Why the Hard Problem of Appreciating Physical Reality?

 An exercise in Evopoetry.

Reflections of a science enthusiast’s seven decade love affair with learning about Earth; what was going on around me; and how that connected with what was going on within me.

Philosophers ask: why does physical processing feel like anything at all? Joseph Levine called it the Explanatory Gap, and David Chalmers popularized it as the Hard Problem.

I, on the other hand, have spent decades wondering how any complex creature could possibly not have had a sense of “being.” Even if originally only a most flimsy feeling lacking all introspection.

Why do I care? Well, I guess because breeding and family circumstance have had me in love with, and engaged with this planet that created me. One could even say, I’ve been invested in the scientific adventure of discovery since before entering kindergarten in 1959. I caught the last gasp of the age-old wonder that once possessed mankind because I was introduced to the wonder of humanity’s ageless questions, while many of those mysteries still existed. Then early 1980s there was Attenborough’s: Life On Earth, insightful beyond description. So I consider myself a card-carrying enthusiastic, curious, critical-thinking spectator of my world through the scientific lens. I’ve undertaken this exercise in “Evopoetry” to see if I could convey a crystallization of that adventure.

My story started with appreciating Earth’s evolution, not as an intellectual construct, but as real physical happening that produced my ‘me’ and my world, one day at a time.

Thanks to that I’ve long possessed a visceral appreciation that I possess half a billion years worth of evolving generations under my bellybutton. This attitude has fed a conviction that my body knows more than I do, so I learned to pay attention to it. It paid off. It’s why I make a point of identifying as an Earth-centrist. Here’s my story.

It’s my perspective, based on my lived experience plus the scientific understanding I have gained from among the best and brightest minds Humanity has had to offer. That’s why I share many names and sources for the curious; check ’em out, you won’t be disappointed.

We start at the beginning, where there was a rigid consistency as primal hydrogen and helium was joined by gravity, evolved our Periodic Table of Elements via star formation and annihilation. These atoms were entities. This is based on observations that atoms send and receive information; impinge upon and accrete with other entities; possess unique properties according to their composition and arrangement.

Of course, it was all on a quantum, gravitational level. Choice didn’t exist; and awareness had nothing to do with it.

This is not “panpsychism” — nothing is imbued with anything — it simply is what it is. Energetic physical stuff in its own right, taking up a specific reference frame, interacting with others’ reference frames. Nothing more, nothing less.

A cosmos filled with entities constrained within their own particular physicality and cone of potential. Each oblivious to its being. Because there was no need for it and no means to it. Yet a something! With a unique frame of reference and a substance of its own.

Addendum — A Philosopher Schools Citizenschallenge

 

 A counterpoint to Cc’s, “Chalmers’ Hard Problem and the Living Moment of Now — A story and a challenge for the philosophically minded.”

Introduction: I’m not looking to convince anyone so much as to connect with science-respecting people who are tired of gratuitous philosophical mysterianism and trust in physical reality and Evolution as guides to understanding ourselves, along with our deepest questions.

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(March 9, 2026) - Citizenschallenge wrote: Thank you Professor for your invitation and I’ll gladly take you up on your offer.

Eight years ago when the Human Mind ~ Physical Reality divide snapped into focus for me, like an old time 35mm slide, the experience and clarifying perspective inspired me to write: “The Missing Key to Stephen Gould’s “Nonoverlapping Magisteria” - so titled because a rereading of his essay triggered the coalescence of decades worth of musings

As for consciousness, that interest goes way back to my youth, I even tried wading through Nagel's essay in the mid-70s until the vertigo got to be too much for me and I tossed in the towel.

In any event, my "Human Mind ~ Physical Reality divide" insight (clarification) started me on a path of knocking on the doors of genuine philosophers via email, occasionally letters, also engaging with the local College Philosophy Department and their Philosophy Club, showing up, listening, sharing handouts, inviting dialogue. The experience has been akin to the sound of one hand clapping. But that wasn’t going to stop me from learning about this philosophical conundrum.

It took eight years of living, questioning, reading, thinking, writing to reach the level of resolution that enabled me to write “Chalmers’ Hard Problem and the Living Moment of Now”  that I finished this past April. A collection of fact-based scientific evidence and arguments doing its best to tell a significant story challenging the Descartes-Nagel-Chalmers paradigm with its Hard Problem of Consciousness and its assumed explanatory gap between body & brain, and sense of self & mind.

The D-N-C mindset can’t conceive of body-brain creating a sense of self and thought. For me, Evolutionary biology makes this intellectual-construct of a body-mind gap unnecessary — since, the moral of our cumulative scientific understanding is that creature experience and awareness of self were never separate to begin with.

