AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

One of the great mysteries that characterizes our time is the hard problem of consciousness. How is it that physical things like brains give rise to subjective experience? The problem continues to remain stubbornly unresolved despite decades of intense research, and this has motivated some of us to turn a critical eye back on the assumptions embedded within the question itself. One worry is that framing the hard problem using the “gives rise” locution implicitly assumes dualism by smuggling in a separation between the brain and consciousness, putting physicalism at a dialectical disadvantage as a result. I offer a more sustained analysis of this longstanding dispute than has hitherto been provided and conclude that physicalists should indeed abandon the gives rise framing of the problem of consciousness. However, another (and more substantial) worry is that the longer the hard problem remains intractable, the more reason we have for thinking its most foundational assumption is faulty. Namely, the denial that consciousness is fundamental.