Today there is a strong tendency to simply equate consciousness with the qualia. Yet there is
clearly something not quite right about this. The "itchiness of itches" and the "hurtfulness of
pain" are qualities we are conscious of. So philosophy of mind tends to treat consciousness as
if it consisted simply of the contents of consciousness (the phenomenal qualities), while it
really is precisely consciousness of contents, the very givenness of whatever is subjectively
given. And therefore the problem of consciousness does not pertain so much to some alleged
"mysterious, nonpublic objects", i.e. objects that seem to be only "visible" to the respective
subject, but rather to the nature of "seeing" itself (and in today’s philosophy of mind
astonishingly little is said about the latter).[129]
Most neuroscientists and cognitive scientists believe that Chalmers' alleged "hard problem" will be
solved, or be shown to not be a real problem, in the course of the solution of the so-called "easy
problems", although a significant minority disagrees.[9][130]
Since 1990, researchers including the molecular biologist Francis Crick and the neuroscientist Christof
Koch have made significant progress toward identifying which neurobiological events occur concurrently
to the experience of subjective consciousness.[131] These postulated events are referred to as neural
correlates of consciousness or NCCs. However, this research arguably addresses the question of which
neurobiological mechanisms are linked to consciousness but not the question of why they should give rise
to consciousness at all, the latter being the hard problem of consciousness as Chalmers formulated it. In
"On the Search for the Neural Correlate of Consciousness", Chalmers said he is confident that, granting
the principle that something such as what he terms "global availability" can be used as an indicator of
consciousness, the neural correlates will be discovered "in a century or two".[132] Nevertheless, he stated
regarding their relationship to the hard problem of consciousness:
One can always ask why these processes of availability should give rise to consciousness in
the first place. As yet we cannot explain why they do so, and it may well be that full details
about the processes of availability will still fail to answer this question. Certainly, nothing in
the standard methodology I have outlined answers the question; that methodology assumes a
relation between availability and consciousness, and therefore does nothing to explain it. [...]
So the hard problem remains. But who knows: Somewhere along the line we may be led to
the relevant insights that show why the link is there, and the hard problem may then be
solved.[132]
The neuroscientist and Nobel laureate Eric Kandel wrote that locating the NCCs would not solve the hard
problem, but rather one of the so-called easy problems to which the hard problem is contrasted.[133]
Kandel went on to note Crick and Koch's suggestion that once the binding problem—understanding what
accounts for the unity of experience—is solved, it will be possible to solve the hard problem
empirically.[133] However, neuroscientist Anil Seth argued that emphasis on the so-called hard problem is
a distraction from what he calls the "real problem": understanding the neurobiology underlying
Relationship to scientific frameworks
Neural correlates of consciousness