Toward a Reframing of the Hard Problem of Consciousness: Subjective Reality, Feeling, and the Origins of the Conceptual World A Philosophical and Cognitive Scientific Investigation
Hakan Saka
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Key points | Argues that the hard problem of consciousness applies only to Feeling-1, the raw phenomenal presence of experience, while Feeling-2—the structured, valenced, and interpreted layer—is a learnable, culturally variable construction that is scientifically tractable. Proposes that conflating these layers has misplaced the explanatory demand, and offers a functional architecture with dissociation-based predictions to localize the remaining problem. |
Abstract
The hard problem of consciousness may be, in part, a problem of conceptual conflation: we treat multiple distinct layers of mind as a single phenomenon, and then wonder why it seems impossible to explain. This paper proposes a framework designed to disaggregate those layers — not to solve the hard problem, but to relocate it into the most precise domain to which it genuinely applies. Central to the argument is a distinction between two levels of what Chalmers calls qualia. Feeling-1 (F1) is the phenomenal presence of a sensory state — the fact that a neural process is experienced as something rather than merely occurring. It is not identical to the underlying neural activation, but corresponds to that activation insofar as it is felt. F1 provides the existence of experience. Feeling-2 (F2) is the structured, interpreted, and valenced organization of this phenomenal base — the meanings, emotions, memories, and values that make encounters with the world matter rather than merely register. F2 provides the structure of experience. F1 can exist without F2; F2 cannot exist without F1. Chalmers' hard problem, properly understood, applies only to Feeling-1 — specifically, to the question of why any neural process is accompanied by phenomenal character at all. Much of what has been labeled the hard problem is, on analysis, Feeling-2: learnable, culturally variable, and explicable through the mechanisms of second-image construction, affective conditioning, and tacit knowledge formation. Distinguishing these claims does not dissolve the hard problem; it localizes it to the smallest defensible residue and removes it from domains where it does not belong. Drawing on tacit knowledge theory (Polanyi, 1966), Kahneman's dual-process framework (2011), the developmental neuroscience of color perception (Franklin et al., 2008; Kyoto/PNAS 2025), neurological evidence from pain asymbolia and blindsight, and Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis, we argue that subjective experience is not an irreducible metaphysical residue but a structured, layered, and partially transmissible cognitive construct. The F1/F2 distinction is implemented as a functional architecture in which the Evaluation System modulates phenomenal access via salience gating, and global broadcast (Global Neuronal Workspace Theory) determines the transition from F1 to F2. Valence operates at two levels within this architecture: as an upstream gating signal that determines which F1 states reach the global workspace, and as a downstream component of F2 that guides decision and action. The framework generates falsifiable, dissociation-based predictions across neurological, developmental, and altered-state domains — predictions that follow necessarily from the architecture and that distinguish it from accounts which treat phenomenal presence, affect, and reportability as co-emergent. Core thesis: The hard problem of consciousness is real, but it concerns only why any phenomenal content is felt at all. What we ordinarily call subjective experience — meaning, emotion, self, and decision — is a learned, valenced construction built upon that raw phenomenal base and is, in principle, scientifically tractable. The aim of this work is not to claim that the hard problem is solved. The aim is to ensure that what remains unsolved is the right question. The Discussion additionally advances a speculative hypothesis: that the classical identification of feeling with experience — to feel is to experience — may itself rest on a category error, and that the hard problem may in part arise from locating the explanatory demand at the wrong level of the processing hierarchy. This hypothesis is offered not as a conclusion but as a question: it opens a door without claiming to know what lies behind it.
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