum eventually swung back. The “loosening of the grip” on reality eventually made people hungry for solid ground. Around 88 BC, Antiochus of Ascalon broke away, claiming the Skeptics had hijacked Plato’s legacy. He led a “return to the roots,” attempting to reconcile Plato’s metaphysics with some of the very Stoic ideas the Academy had fought for centuries. This led to Middle Platonism, which eventually evolved into the mystical certainty of Neoplatonism. By the 3rd century AD, the skepticism was gone, replaced by a deep conviction in the soul’s ascent to the One. The shadow had passed, and the school returned to the Sun.

    Conclusion: The Value of the Skeptical Turn

    This historical pivot matters today because it reminds us that even the most “certain” philosophical systems must eventually face the fire of doubt.

    The Platonists didn’t become skeptics because they stopped caring about the truth; they became skeptics because they refused to settle for a fake, rigid version of it. They recognized that the “Sun” of certainty can sometimes blind us to the complexities of reality. By “backing off” from the Forms for two centuries, the Academy developed the tools of logic, probability, and critical thinking that still underpin modern science and law.

    They taught us that there is a middle ground between “Absolute Certainty” and “Total Chaos.” That middle ground is the world of probability—a place where we can act with conviction while keeping an open mind. The journey from the Sun to the Shadow was not a failure of Plato’s school; it was its most rigorous test. It proved that sometimes, to find the light, you must be willing to sit in the dark and ask the hardest questions. Even the most “set-in-stone” beliefs benefit from a few centuries of healthy, Socratic doubt.

    📚 Recommended Reading on Ancient Skepticism & Philosophy as a Way of Life

    Disclosure: Please note that the links below are Amazon Associate links. I will earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through these links at no extra cost to you. Your support helps keep this site running!

    1. Long, A.A. — The Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol. 1 The gold standard for primary sources. If you want to see the actual “demolition tools” Arcesilaus and Carneades used to dismantle Stoic certainty, this volume provides the translated texts alongside clear, insightful commentary.

    2. Cicero — On Academic Scepticism (Lucullus and Academica) Cicero was a student of the New Academy and remains our best witness to these debates. Written as a dialogue, this work captures the competitive spirit of the Athenian schools and makes the transition from dogmatism to doubt feel incredibly modern.

    3. Hume, David — An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding Hume is the great modern heir to the Academic Skeptics. He famously argued that while we cannot “prove” things like cause and effect, we must act as if they are true to function in the world. It is the definitive guide to “backing off” from metaphysical certainty.

    4. Hadot, Pierre — Philosophy as a Way of Life Hadot reminds us that ancient philosophy wasn’t just a set of theories, but a series of “spiritual exercises.” He explores how skepticism was used as a tool to cure the mind of the anxiety that comes with rigid, dogmatic beliefs.

    5. Vogt, Katja — Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato A fantastic contemporary look at the Socratic roots of skepticism. Vogt explores how the “doubting” Plato was always there, hidden in plain sight, even in his more seemingly certain dialogues.

    6. Sextus Empiricus — Outlines of Scepticism While Sextus belonged to a rival branch of skepticism (Pyrrhonism), his work is a massive encyclopedia of every skeptical argument ever devised. It is the ultimate “toolkit” for anyone looking to question the foundations of belief.

    7. Plato’s Academy: Its Workings and its History (Edited by Paul Kalligas et al.) While this is a collection of essays, it is currently the most comprehensive “biography” of the school. It specifically details the transition from Plato’s early days to the skeptical era and eventually the Roman period. It explains the “why”—showing how Athenian politics and the arrival of rival schools like the Stoics forced the Academy to change its strategy to survive.

  • Functionalism and the Software of the Mind

    In our previous look at Daniel Dennett’s work, we explored the “how” of consciousness—how evolution could move from mindless bacteria to the complex symphonies of Bach through the slow accumulation of “competence without comprehension.” But if Dennett is right—if we are truly biological machines—we are left with a staggering conceptual hurdle.

    If the mind is just the brain in action, what is a “belief”? What is “pain”? What is the “feeling” of a sunset? If these aren’t special spiritual substances, then what are they?

