# Contested concept: easy problems

_**What you are reading**: one contested-concept page in Deliberus's deliberation graph. Deliberus maps human reasoning — including claims that are contested, mistaken, or extreme — so that disagreement can be examined precisely. A claim's presence here is not an endorsement: the graph records that someone argued it, how it connects to other reasoning, and how far scrutiny has gotten. The metadata on this page describes the state of that scrutiny, not the truth of the claim._

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- **Contestedness**: criterion
- **Diagnosis**: The easy/hard labels mask a disagreement over whether difficulty is measured by the kind of explanation needed (in principle) or by empirical difficulty in practice.
- **Canonical**: `/concept/easy problems` (data: `/concept/easy problems.json`)

## Senses in use
- **Easy because functional or structural and reductively explainable in principle** — used in 3 claim(s)
- **Easy only in the sense that scientists know what to look for, though as hard as going to Mars** — used in 3 claim(s)
- **Actually the hard ones, in practical difficulty** — used in 2 claim(s)

## Claims using this term
- [With enough brainpower and funding, scientists would crack the easy problems of consciousness in this century.](/claim/claim_2941593c0923.md) _(sense: Easy only in the sense that scientists know what to look for, though as hard as going to Mars)_
- [The really hard problems are the problems the scientists are dealing with.](/claim/claim_a0a6c2408ecb.md) _(sense: Actually the hard ones, in practical difficulty)_
- [For the easy problems of consciousness, scientists more or less know what to look for.](/claim/claim_c11987737614.md) _(sense: Easy only in the sense that scientists know what to look for, though as hard as going to Mars)_
- [The easy problems [of consciousness] are a logical consequence of lower-level facts about the world](/claim/claim_e5c19425efb8.md) _(sense: Easy because functional or structural and reductively explainable in principle)_
- [The easy problems [of consciousness] pertain to the causal structure of the world while the hard problem [of consciousness] pertains to con…](/claim/claim_e90bbe22f5a3.md) _(sense: Easy because functional or structural and reductively explainable in principle)_
- [The easy problems [of consciousness] are amenable to reductive enquiry.](/claim/claim_f48032cfb481.md) _(sense: Easy because functional or structural and reductively explainable in principle)_
- [The easy problems of consciousness are about as easy as going to Mars or curing cancer.](/claim/claim_f7a52dd7c783.md) _(sense: Easy only in the sense that scientists know what to look for, though as hard as going to Mars)_
- [Chalmers' "easy problems" of consciousness are actually the hard problems.](/claim/claim_ff927e9280c0.md) _(sense: Actually the hard ones, in practical difficulty)_