The “Hard problem” is defined as the difficulty in specifying how subjective awareness could arise from brain activity (Hobson & Friston, 2014).
At the same time, the input-output gates of the brain are actively closed and the chemical balance is shifted from aminergic to cholinergic.
According to Hobson, dream interpretation has, until recently, relied on theories of symbolic transformations of mental content and the formal approach described here does not disprove previous schemata.
Hobson & Friston (2014) write that the “hard problem” can be seen as a residue of Cartesian dualism, which considers brain and mind to be qualitatively distinct entities.
The key move in accepting and advancing this idea is to specify dual aspect monism as the concept best adapted to a new view of the brain-mind has a unified system with two components, one objective (the brain) and one subjective (the mind) (Hobson, 2005, 2009, 2011, 2015).
For this reason, Hobson argues that a high priority should be accorded to brain science supposing that it will help better understand the mind.