The assumption, that an objective world completely free of subjects of experience is the ultimate explanation for our world that includes subjects of experience, gives rise to the so-called “hard problem of consciousness,” that is, the problem of explaining what it’s like to be the subject of an experience entirely in terms of the functioning of the brain. But the solution to this problem is not just hard, it’s logically impossible. One’s own brain is something of which one can be aware, either as a concept or a mental image or series of perceptions of an organ with extremely complex interconnections of parts. But no matter how complex it is, it is still only a small part of the greater complexity of the entire field of things and events of which one can be aware. My brain is here in this room where I am typing this. There are other brains in other parts of the house, just as complex as mine, I suppose. This house is but one of many buildings on the earth, which is itself very complex, and but one planet orbiting one of many billions of stars, etc. I can think about any or all of those things as well as think about my brain, and all my thoughts are supposed, by reductionist philosophers like Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris, to be nothing more than something going on in my brain. So, the solution to the hard problem is logically impossible, for it would consist in explaining a thing, the entire field of what I can be aware of, as being nothing more than a part of that very thing, the part that consists of the empirical evidence and theories about the functioning of my brain.
An objective world, completely free of subjects of experience, cannot be the ultimate explanation of our world which includes subjects of experience.