    To answer this, we must turn to Functionalism. If Dennett’s evolutionary theory is the history of the mind, Functionalism is its architecture. It is the theory that mental states are defined not by what they are made of, but by what they do.

    The Great Transition – From Behaviorism to Function

    To understand why Functionalism is so dominant today, we have to understand what it replaced. In the early 20th century, psychology was dominated by Behaviorism. Behaviorists argued that because we cannot “see” inside the mind, we should only care about what we can observe: the input (a stimulus) and the output (a behavior).

    The problem was that Behaviorism was “hollow.” It suggested that if you are in pain but don’t cry out or flinch, you aren’t really in pain. It ignored the internal life entirely. Functionalism arrived as the sophisticated successor. It agreed that inputs and outputs matter, but it added a crucial middle step: Internal Relations.

    A mental state is not just a behavior; it is a causal engine that interacts with other mental states. If you see a needle (input), it triggers “fear” (mental state), which checks with your “belief” that medical care is necessary (mental state), resulting in you sitting still (output) even though you are afraid. This “Internal Relation” is the “Logic of the Ghost.” It treats the mind as a system of interconnected roles, much like the software of a computer.

    Substrate Independence and the Octopus Problem

    The most radical aspect of Functionalism is Multiple Realizability, or “substrate independence.” Earlier theorists argued the mind was identical to the brain. Under that view, “pain” is just the firing of human neurons. But this created a “human-centric” bias.

    Functionalism “backs off” from this biological requirement. If an octopus—which has a completely different neural architecture—gets its tentacle caught in a rock and recoils in distress, is it not in pain because it lacks “human” neurons? Functionalism says that if the octopus’s nervous system performs the same function—detecting damage, creating a state of distress, and triggering avoidance behavior—then the octopus is in pain. Substrate independence suggests that the “software” of the mind can run on many different types of “hardware.”

    Searle’s Warning – Syntax vs. Semantics

    While Functionalism offers an elegant solution to the “octopus problem,” it triggers one of the most famous debates in modern thought. Can a system that functions like it understands actually understand?

    Philosopher John Searle offers a powerful warning known as the Chinese Room. He asks us to imagine a man who speaks no Chinese locked in a room. He has a massive rulebook that tells him: “If you see shape A, output shape B.” People outside slide Chinese characters under the door, the man follows the rules, and slides back perfect responses.

    To the outside world, the room passes the “Turing Test.” Functionally, it is perfect. But the man inside doesn’t understand a single word. Searle uses this to argue that Functionalism mistakes syntax (manipulating symbols) for semantics (understanding meaning). He suggests that biological brains have a “causal power” to produce intentionality—a real “aboutness”—that mere functions cannot replicate.

    The Dennettian Rebuttal – The Intentional Stance

    This is where our exploration meets Dennett’s “Multiple Drafts.” Dennett’s response to Searle is a masterpiece of biological humility. He argues that Searle is looking for a “magic spark” of understanding that isn’t even there in humans.

    Dennett proposes the Intentional Stance. He suggests that “understanding” isn’t a substance found in a single neuron or a single man in a room. It is a level of description. If you want to predict what a chess-playing computer will do, you don’t look at the electrons; you treat it as if it “wants” to save its Queen.

    If the “Chinese Room” is complex enough to pass every test, Dennett argues that “understanding” is the only word that remains useful. We aren’t “more” than the Chinese Room; we are simply Chinese Rooms made of billions of “minions” (neurons) that are also, individually, mindless. The understanding isn’t in the man; it is a property of the entire system.

    The Problem of Qualia – The Inverted Spectrum

    Even if we accept that intelligence is functional, what about the raw “feel” of experience? This is the “Hard Problem” of Qualia.

    Imagine two people who are functionally identical. They both call a stop sign “red.” They both know red is a “warm” color. But inside, one person sees what the other would call “green.” This is the Inverted Spectrum thought experiment. If their functions are identical but their internal experiences are different, doesn’t that prove Functionalism is missing the “soul” of experience?

