The "Hard Problem" of Life
arXiv Preprint Archive June 23, 2016 Sara Imari Walker, Paul C. W. Davies
The essay draws a parallel between the 'hard problem of consciousness' and a proposed 'hard problem of life': how information can act as a causal agent in the physical world. The authors argue that explaining life requires understanding how information influences events, and they suspect this problem, like consciousness, may not be fully reducible to known physical principles, potentially requiring new laws or concepts.