Bernabé Mallo
Doctor en Filosofía por la Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU)
Investigador
en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte. / PhD in
Philosophy – University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
Researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origins of art.
A review of "Facing up to the problem of consciousness" (1995) and its implications for understanding art as the expression of subjective experience
Introduction: What does a bison feel?
Let us imagine for a moment the Palaeolithic artist who, over thirty thousand years ago, painted a bison on the walls of the Altamira cave. They were not photographing an animal. They were not scientifically documenting its anatomy. They were doing something far stranger and, perhaps, far more human: they were trying to communicate what it feels like to see a bison.
This distinction —between registering a fact and expressing an experience— lies at the core of one of the most fascinating philosophical questions of our time. The Australian philosopher David Chalmers articulated it in 1995 with a clarity that has shaped the philosophy of mind for three decades: there is a radical difference between the "easy" problems of consciousness (how the brain processes information, discriminates stimuli, integrates data) and the "Hard Problem" (why and how this physical processing is accompanied by a subjective experience, by something that feels like something from the inside).
Those subjective, incommunicable experiences are called qualia (singular: quale): the "redness" we see, the "pain" we feel, the "melancholy" that washes over us when we hear a song . A machine can detect the wavelength of red light (650 nanometres), but it does not experience redness. A robot can register an impact, but it does not feel pain. And an algorithm can analyse a painting, but it does not live the emotion the artist sought to convey.
The thesis we will explore here is this: the origin of art is intrinsically linked to the human need to express and share qualia. Art was not born as a cultural luxury, but as the first technology we invented to break the isolation of our private minds.
What is the "Hard Problem" of consciousness?
In his influential paper "Facing up to the problem of consciousness" (originally published in 1995 and widely disseminated since then), Chalmers proposes a methodological division that has transformed the study of the mind.
The "easy" problems
There are multiple questions about the mind that can be addressed by the standard methods of cognitive science and neuroscience: how does a subject discriminate sensory stimuli? how does the brain integrate information from different sources? how are internal states verbalised? These are complex problems, but there is no reason in principle to think that science cannot solve them.
Chalmers calls them "easy" not because they are trivial, but because they fit the standard explanatory paradigm: they relate cognitive functions to physical mechanisms. A theory of visual information processing, for example, tells us how the brain transforms light waves into patterns of neural activation.
The Hard Problem
The Hard Problem is of a completely different nature. It does not refer to what the brain does, but to how that doing is accompanied by a subjective experience. Why does the activation of neurons in the visual cortex not only process information but also feel like something to see red? Why are we not all "philosophical zombies" —beings who behave exactly like humans but lack all inner life?
Chalmers argues that reductive methods —those that attempt to explain consciousness in purely physical terms— are doomed to failure because they leave intact the central question: why does subjective experience exist at all. This is not to deny the relevance of neuroscience, but to recognise that, by itself, it cannot close the "explanatory gap" between the brain and lived experience.
What are qualia and why do they matter for art?
Qualia are the building blocks of our inner life. They are the phenomenal qualities of experience: the itchiness of an itch, the warmth of the sun on the skin, the sadness of a minor melody. They are, as the literature notes, "the subjective characteristic of experiences, which are only directly accessible from the subject having the experience" .
Science can describe the physics of colour, the physiology of pain, the acoustics of sound. But there is something about the experience of red that escapes all objective description. That "something" is the quale. And it is, we will argue here, the true object of art.
Art does not communicate objective information about the world —science already does that. Art communicates how it feels to be in the world. A cave painting is not a photograph: it is a projection of the hunter's subjective experience, of their wonder, fear, and admiration before the beast. A symphony is not a treatise on acoustics: it is the transfer of a mood from the composer's mind to the listener's mind.
Art as a bridge between isolated minds
One of the most disturbing philosophical problems is the problem of other minds. I can never know for certain whether you see blue as I see it, or whether your pain feels like mine. We are, as the poet said, "trapped in the prison of our own skulls".
Art, from this perspective, is the primitive technology we invented to escape that prison. It is the attempt to transfer my qualia directly to your brain, bypassing the cold language of science. When an artist paints a sunset, they are not saying "there is a 3000-degree Kelvin light source setting behind the horizon". They are saying: "look, this is what it feels like to me to see the sunset". And when you contemplate that painting and feel something similar, a miracle occurs: two minds have met in a common space, have shared something that is, in principle, unsharable.
