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Abbasi M B. An examination of the hard problem of consciousness with respect to grounding: A case study of Dasgupta’s view. Advances in Cognitive Sciences 2025; 26 (4) :55-63
URL: http://icssjournal.ir/article-1-1790-en.html

The literature around the hard problem of consciousness and grounding has been considerably developed in the last two decades. Recently, there have been some attempts at reformulating physicalism using grounding with examples such as Dasgupta’s moderate physicalism. He proposes moderate physicalism as a new version of physicalism using a newly introduced notion of autonomous facts, namely the fact that the question of their grounds is meaningless. This case study intends to initially provide a concise overview of the hard problem of consciousness alongside Dasgupta’s contributions. Subsequently, the study will seek to delineate the potential roles that grounding may play in articulating the hard problem. Finally, the analysis will assess Dasgupta’s perspective concerning the findings presented earlier. The endeavors of this paper are divided between two subjects. One concerns the conceivable relations between the notion of grounding and the hard problem of consciousness, and the other concerns Dasgupta’s formulation of physicalism. Seemingly, grounding relates to the hard problem in two ways. Grounding can reformulate the ontological gap, namely, an ontological gap between phenomenal and physical facts if at least one phenomenal fact is not wholly grounded in physical facts. Furthermore, it seems that grounding
and metaphysical explanation can help us limning the distinctions between the five types of Chalmers’ famous classification. Regarding Dasgupta’s reformulation, it appears that his position can only be motivated if one has already accepted the explanatory gap. It also seems that his position cannot avoid our new formulation of the ontological gap and, hence, cannot adequately represent physicalism.