The Hard Problem of Consciousness

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The hard problem of consciousness is a philosophical concept that refers to the difficulty in explaining why and how subjective experiences or qualia arise from physical processes in the brain. It was famously formulated by philosopher David Chalmers in the 1990s.
Consciousness, in this context, refers to the state of being aware of one's own thoughts, sensations, emotions, and perceptions. It is the subjective "what it is like" to experience something, such as the taste of chocolate, the feeling of pain, the color red, or the sense of love.
The hard problem of consciousness arises because while we have made significant progress in understanding the brain's functions and how it processes information, we still lack a satisfactory explanation for why these physical processes give rise to subjective conscious experiences. In other words, why does the firing of neurons and the processing of neural information lead to the subjective experience of, for example, seeing the color red or feeling happiness?
There are several other problems related to consciousness, such as the easy problem of explaining how the brain processes information and performs cognitive functions, but the hard problem is specifically concerned with the subjective and qualitative nature of consciousness itself.
Many theories and approaches have been proposed to tackle this problem, ranging from materialistic explanations that seek to link consciousness solely to physical processes in the brain to more dualistic or panpsychist ideas that posit consciousness as a fundamental aspect of the universe. However, as of my last update in September 2021, the hard problem of consciousness remains an open and challenging question in both philosophy and neuroscience.