I recently read an article on Medium in which Prudence Louise argued that consciousness is fatal to the philosophy of naturalism. Consciousness is supernatural, and the hard problem is the impossible problem because consciousness is not natural.

I was astonished. Consciousness is clearly part of our reality and its existence was famously termed the “the hard problem” by the philosopher David Chalmers. In a previous post, I described how Chalmers set himself the following constraints in tackling the hard problem. First, to take consciousness seriously and not redefine it as something else (as per Daniel Dennett). Second, to take science seriously in the domains where it has authority. Third, to take consciousness to be a natural phenomenon.

Why does Prudence Louise think consciousness must be supernatural? She correctly points out that we have no evidence that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, though many people, and most neurologists assume it must be. We don’t have any theory of emergence, a proposed mechanism to explain how consciousness could emerge. I agree with her so far.