The Causes of the Hard Problem: A Note

Volume 16 No 9 (2018)

Greg P. Hodes

DOI: 10.14704/nq.2018.16.9.1599

Abstract

This note calls attention to the fact that efficient causes – the sort of cause that changes something or makes something happen – can play no constitutive role in the immediate cognitively conscious relation between cognitive subject and a cognitive object. It argues that: (1) it is a necessary condition for there being an efficient causal relation that it alter its relata; and (2) it is a necessary condition for being a conscious cognitive relation that it does not alter its relata. This has important implication for the theories of knowledge and consciousness the “Hard Problem,” and related puzzles

Keywords

Cognitive Consciousness, Hard Problem, Mind-Brain, Causes of Consciousness, Consciousness, Efficient Causes

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