the hard problem

The hard problem of consciousness is David Chalmers’ term for the question of why physical processes are accompanied by subjective experience at all. He presented the distinction at a conference in 1994 and published it in 1995. The so-called “easy” problems can still be technically very hard, but they concern functions such as perception, reporting and behavior. The hard problem is not officially “the hard problem of physics”, and several philosophers think the problem is ill-posed or can be dissolved.