ABSTRACT

This chapter lays out in detail the problematic appearances of consciousness requiring explanation. Considerations from pessimists like Chalmers and Joseph Levine are considered, and the chapter distills out the claim that our first-person access seems to put us in direct contact with indescribable, simple properties, properties only contingently connected to the structural, dynamical, and functional features of the mind. The chapter argues that these appearances make it seem that there is a hard problem and they must be explained in easy scientific terms if the debunking argument is to succeed.