A representative expression of current thinking on the ‘problem of consciousness’ runs as follows. There is one, impenetrably hard problem; and a host of soluble, and in this sense easy problems. The hard problem is: how could a physical system yield subjective states? How could there be something it is like to be a physical system? This problem corresponds to a concept of consciousness...
Abstract In the mid-1980s Libet conducted a series of experiments which, he argued, showed that we are aware of intentions to act only after the brain area responsible for initiating acting has already been activated. He, and others, took these experiments to show that our brain ‘decides’ on courses of action independently of our consciousness, where this in turn threatens the idea of free...