text: **Historical precedents**
  
  The hard problem of consciousness has scholarly antecedents considerably earlier than Chalmers. 
  Chalmers himself notes that "a number of thinkers in the recent and distant past" have "recognised the 
  particular difficulties of explaining consciousness."[33] He states that all his original 1996 paper 
  contributed to the discussion was "a catchy name, a minor reformulation of philosophically familiar 
  points".[33] 
  
  Among others, thinkers who have made arguments similar to Chalmers' formulation of the hard problem 
  include Isaac Newton,[34] John Locke,[35] Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,[36][34] John Stuart Mill,[37] and 
  Thomas Henry Huxley.[38][34] Likewise, Asian philosophers like Dharmakirti and Guifeng Zongmi 
  discussed the problem of how consciousness arises from unconscious matter.[34][39][40][41] 