Chalmers’ Hard Problem and the Living Moment of Now

A story and a challenge for the philosophically minded.

A Thesis Challenging the Descartes-Nagel-Chalmers "Consciousness" Paradigm

Presented to the Fort Lewis College Philosophy Club in Durango

If you’ve plunged into the philosophical arena of human consciousness, I think we’d agree—if on nothing else—that the expert dialogue is a great big ball of confusion. After all, in a 2024 survey by Robert Kuhn, there are 325 competing philosophical and scientific theories of consciousness. That’s not theories closing in on understanding; that’s 325 opinions that don’t convince any peers.

At the head of this ball of confusion is the Descartes-Nagel-Chalmers paradigm, summed up in Chalmers’ Hard Problem of Consciousness: Why and how do physical processes in the brain (neural activity) give rise to subjective experience? What is it like to be something? How does matter become thought?

Writer Marvin Von Renchler excellently summarizes the flaw in the Hard Problem: “Rather than demonstrate a separation between physical processes and subjective experience, it is assumed.”

Biologically, everything we observe points to continuity: increasingly complex systems of memory, integration and self-referential processing emerging stepwise under selection pressures. There is no clear place for something non-physical to be introduced.

Von Renchler concludes that, “The ‘hard problem’ is less an unsolved mystery and more a framing issue, a mismatch between philosophical categories and how evolved systems actually work.”

There’s another objection I’ve yet to receive a serious response to: Why search for our mind wholly within our brain in the first place?

Conflict between storyteller and science telling.

 

During one of this morning’s walks with my Maddy dog–musing on my current project, Thomas Nagel’s iconic essay, “What is it like to be a bat?”–I had a defining insight regarding the conflict I feel–as a life long science enthusiast and follower–with theology and philosophy.

Even though they also interest me, however in the same way art and music impress me, not in any self-defining manner the way serious science does.

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On the one side we have,

the storyteller, confident in the stories created from within one’s mind. Using the outside world as a prop upon which to tell a provocative spellbinding tale. Glorifying in the unsurpassed genius of our own spectacular mind.

versus,

the observer, collecting evidence, and allowing the facts to create and dictate our story. Demanding honesty and suppressing our natural ego driven bias as much as possible.

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Physical Reality ~ Human Mind divide

I suggest it’s the most fundamental observation that can be made regarding our human condition, it provides a realistically intellectual foundation to build a down-to-Earth, bottom-up understanding.

Awestruck Scientist responded:

Even though they also interest me, however in the same way art and music impress me, not in any self-defining manner the way serious science does.

I agree on two accounts, and disagree on one:
I agree with putting theology and philosophy in the same category as art and music - they all arise subjectively.
I agree with the distinction between storyteller and observer, which I would call the subjective and the objective.
I disagree with the notion (I hope I am not misinterpreting here you) that the observer is somehow more relevant than the storyteller. For me they are equally important and true, as long as they don't attempt to usurp the truth claim of the other perspective.

My response:
that the observer is somehow more relevant than the storyteller.
A.S., good point and thanks for making it!
I agree, storytelling is one of humanity's most important advances, I'm not questioning that.
This is about the source of authority used by the authors of the respective styles of storytelling, that I want to shine a klieg light on.
The philosophizing, and literary, storyteller follows their muse, molding their own story and emotions out of their own mind-scapes, as they strive to create, and perhaps share as hopefully, spellbinding stories. They are the masters of their world and their stories.
On the other hand, the scientist story teller is confined to following the known evidence as they plot the outlines and themes of their stories.
As science advances, new evidence comes in, often absolutely unanticipated, and radically rearranging the story. The scientific story honors, by striving to honestly reflection the actual factual, up to date, evidence that the best and the brightest have gathered and shared.
The philosophical. theological, and literary storytelling is all about human ego, wanting to be heard. It's beautiful, I'm right in there with the rest of us who strive to write well and meaningfully, and hope that someone notices.
Still we must understand scientific story telling is all about striving to understand this world we were born into based on solid physical evidence, and about ourselves in the bargain. That's what I owe all my allegiance to.
It's why I identify as an Earth-centrist.
Earth Centrism = Geocentrism. Seriously?
The Missing Key to Stephen Gould’s “Nonoverlapping Magisteria.”
Cheers & have a good weekend.

The Meaning of Jesus of Nazareth Considered.

 Over at CFI Forum a thread was started under that title, regarding the historicity of Jesus. That is, was Jesus once an actual flesh and blood person? It reminded me of an article Tanner wrote Nov 15, 2025, There’s No Real Evidence for Jesus. Truth or Myth? I read it a couple weeks ago and it keeps coming back to mind. The two have rekindled my interest in trying to formulate and share a comprehensible Earth-centrist’s perspective on Jesus.

