This isn't actually true. If you're genuinely interested in the subject I can point you in the direction of some good books/papers/links. Also there is a lot of dispute on whether Chalmers is even correct to say that there IS a 'hard problem'.

doesn't the dispute about the 'hard problem' more or less boil down to whether or not you accept the intuition that there is something about conscious experience (qualia or the like) that is ineffable?

If you accept it, there is a hard problem

If you deny it, there is no hard problem

The basis of the intuition itself is just that it feels like the "transcendental unity of self-perception" (I always liked this phrase in Kant) is something real, and the difference in opinion on it is just how much weight you put on that intuition.

Yes, more or less. The HPoC asks "how and why does subjective experience (qualia) arise from sensory input". But we know, for example, the condition of blindsight is linked to (carefully avoiding "caused by", for the nits ) damage to the left V1 visual cortex. Patients with blindsight have no quale associated with vision - they consider themselves blind - but perform way way above chance when asked to 'guess' where an object is, or identify it's colour. Conditions like these suggest that qualia are reducible to, or caused by, or emerge from the physical structures of the brain. That doesn't really get us closer to explaining 'why' we have qualia, but should not give any comfort to mind/body dualists either. VS Ramachandran's "The Tell Tale Brain" is a good, readable book for the layperson on this sort of thing.

Every time Kant comes up I wish I'd read up on him, but my reading list for this year is already unmanageable. Can you (or anyone) recommend a sub-200 page introductory book on Kant?

http://www.amazon.de/Immanuel-Kant-O...8510036&sr=8-1

(not that it'll help much, but Otfried Höffe is one of the heavyweights on Kant in Germany. If you can find a translation of his introduction, you can safely go with that)

Thanks. Looks like there's a translation here: http://www.amazon.com/Immanuel-Kant-.../dp/0791420949

Yo, then that'd be a decent start. I can't find my own copy so I couldn't figure out whether it's the same, but the 3-part approach rings a bell. I attempted to work through that thing like 5 times, always got to page 100, then fell asleep. I figure that means, it's "true to Kant".

I've only read Critique of Pure Reason, and even there I'm not sure I can claim to have really understood it entirely. But I got that one phrase and by God I'm going to name-drop Kant when the opportunity arises

Interesting. From my brief research into it though, and I'm far from an expert obv, it seems like there is still some controversy regarding what is actually going on as well as issues with small sample sizes. But definitely interesting although I don't see how it helps the emergence argument specifically, but rather demonstrates that the brain has a very key role in consciousness which I don't think many people debate.

I can't vouch for it fully as I've not read it, but Alan Wood is a superb Kant scholar and he has a highly reviewed 216 page intro book on him here.

If you want to go into a bit more depth and want something a bit more recent, Paul Guyer's Kant is very good.

What if God decides he wants humans to have free will, can he then make himself "less omniscient" (for lack of a better term) so that he doesn't know the outcomes of our choices?