A Teleological Strategy for Solving the Meta-Problem of Consciousness

Journal of Consciousness Studies 26 (9-10):205-216 (2019)
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Abstract

Following Chalmers, I take the most promising response to the meta-problem to be a realizationist one on which (roughly) consciousness plays a role in realizing the processes that explain why we think that there is a hard problem of consciousness. I favour an interactionist dualist version of realizationism on which experiences are non-physical states that non-redundantly cause problem judgments. This view is subject to the challenges of specifying laws that would enable experiences to cause problem judgments and of explaining why it's not a lucky coincidence that experiences' causal and rational powers converge on problem judgments. I propose a strategy for solving the meta-problem and meeting these challenges. According to it, a fundamental teleological law operates on normative features of experiences in ways that bias experiences towards causing effects that they rationalize, including problem judgments. I conclude by applying the strategy to other luck-avoidance challenges.

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Bradford Saad
University of Oxford

Citations of this work

Psychophysical Harmony: A New Argument for Theism.Brian Cutter & Dustin Crummett - 2025 - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 11:33-71.
Digital suffering: why it’s a problem and how to prevent it.Bradford Saad & Adam Bradley - 2025 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 68 (7):2110-2145.
Lessons from the Void: What Boltzmann Brains Teach.Bradford Saad - 2025 - Analytic Philosophy 66 (4):594-621.
A dualist theory of experience.Bradford Saad - 2025 - Philosophical Studies 182 (3).

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