Explaining Consciousness: The Hard Problem
Jonathan Shear
Sold by Mesquite Booksellers, Tucson, AZ, U.S.A.
AbeBooks Seller since December 4, 2025
Used - Soft cover
Condition: Used - Very good
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Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketSold by Mesquite Booksellers, Tucson, AZ, U.S.A.
AbeBooks Seller since December 4, 2025
Condition: Used - Very good
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketviii,422. This is a special sale item which will be shipped in an envelope, not a box. If you order this from outside the United States, we will almost certainly request an additional payment to help cover the postage. Every order includes tracking and originates in Tucson, AZ. ~Mesquite Booksellers.
Seller Inventory # 1041
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.
Contributors
Bernard 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
Robert S. Chirinko is Professor of Finance at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
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