Evidence Item - v0.6
Naturalism and the hard problem of consciousness
E-CONSCIOUSNESS
Visual overview: Consciousness and the hard problem visual overview
Classification
- Evidence ID
- E-CONSCIOUSNESS
- Corpus/version
- v0.6
- Stage
- stage3
- Category
- Consciousness & Mind
- Major category
- Philosophy
- Sub-category
- Mind / Consciousness
- BF status
- ready
- Scoring label
- Scored row with active Bayes factors
Navigation
Primary Datum
Datum: functional accounts explain behavior and report, but phenomenal consciousness still raises the hard problem.
Scoring / Hypothesis Pressure
| Hypothesis | log10BF | Min | Max | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
H-GOD | 0.04 | 0 | 0.1 | Mind grounded in a divine mind makes qualia unsurprising, but without specific commitments the differential remains small. |
H-IDEALISM | 0.1 | 0 | 0.2 | If mind/experience is fundamental, a residual phenomenal gap is expected rather than problematic. |
H-NATURALISM | -0.06 | -0.15 | 0.04 | Strict base-level physicalism expects eventual closure; a persistent phenomenal gap slightly lowers P(E|H-NATURALISM) absent strong illusionism. |
H-PLATONIC-MATHEMATICAL-STRUCTURALISM | 0 | -0.05 | 0.05 | Abstract structural primacy is compatible with consciousness but offers little specific leverage on phenomenal feel here. |
Dependency / Cap Metadata
- dependency_cluster_id
- consciousness_mind
- dependency_cluster_role
- sibling_support
- dependency_cluster
- consciousness_mind
- dependency_role
- sibling_support
- cap_profile
- moderate_semi_independent
- evidence_function
- context_child
- directness
- supporting
Counter-Pressure
- title
- Brain explanations are real; reduction is the extra claim.
- text
- Naturalism and the hard problem of consciousness may give naturalism real local pressure by showing how much mind depends on brain. The Christian answer should welcome that. But dependence is not identity, and correlation is not a full account of first-person life, truth, moral responsibility, and love.
- path
- Let neuroscience explain the machinery. Then ask whether the machinery explains the person. A Christian can say humans are embodied souls or ensouled bodies without pretending thought floats free from the brain. The hard question is whether matter alone can carry meaning.
Apologetic Note
- label
- Apologetic leverage
- title
- People are harder to explain than brain scans are to describe.
- key point
- Naturalism and the hard problem of consciousness matters because neuroscience can describe brain activity without fully explaining what it is like to be a person who knows truth, loves, chooses, feels guilt, prays, and asks what life means.
- conversation move
- Welcome the science. Then use a simple distinction: explaining the instrument is not the same as explaining the music. Brain processes matter, but the person doing the thinking is still the deeper mystery.
- caveat
- Do not deny the brain. Christianity says persons are embodied. The point is that persons look like more than chemistry talking to itself.
Caveats / Notes
- Source note
- Expanded with first-person subjectivity / hard-problem framing while keeping intentionality and global-workspace material in their own governed rows. Active BF values unchanged.
- Cap notes
- This row belongs to the consciousness and mind family. Its force should remain inspectable while overlap with sibling mind/reason rows is governed in cap diagnostics.
- Cap profile note
- Semi-independent convergence rows are capped, but not treated as exact duplicates.
- Cluster note
- Canonical hard-problem/qualia anchor. Dependent qualia-gap items should be capped against this row.
- Governance note
- Expanded hard-problem anchor with first-person subjectivity controls. Active BF values unchanged; not duplicated into intentionality or global-workspace rows.
Citations
- David J. Chalmers (1995), Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness
- Keith Frankish (2016), Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness
- Stanislas Dehaene (2014), Consciousness and the Brain (access vs phenomenal)
- Joseph Levine (1983), Materialism and Qualia (explanatory gap)
- Thomas Nagel (1974), What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
- Frank Jackson, "Epiphenomenal Qualia," Philosophical Quarterly 32 (1982): 127-136.
- Ned Block, "On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness," Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18 (1995): 227-247.
Recommended Citation
The Signal Evidence Dataset, "Naturalism and the hard problem of consciousness," Evidence ID: E-CONSCIOUSNESS, Version 0.6. Accessed [access date]. https://logos-signal.org/evidence/E-CONSCIOUSNESS/
Machine-Readable Source
This page is generated from the public evidence mirror without recalculating or changing scores.