PHENOMENAL AND ACCESS CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE "HARD" PROBLEM: A VIEW FROM THE DESIGNER STANCE

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to summarise and justify critical comments I have been making over several decades about research on consciousness by philosophers, scientists and engineers. This includes (a) explaining why the concept of “phenomenal consciousness” (P-C), in the sense defined by Ned Block, is semantically flawed and unsuitable as a target for scientific research or machine modelling, whereas something like the concept of “access consciousness” (A-C) with which it is often contrasted refers to phenomena that can be described and explained within a future scientific theory, and (b) explaining why the “hard problem ” is a bogus problem, because of its dependence on the P-C concept. It is compared with another bogus problem, “the ‘hard ’ problem of spatial identity ” introduced as part of a tutorial on semantically flawed concepts. Different types of semantic flaw and conceptual confusion not normally studied outside analytical philosophy are distinguished. The semantic flaws of the “zombie ” argument, closely allied with the P-C concept are also explained. These topics are related both to the evolution of human and animal minds and brains and to requirements for human-like robots. The diversity of the phenomena related to the concept “consciousness ” as ordinarily used makes it a polymorphic concept, partly analogous to concepts like “efficient”, “sensitive”, and “impediment” all of which need extra information to be provided before they can be applied to anything, and then