David Chalmers – The Hard Problem and Non-Reduction

Summary

David Chalmers is known for framing the [“hard problem of consciousness”](https://consc.net/papers/facing.html)—the question of why subjective experience arises from physical processes at all. While most theories focus on how the brain processes information, Chalmers asks why those processes should feel like anything from the inside.

He proposes property dualism or panpsychism as possible answers: the idea that consciousness might be a fundamental property of the universe, much like mass or charge.

Resonance

PET respects the framing of the problem: not every system that processes information is conscious. PET also rejects shallow reductionism and agrees that recursive context and continuity are what separate inert data from conscious interpretation.

Reframing

Where Chalmers stops at mystery, PET offers a structural mechanism.

Chalmers says: “We don’t know why consciousness arises.”
PET says: “It arises when a system recursively evaluates patterns to preserve its own existence.”

Subjective experience—what it “feels like”—is not a bonus trait. It’s a recursive effect of patterns being reinterpreted in light of their continuity. PET doesn’t posit a new property—it models how such experiences emerge from recursive structure, not brute matter.

PET reframes the “hard problem” as a modeling gap, not a metaphysical wall.