(학술행사) A Buddhist Version of the ‘Hard Problem’ of Phenomenal Consciousness(Mark Siderits, Professor Emeritus, Illinois State University)
- 철학과
- 2026-01-15 16:00 ~ 2026-01-15 18:00
- Bldg. 4, Room 302
SNU Department of Philosophy, Invited Lecture in Buddhist Philosophy
A Buddhist Version of the ‘Hard Problem’ of Phenomenal Consciousness
Mark Siderits, Professor Emeritus, Illinois State University
Bldg. 4, Room 302
Thursday January 15th 2026, 4:00PM–6:00PM
The so-called ‘hard problem’ of consciousness—the problem of explaining how it is that conscious mental states can have phenomenal character—is usually thought of as posing a challenge just for physicalists. Classical Indian Buddhist philosophers uniformly rejected physicalism, yet they still face a difficulty in this domain: conscious mental states are usually thought of as those mental states of which the subject is aware, but it is a fundamental tenet of Buddhism that there is no subject of awareness. If it is true that some but not all mental states have phenomenal character, what explains the difference? This talk will examine the difficulties Buddhist philosophers encountered in trying to answer this question, and it will explore a radical solution that should also be of interest to a physicalist who claims that phenomenal consciousness is illusory.
