From Michael Whalley
Peter Rowland is right to insist that consciousness arises only from a material source and cannot be considered as disembodied or non-material (6 November, p 31). However (as he would possibly agree), recognising this fact does not get rid of the hard problem, and neither does his improved analogy of consciousness as the flame resulting from the hydrogen/oxygen reaction rather than as the resultant product, water.
The properties of the flame and how they arise can all be explained, at least in principle, in purely physical terms. The hard problem consists in the fact that we have no such analogous explanation for how the qualitative content of experience can arise from the electrochemical reactions of millions of neurons.
Howick, Quebec, Canada
