Abstract

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining the experiential aspects of consciousness in the physical terms of computational neuroscience. I argue that, on the one hand, the problem cannot be what it is often said to be---the problem of explaining the "feel" of conscious experiences, their subjective or qualitative character, or the problem of explaining qualia---since each of these notions embodies serious conceptual confusions. On the other hand I claim that there is a sense in which we may say that certain aspects of experience cannot be explained in physical terms. The reason they cannot, however, is not mysterious; it has to do with the fact that these aspects depend, not only for their description but also, in a sense, for their very existence, on our being the kind of conscious creatures who use language. There is no such thing, I argue, as an explanation in purely physical terms of an organism's being in a conscious state whose individuation depends on that organism's satisfying certain linguistic or conceptual criteria