And what were they having problems with? It seems that many people subscribe to a 'hard problem of consciousness' when simply knowing what events in the brain correspond to which conscious states *is* the explanation.
Not sure what you mean. Here 's what the initial description of what I mean in Wikipedia:
The
hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why and how we have
qualia[note 1] or
phenomenal experiences. That is to say, it is the problem of why we have personal, first-person experiences, often described as experiences that feel "like something." In comparison, we assume there are no such experiences for inanimate things like, for instance, a thermostat, toaster, computer, or a sophisticated form of artificial intelligence.
[2] The philosopher
David Chalmers, who introduced the term "hard problem of
consciousness,"
[3] contrasts this with the "easy problems" of explaining the physical systems that give us and other animals the ability to discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, focus attention, and so forth.
[4] Easy problems are (relatively) easy because all that is required for their solution is to specify a mechanism that can perform the function.
[4] That is, even though we have yet to solve most of the easy problems (our understanding of the brain is still preliminary), these questions can probably eventually be understood by relying entirely on standard scientific methods.
[4] Chalmers claims that even once we have solved such problems about the brain and experience, the hard problem will "persist even when the performance of all the relevant functions is explained".
[4]
The existence of a "hard problem" is controversial. It has been accepted by
philosophers of mind such as
Joseph Levine,
[5] Colin McGinn,
[6] and
Ned Block[7] and
cognitive neuroscientists such as
Francisco Varela,
[8] Giulio Tononi,
[9][10] and
Christof Koch.
[9][10] However, its existence is disputed by philosophers of mind such as
Daniel Dennett,
[11] Massimo Pigliucci,
[12] Thomas Metzinger,
Patricia Churchland,
[13] and
Keith Frankish,
[14] and cognitive neuroscientists such as
Stanislas Dehaene,
[15] Bernard Baars,
[16] Anil Seth[17] and
Antonio Damasio.
I didn't go into all the details.
Hard problem of consciousness - Wikipedia
My opinion is that there is a materialistic bias, and this explains why some dispute this problem.
