An awake brain and an anaesthetised one differ in numbers you can actually measure: network synchrony and integration collapse as the drug takes hold. Charting such correlations is work neuroscience can do, and Chalmers in 1995 called that whole family the easy problems. The hard problem sits elsewhere: knowing exactly which neurons fire still does not tell you why that physical arrangement comes with a feeling, precisely the gap Levine described in 1983. Global workspace theory and integrated information Φ remain contested hypotheses, and neither has closed the gap.
An awake brain and an anaesthetised one differ in numbers you can actually measure: network synchrony and integration collapse as the drug takes hold. Charting such correlations is work neuroscience can do, and Chalmers in 1995 called that whole family the easy problems. The hard problem sits elsewhere: knowing exactly which neurons fire still does not tell you why that physical arrangement comes with a feeling, precisely the gap Levine described in 1983. Global workspace theory and integrated information Φ remain contested hypotheses, and neither has closed the gap.
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