Pierz Newton-John
1 min readJan 16, 2025

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My problem with this argument is that the Hard Problem asks how we might find a rational explanation for subjectivity, not how we might feel less surprised by it. You lean a lot on monstrous creativity, as ever, but “monstrousness” is a human category, a point I’ve made before. You acknowledge this by grounding the monstrous aspect in nature’s obliviousness to human ends. So if the monstrousness arises only once humans exist, in their subjectivity, it cannot be grounds for that same subjectivity. Or do you believe there is some inherent valence of monstrosity to nature that exists prior to our perception of it? In that case you’d need to define what monstrosity can mean in such an impersonal context. I would find that hard to swallow since I cannot even really go along with nature being monstrous in the first place. A monster is misshapen, misbegotten whereas nature appears to me certainly terrible and awesome but also extraordinarily beautiful and elegant.
More importantly though, my point is that this argument grounds its answer to the hard problem in something impressionistic - “nature is fecund and strange so why be surprised that it also can give rise to awareness?” - which is an appeal to mystery not a rational account, which is what the hard problem asks for. It begs the question of what your ontology is here. Are you a materialist? And if so, how do you square this with the inner view of mind? If not, what are you?
I feel you’ve evaded rather than answered these “hard questions”.

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Pierz Newton-John
Pierz Newton-John

Written by Pierz Newton-John

Writer, coder, former psychotherapist, founding member of The School Of Life Melbourne. Essayist for Dumbo Feather magazine, author of Fault Lines (fiction).

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