The analogy between the hard problem of life and hard problem of consciousness is imperfect because life's hard problem concerned objective functional properties (reproduction, adaptation, metabolism) that could in principle be mechanistically explained, whereas consciousness's hard problem concerns subjective phenomenal experience (first-person experience) which has no analog in the case of life except consciousness itself.
causalpending
Speaker
David ChalmersEvidence Quote
“in the case of Life all of the things that we really wanted to explain were kind of these objective processes of reprodu tion of adaptation of metabolism growth...the problem was always the problem of explaining these objective behaviors...whereas in the case of Consciousness you we've got analoges to all those things but those are all the easy problems...there's this further datum in the case of Consciousness which is first person subjective experience which doesn't really have an analog in the case of life”
Created: 8/12/2026, 6:02:17 PM
My Notes
Loading notes...