Heil, J. (2018). The mystery of the mystery of consciousness. In M. P. Guta (Ed.), Consciousness and the Ontology of Properties (Pp. 15-23). Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315104706
[Abstract]This paper takes up what has been called the ‘hard problem of consciousness’: how can we account for the presence of consciousness in the universe as described by physics? The problem can seem not simply hard but utterly hopeless. One possibility is that the problem is of our own making. We begin with various assumptions that yield a space of possible answers, none of which carries conviction. Two assumptions are identified and shown to be optional. When these are replaced by plausible alternatives the hard problem becomes, if not immediately amenable to solution, at least less hopeless. Consciousness is a familiar and beloved feature of our lives. One way to locate the mystery of consciousness is to recognize it as one aspect of a more general problem, the problem of reconciling our everyday experience of the universe with the 'scientific image', the picture of the universe we obtain from the sciences, especially fundamental physics. Consciousness and the manifest image are said to be qualitatively rich, but the physical universe as depicted in the scientific image is thought to be qualitatively bereft. Although the bifurcation of the mental and the physical and the related bifurcation of qualities and powers are perhaps the most prominent sources of the mystery of consciousness, the author mentions one more impediment to a sensible understanding of consciousness and a reconciliation of the manifest and scientific images. Neuroscientists describe brain states as the 'substrate' of consciousness.
Note:
Originally published in Insight, 2015, volume 8, number 9. "Insights captures the ideas and work-in-progress of the Fellows of the Institute of Advanced Study at Durham University."
[Citing Place (1956)]  
Citing Place (1956) in context (citations start with an asterisk *):
Section Escaping the Fly Bottle
* Although the bifurcation of the mental and the physical and the related bifurcation of qualities and powers are the most prominent sources of the mystery of consciousness, let me mention one more impediment to a sensible understanding of consciousness and a reconciliation of the manifest and scientific images. I have in mind the tendency to conflate features of things perceived and features of experiences of those features. In the 1950s, U. T. Place dubbed this mistake as the phenomenological fallacy (Place, 1956: pp. 48–50). When you look at the tomato, you experience something red. Philosophers sometimes describe this as your having a red experience. But your experience is not red; the tomato is red. The redness you experience belongs to the tomato, not to your experience of the tomato. So, from the fact that you are ‘having a red experience’ despite your brain’s not being red – or there being no tomato-shaped red occurrence in your brain – in no way shows that your experience of the tomato is not an occurrence in your brain.