Killing the Hard Problem

A new type of emergence called contextual emergence (CE) is proposed to advance the hard problem of consciousness. CE holds that properties and behaviors at one scale or domain provide only necessary, not sufficient, conditions for those at another scale; the world is a complex web of irreducibly multiscale extrinsic dispositions. CE explains how novel properties arise and why they matter, emphasizing the equal fundamentality of multiscale contextual constraints in scientific explanation. Together with Jamesian neutral monism, CE deflates the hard problem, breaking metaphysical gridlock between identity theories, strong emergence, and panpsychism, and opens new directions for enactivist and radical empiricist science of consciousness.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract The hard problem of consciousness has historically been a major driver of discussions pertaining to emergence. As the only forms of emergence on offer in these discussions were strong and weak emergence, very little progress was made. Herein a new type of emergence is offered to move forwards. Contextual emergence (CE) holds that the world is structured as follows: properties and behaviours in a particular domain or at a particular scale (including its laws) at best offer some necessary but no sufficient conditions to determine properties and behaviours in another domain or at another scale. Hence, the world is a complex web of irreducibly multiscale extrinsic dispositions. CE explains both how novel properties are produced and why they matter. CE emphasizes the equal fundamentality of multiscale contextual constraints and relations in scientific explanation. Contextual features are therefore not merely inputs, boundary conditions, essential background conditions, and so on. Contextual features can involve dynamical/causal interactions or adynamical/acausal constraints of various sorts. The most complete explanation for any phenomena is going to involve multiscale contextual features. CE and Jamesian neutral monism go hand in hand, and together they fully deflate the hard problem. Taken together they allow us to break the metaphysical gridlock between ontological identity theories, strong emergence, and panpsychism on the one hand, and the corresponding scientific gridlock between bio-mechanistic and broadly functionalist, computational, information-theoretic, and structural accounts of consciousness on the other. Furthermore, taken together, these two open new directions for the enactivist and radical empiricist-based science of consciousness.