The problem of qualia in the philosophy of mind: An anti-reductionist analysis

The problem of qualia, also called the hard problem of consciousness in philosophy of mind, is, in short, the problem of uncertainty about how to relate the phenomenal aspects of consciousness to the functional structure of the physical brain. To date, many theoretical approaches to this problem have been developed, most notably materialist and dualist theories. Reductionist approaches, which make up a large part of these theories, have generally attempted to reduce consciousness to the brain and the physical processes that occur there. However, attempts to explain states of consciousness, which are subjective in nature, using the objective methods of science have not yet yielded positive results. On the other hand, dualistic theories that divide the mental and the physical into two ontologically separate spheres have not provided a logical explanation for the interplay of these two realms. For this reason, there has recently been an increasing tendency toward panpsychistic theories. According to panpsychism, which attempts to locate the basis of conscious phenomena in microphysical structures, consciousness is not an emergent phenomenon but something inherent in the universe. In this way, panpsychism succeeded in overcoming the radical emergence problem of materialist theories and the interaction problem of dualism. However, the problem of how conscious phenomena combine in microphysical structures to produce conscious experiences of a human kind, the so-called combination problem, poses a significant threat to panpsychism. Cosmopsychism, which arose as an alternative to atomistic panpsychism and traces the basis of consciousness to the cosmos, overcomes this problem. On the other hand, cosmopsychism faces the problem of derivation, which is the opposite of the problem of combination. In our view, however, this problem can be overcome by abandoning the assumption that the cosmos is a subject of experience. Therefore, cosmopsychism offers itself as an alternative theory of consciousness, since it has theoretical advantages over panpsychism.