    Here, we must practice the “backing off” approach. Instead of insisting that Qualia are either “magical” or “fake,” we might view them through Dennett’s lens of the User Interface. When you click an icon on your computer, you see a folder opening. Underneath, there is a chaotic storm of binary code. The “folder” is a useful illusion—a “user-illusion”—that allows you to interact with the complexity.

    Functionalism suggests that our “inner life”—the redness of red, the sting of pain—is the User Interface of the Brain. It isn’t an irreducible mystery; it is the way the biological machine represents its own complex internal functions to itself. The “feeling” is the functional output of a system trying to categorize a massive influx of data in real-time.

    The Ethics of the Machine – Tiny Robots and the Soul of Korg

    If we accept the functionalist view, we face a profound shift in our moral landscape. If consciousness is a function, then the “Center of Narrative Gravity” we call the “Self” is a product of organization, not biology.

    This leads to the China Brain thought experiment by Ned Block. If every person in China was given a radio and told to simulate the firing of a single neuron, and they all communicated to control a giant robot, would that robot be “conscious”? Functionalism says yes. Our intuition often screams no because we are biased toward “meat.” We find it hard to believe that a billion people could produce the “smooth” feeling of a mind.

    However, we can bridge this gap by looking at our own cultural imagination. Consider Korg, the character from the Marvel Universe made entirely of rock. Scientifically, he has no “meat,” no neurons, and no grey matter. Yet, when Korg speaks, jokes, and displays empathy, we don’t doubt for a second that he is a conscious person.

    This is where Dennett’s most provocative claim comes into play. Dennett famously says, “Yes, we have a soul. But it’s made of lots of tiny robots.” In humans, those “robots” are our neurons—unthinking, mechanical cells that follow simple rules. In a being like Korg, those “robots” would be something similar, only made of silicon.

    The “soul” of Korg—and our own soul—is not a magical, ghostly substance. It is the emergent result of billions of mindless parts working together so perfectly that they create a “User Interface” of personality and warmth. Dennett’s point is that we don’t need “skyhooks” (magical properties) to explain Korg’s kindness or our own consciousness. We only need “cranes” (functional mechanisms). If we can imagine a conscious being made of rock like Korg, we are admitting that the soul is not about what you are made of, but about how your “tiny robots” are organized.

    Conclusion: The Horizon of the Functional Mind

    Writing about the mind requires a certain degree of intellectual “backing off.” If we cling too rigidly to the idea that we are “nothing but” neurons, we lose the beauty of the experience. But if we cling to the idea of an immaterial soul, we close our eyes to the brilliant reality of our evolutionary history.

    Functionalism provides the bridge. It allows us to say that our thoughts and feelings are real, but they are real in the same way a “game” or “insurance” is real. They are patterns of activity. They are ways of being in the world.

    Whether we are looking at the man in the Chinese Room, the rock-man Korg, or the “Multiple Drafts” in our own heads, we are looking at a system that has found a way to turn mindless matter into meaningful experience. We are the “biological machine’s self-description,” and the more we understand the functions that make us up, the more we can appreciate the sheer, unlikely wonder of being awake.

    📚 Recommended Reading on Consciousness and the Mind

    Disclosure: Please note that 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.

    • Dennett, Daniel C. — Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds This book is essential for understanding how complex minds can emerge from mindless biological processes. It provides the evolutionary “how” that pairs perfectly with the functionalist “what” discussed in this post.
    • Searle, John R. — The Mystery of Consciousness Searle provides the most rigorous critique of functionalism. Reading this is vital to understanding the “Chinese Room” argument and the limits of treating the mind as a symbol-processing computer.
    • Putnam, Hilary. — Mind, Language and Reality Putnam is the father of functionalism. These early essays define the concept of “Multiple Realizability”—the idea that a mind can exist in many different types of physical substrates.
    • Block, Ned. — Readings in Philosophy of Psychology This collection is a treasure trove for those interested in the challenges of functionalism. It includes the “China Brain” thought experiment and other classic arguments that force us to question our biological biases.
    • Chalmers, David J. — The Conscious Mind Chalmers is the architect of the “Hard Problem.” This book is the best way to explore the counter-view that subjective experience (qualia) is something fundamentally irreducible to functional or physical descriptions.