What Is the Hard Problem of Consciousness?

"What about the hard problem of consciousness – how inanimate matter gives rise to conscious experience? Rupert says: ‘The hard problem of consciousness is a moot question. It’s like a series of very intelligent people in a dream going to a conference and wondering how the matter in their world gives rise to conscious experience. And then the dreamer wakes up and realises there was no matter in the dream world. There isn’t any matter. There isn’t dead, inert stuff called matter. The only stuff there is, the ontological primitive, is consciousness. So the question of how something other than consciousness gives rise to consciousness doesn’t make sense. What’s a much more interesting question is the hard problem of matter – how what seems to be material stuff arises in consciousness. How this apparently physical universe, which appears in consciousness and is made of consciousness and is known by consciousness, seems to be dead, inert stuff called matter. Now that is interesting.’"

From event 05 - 12 October, 2025 Seven-Day Retreat at Garrison Institute, 5–12 October 2025

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