I think therefore I am ..... Or am I ?

David Chalmers points to the 'hard problem', the unbridgeable gap between firing neurons and the inner glow of experience. He asks why there is something it is like to be at all. Brains and AI may simulate thought and behaviour, but the fact that we experience red, feel pain, or taste chocolate cannot be accounted for by functions alone. Consciousness, for Chalmers, is a fundamental feature of the world, something that cannot be reduced or eliminated without losing the essence of what it is to exist as a sentient being. Where others see clever constructions, he sees reality insisting on recognition, a mysterious presence that resists simplification. For Chalmers we don't just experience, we are aware that we are experiencing.

Daniel Dennett, looking at the same processes, tells us to be careful of what our minds claim to deliver. He calls consciousness a user illusion, a magic trick our brains play on us to make sense of the world. There is no single observer inside; only many parallel processes weaving stories that feel coherent. To worry too much about the inner self is to chase shadows. The brain does what it does, organising stimuli into patterns, creating the impression of experience. The sensation of being aware is a convenient interface, a kind of software dashboard over a hardware we barely understand, and the real work is in the computations themselves. We feel like something inside us, but according to Dennett, that feeling is a clever construction, not the core of reality.

This week I will be looking at how the Philosophy or Mind influences the would we live in and the day to day news items that can be viewed through the lens of Chalmers and Denntett.