Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

by Brian Greene

In 1994 David Chalmers, a young Australian philosopher, hair flowing past his shoulders, took the stage at the annual consciousness conference in Tucson and described this deficit as the “hard problem” of consciousness. Not that the “easy” problem—understanding the mechanics of brain processes and their role in imprinting memories, responding to stimuli, and molding behavior—is easy. It’s just that we can envision what the shape of a solution to those sorts of problems would look like; we can articulate an in-principle approach at the level of particles or more complex structures like cells and nerves, which seems coherent. The challenge to envision such a solution for consciousness motivated Chalmers’s assessment. He argued that not only are we lacking a bridge from mindless particles to mindful experience, if we try to build one using a reductionist blueprint—making use of the particles and laws that constitute the fundamental basis of science as we know it—we will fail.