Why did Jesus become and remain the ultimate superstar for so many?

What to make of the evidence regarding Jesus of Nazareth’s physical reality–in relation to all the stories added onto his memory (long after his life was finished), that increasingly deify Jesus?

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Stained glass, Jesus on Mt. Tabor, at Tabor Church, Chicago. ©Beatriz Romero

To give the “moral of this story” substance, I need to start by sharing some background. Being an Earth-centrist I can’t relate to the obsession with theological writings & debates. It is all too much talk for talk, for me. That doesn’t mean I’m oblivious to Christianity and Jesus. Still, the last time I actually wrestled with Jesus’s meaning was as a teen and 20s. After that, Earth and her evolution took over my heart and soul, and there was no looking back for me.

Medieval philosophy simply won’t do anymore.

 

 Descartes’, “I THINK THEREFORE I AM” might be the most profound sentence written.

It is a quintessential crystalized conception regarding our human condition, our psychology and our introspective human mind — but, it has zero to do with the physical biological world that we are embedded within, that created our body/brain, which in turn produces our mind full of thoughts.

Think about it, Descartes lived and died before real sciences existed! Descartes and his philosophy is embedded within the theological world dominated by the Catholic Empire, which he bowed to.

Today, David Chalmers is a genius professor of that intellectual tradition. A tradition that can’t seem to see past the bubble of our human mind. Chalmers and supporters insist that biology will never bridge the gap between matter and thought, at least not without admitting some metaphysical something.

For support of their Hard Problem belief, they have beautiful arguments with opinions and words piled on top of words, insisting the gap between matter and thinking cannot possibly be found upon 100% pure physical biological, scientific evidence, it requires …, well it requires something extra, they insist.

Then they look for consciousness within the brain and neurons, without explicitly recognizing that our introspective mind is but the extreme end of the consciousness spectrum.

  

Human introspective consciousness would be impossible without the support and substance of all those older lower layers of consciousness, that permeate our body, but that we aren’t directly aware of.

Serious science has been busy learning about these revelations and sharing with all who are curious.

We live in a new world reality, scientists have evidence mitochondria communicate and coordinate with each other — and they are within each cell! Intercellular awareness and communication is also a documented thing. Research into independent single celled creatures, are recording the same behaviors being documented in complex animals.

There has been a paradigm shift in biological sciences that smashes through all those quaint medieval Ego-driven notions of human exceptionalism, that theological and philosophical thinking are built upon.

Physical science has even unraveled the mystery of “Vitalism” and it isn’t sprinkled down upon Earth by God or anything else. It turns out to be a product of Earth herself!

“Vitalism” was invented over four billion years ago by chemistry, in partnership with Earth, time, and it is found in the Krebs cycle, where quite literally, geology and chemistry figured out how to harness electricity, thereby inventing biology. That is what life sprang from.

For details, read Nick Lane’s Transformer and his previous books. Further sources shared at the end.All of this requires a modern philosophy brave enough to blast through the entrenched faith based platitudes. Learning to vocally grapple with our Human Mind ~ Physical Reality divide, and to begin appreciating all that unfolds from that recognition.

Within our body, each of us possesses a genetic heritage going back over half a billion years. Our body is the product of all those untold successful generations piling one on top of the previous one, living, learning, surviving one day at a time, leaving offspring behind to take up the gauntlet. As they, in turn, turn heritage into legacy.

The science is making it clear that the best way to understand consciousness is as the inside reflection of our body communicating with itself.

When are those realities going to start getting enthusiastically discussed within philosophical circles?

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Here’s an introductory scientist author’s list

Robert Hazen: Mineral evolution on Earth, preparing the ground for biology

Nick Lane: Geology and chemistry harnesses electricity to create biology.

     Writer of the most excellent summary of “SELF”

Jack Szostak: The Early Earth and the Origins of Cellular Life

Michael Russell: On the Emergence of Life Through “Negative” Entropy Trapping

Arthur Reber: The “Cellular Basis of Consciousness” proposal — CBC

Michael Levin: Bioelectricity in development and regeneration, exploring cellular cognition.

Biology together with time, and chemistry and geology, that is Earth’s processes created creatures and environments and competition, in short, evolution.

Pageant of Earth’s Evolution, Index of noteworthy YouTube videos

Mark Solms — Regarding the Source of Consciousness

Antonio Damasio — Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

Robert Sapolsky — Behavioral Biology with a Primatology background 

Honorable mention, author David Quammen’s The Tangled Tree of Life, a front and center history of the ‘70’s genetics revolution, that ushered in this golden age of biology.

These are some of the leading lights, though I never forget they require the support of thousands to help this work move forward.

 

Further reflections, Considering Things Science Can Explain About Consciousness

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