It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness
An article by physicist Carlo Rovelli arguing that there is no “hard problem” of consciousness and no need for mind–body dualism draws heavy skepticism. Commenters largely defend the idea that subjective experience (qualia) poses a genuine explanatory gap not addressed by simply appealing to neural complexity, while others counter that consciousness is an emergent, fully physical process and that the mystery is overstated. Across perspectives, people highlight how poorly defined “consciousness” remains, why it resists straightforward scientific treatment, and what its nature might imply for free will, AI moral status, and the limits of materialism.
Overall reaction to the article
- Many commenters found the essay “hand‑wavy,” condescending, and philosophically shallow.
- Main complaint: it declares there is “no hard problem” without actually engaging the standard formulations, instead equating it with generic resistance to naturalistic explanations (Darwin, thunderstorms, etc.).
- Some liked the anti‑dualist, naturalistic stance but thought earlier philosophers and neuroscientists have made the same points more rigorously.
What the “hard problem” is taken to be
- Widely described as the difficulty of explaining phenomenal consciousness or qualia — the “what it is like” aspect of experience — in terms of structure and function alone.
- Thought experiments invoked: philosophical zombies, “why am I me and not someone else?”, exact physical copies (e.g., spreadsheet simulating a brain), Mary the color scientist, etc.
- Defenders emphasize an explanatory gap: even a complete physical model of the brain seems not to entail why there is subjective experience rather than “all computation in the dark.”
Arguments that the hard problem is misguided or dissolves
- Some argue consciousness is just certain patterns of neural (or computational) activity; asking “why those give rise to experience” is like asking why some clouds yield thunderstorms — just complex but natural.
- Illusionist views: consciousness/qualia are powerful self‑models or “controlled hallucinations”; the demand for more explanation stems from mismatched intuitions, not a real metaphysical gap.
- P‑zombies are attacked as incoherent or physically impossible: a perfect physical duplicate would, by stipulation, also have whatever conscious processes we do.
- Several predict that with a full functional account of brain processes, the “hard” problem will dissolve, as past “essences” did in science.
Arguments that the hard problem is real
- Others contend complexity, self‑modelling, or recursion explain only cognition and behavior (the “easy” problems), not why there feels like anything at all.
- Point out the article (and some physicalists) repeatedly shift from phenomenal consciousness to access‑/functional consciousness without noticing.
- Some suggest that if standard physicalism is to succeed, it may require new conceptual tools or even new physics, not just more neuroscience.
Definitions, measurability, and scope
- Significant disagreement over what “consciousness” even means and whether the term is scientifically usable.
- Positions range from “consciousness doesn’t really exist” to “it’s the most certain thing we know.”
- Discussion extends to animals, AI, and ethical implications, but there is no consensus on criteria for attributing consciousness.