Chalmers has explored these ideas also in the context of virtual realities. In his work Reality+ (2022), he argues that virtual worlds can be as real as the physical world, and that immersion in them can generate genuine experiences . We might add that art has always been a virtual reality technology: the painted cave was the first immersive headset, the novel the first simulated world, the symphony the first artificial soundscape. Art is not a substitute for reality: it is an expansion of reality, a new territory for subjective experience.
Connection with research on the origin of art (S/Y/C)
This reflection on qualia and art resonates deeply with the research we have been developing on the S/Y/C model of neuronal functioning and the Law of Biological Coherence.
The Y (Symbolon) dimension of our model finds its deepest foundation here. Symbolon —the capacity to create and share symbols as an act of recognition— is not an abstract cognitive ability. It is, above all, the response to an existential need: sharing the unsharable, communicating qualia, breaking the isolation of consciousness.
Art is symbolon par excellence because it does not merely represent objects, but embodies experiences. When the artist paints, they do not just draw forms: they project their interiority. When the spectator contemplates, they do not just recognise forms: they receive an experience. Art is the bridge that the human brain builds between two subjectivities, using symbols as raw material.
The S (Survival) and C (Wholeness) dimensions are also involved. Art, by allowing us to share qualia, fulfils a crucial homeostatic function: it regulates our collective emotions, helps us process pain and joy in community, and strengthens the social bonds essential for group survival. At the same time, aesthetic experience offers us a sense of wholeness —an achieved totality, an emergent meaning— that satisfies the deepest drive of our nervous system toward coherence and integration.
Final considerations: art as testimony of the living
Chalmers's theory reminds us that consciousness —and with it, qualia— remains one of the great mysteries of science. But perhaps that mystery is not a problem we need to solve, but a reality we must accept and, in the case of art, celebrate.
Art exists because human beings are not content to process information. Human beings feel. And what they feel is as real as what scientific instruments measure, even if it cannot be reduced to equations. The cave painting, the symphony, the novel, the poem: all of them are testimonies that inner life matters, that qualia are the centre of our existence, that sharing what we feel is as important as sharing what we know.
And that, perhaps, is the true origin of art: not the need to represent the world, but the need to express the soul.
References
Chalmers, D. J. (1995). Facing up to the problem of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2(3), 200–219. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203826430-11
Chalmers, D. J. (2022). Reality+: Virtual worlds and the problems of philosophy. W. W. Norton & Company.
López Mallo, J. B. (2023). La construcción neuro-simbólica. Una aproximación al funcionamiento del cerebro desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar [Doctoral thesis, University of the Basque Country - Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea]. ADDI Repository. http://hdl.handle.net/10810/62701
https://catalogo.sanchoelsabio.eus
López Mallo, J. B. (2026a). De la filosofía quirúrgica a la ley de coherencia biológica S/Y/C: Hacia una investigación sobre el origen del arte en la especie Homo. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57196
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYGTJD5C
López Mallo, J. B. (2026b). From surgical philosophy to the law of biological coherence S/Y/C: Toward a study of the origin of art in the Homo lineage. Lopez Mallo, Javier Bernabé. https://isbn.bibna.gub.uy/catalogo.php?mode=detalle&nt=57197
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GY89SZS1
Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? The Philosophical Review, 83(4), 435–450.
Autor / Author
Bernabé Mallo
Doctor en Filosofía – Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Investigador independiente en neurofilosofía, evolución humana y origen del arte.
Bernabé Mallo
PhD in Philosophy – University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)
Independent researcher in neurophilosophy, human evolution, and the origin of art.
Enlaces / Links
Página de autor Amazon / Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9002-9728
Plataforma EHUenRed / Link EHUenRed: https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/masterrak-eta-graduondokoak/red-latinoamericana-de-posgrados
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neuroideas815
Canal YouTube / Channel YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBsf6OZ482NjST6QA-hvYtQ
Publicaciones y proyectos en desarrollo / Publications and projects:
https://www.amazon.com/author/bernabemallo
https://ehuenred.theglocal.network/ideas/el-origen-del-arte-en-el-cerebro-de-makapansgat-al-moma-del-primate-al-sapiens
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