Chalmer's Meta problem of consciousness

The meta-problem of consciousness (2018).

• The easy problem of consciousness is explaining how conscious biological creatures can do their third-person observable functions. That is, how a brain works and how it might be replicated.
• A system is phenomenally conscious, that is, has qualia, if there is something it is like to be that system, from the first-person point of view.
• The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why and how we have qualia or phenomenal experiences.
• The meta-problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why we think that the hard problem of consciousness is a problem.
• Eliminative materialism (or illusionism) is the theory that there is no qualia, so the hard problem doesn't exist.

Chalmer proposed that the meta-problem is a good research topic: it is an objective problem about something that exists and is objectively measurable: that humans talk about their consciousness and how it is immaterial and hard to understand and other things. There are several approaches:

• Psychologists can study how humans intuitively understand consciousness. They have already done plenty on that, such as some researches on how children often think that the body and the mind are separate.
• Philosophers should clarify the meta-problem and relate it to the hard problem.
• AI researchers and programmers can try to implement systems with cognitive modules, and see if they actually behave in a similar way as humans concerning conscious beliefs. See if they would say things like "I am not a material thing." or "I cannot be described by a fully material physics.".

If the meta-problem is solved, then maybe that's the end of he hard problem. Maybe if we can explain why we feel so puzzled about consciousness, that'd be the end of our puzzlement. We would see that our puzzlement is really based on an evolutionary mistake, an illusion. 

It would be like us discovering the earth is not flat. The earth is not flat: that's an illusion. We see it is flat, due to our short eyesight. In this way, the answer to "the meta-problem of flat earth" dissolves the hard problem of flat earth.

Similarly, the answer to the meta-problem of consciousness can straight up dissolve the hard problem of consciousness. That is the triumph of eliminative materialism!

Even if you don't believe in eliminative materialism, thinking about the meta-problem can still help. In particular, if you have a theory of consciousness, then you should try to think about whether the theory would predict that creatures endowed with consciousness would talk about consciousness as if it is an immaterial and puzzling thing. Chalmers claims that the Integrated Information Theory has defect here, since under the IIT, conscious beings don't seem to talk about consciousness as if it is an immaterial and puzzling thing.