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The 'Hard' Problem of Consciousness Is Continually Reproduced and Made Harder by All Attempts to Solve It
- Source :
- Theory, Culture & Society. 25:51-86
- Publication Year :
- 2008
- Publisher :
- SAGE Publications, 2008.
-
Abstract
- I argue that the so-called 'hard' problem of consciousness ' the problem of how consciousness is possible at all, and how it 'connects' with matter ' is only an artefact of the ways in which human scientists approach consciousness and (more generally) mind. Putting the point paradoxically but also quite precisely: the efforts to solve the mind'body problem, and this its latest variant form, are the very disease of which they take themselves to be the cure. I give examples drawn from sociology and from philosophy to support this claim, and then try to mitigate this vicious consequence of Cognitivism in both disciplines by offering a Wittgensteinian dissolution of the (pseudo-)problem as an alternative to (hopeless) cognitivist efforts to solve it.
Details
- ISSN :
- 14603616 and 02632764
- Volume :
- 25
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Theory, Culture & Society
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........8b0390e106cb3424ebc644355b7e3e77