The hard problem of consciousness in the context of philosophy of mind in the twentieth century

Abstract

The paper aims to clarify the place of the hard problem of consciousness in the philosophy of mind in the twentieth century. It shows that the study of the phenomenal aspects of conscious experience was popular both at the beginning and at the end of the twentieth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the study of consciousness was directed by rather epistemological questions, than questions of metaphysics. During this period, there were at least three approaches to the understanding of consciousness: the theory of sense data, intentionalism and direct realism. The remarkable feature of philosophy of mind in the second half of the twentieth century was the revival of metaphysics of mind in the context of analytical philosophy. The paper offers an answer to the question: What makes this revival and the emergence of the hard problem of consciousness possible? The paper concludes with the thesis that the hard problem of consciousness and the revival of the metaphysics of mind were due to the emergence of such theory of perception as adverbialism. However, since the position of adverbialism is not intuitively obvious, since there are competing interpretations of the phenomenal aspects of conscious experience, it allows us to suspend the grounds for adverbialism and avoid the hard problem of consciousness