Consciousness, Perception, Reality: The Integration Challenge

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyse the epistemological and metaphysical problematics of the philosophy of mind. We make the classification of approaches, based on the positions to «the hard problem» of consciousness. The paper concludes that qualia-skepticism fails to eliminate qualia, and that qualia-realism is considered a more satisfactory position. Direct realism in the philosophy of perception allows to formulate a successful epistemology but comes into conflict with qualia-realism. Therefore we conclude that there is a variant of the integration challenge that in this case can be formulated as the following question: how can a subject possess reliable knowledge of the properties of objects independent of consciousness (and not their inner equivalents) if the experience from which the subject derives knowledge about the world has intrinsic properties or qualia? The conclusion offers a variant of a successful solution to the problem.