I have been assuming throughout that consciousness is a state, not an object. Minds 'have' consciousness, but they are not made of it. It's a state of them.

The problem I am highlighting is not, then, one that is a product of picturing things incorrectly. The problem is that some people think that in the case of consciousness, we can get out what we did not put in. That is, though they accept in all other contexts that such a notion is incoherent, they suddenly accept it when it comes to consciousness.

Hi,

I'm not sure of the motivation for that view. Conscious states are states and states are of things. I'm taking that for granted.

I see no problem with that way of characterizing things, such that I see no motivation for thinking we are confused when we do so.

I think there is a problem in supposing conscious states to be states of physical things. Lots and lots of problems. The particular one I am drawing attention to is that unless one attributes conscious states to the basic units of matter, to attribute it to physical wholes violates a basic law of reason - one so fundamental it underpins basic logic. To suppose a whole could have a new kind of property not in anyway present already in its parts is really no different from supposing a valid argument can have a conclusion that was in no way present in any of the premises. That is, it is no different from thinking that sometimes arguments of this form - 1. if p then q, 2. p. 3. therefore R are valid.

But this doesn't imply a problem in the idea of concious states being states. It just implies that the objects of which conscious states are states are not physical ones (not complex physical ones anyway)

Dictionary definition fallacy. Look it up.

Oh, and I won't be responding to you again btw. You are on the 'not worth it' list.

You do realize YOU are the one Humpty dumptying? Despite my having said what I mean by weak emergence numerous times you have decided that you can just decide to give it a different meaning and thereby win a point! Anyway, this is not profitable and I won't be responding to you anymore. You can take that as a victory (alongside Mary Antoinette's victorious shampoo savings)

This just ignores what I explicitly said I mean by weak emergence. I am using it to mean: something had by the whole, but not by any of the parts. If the whole weighs 10 stone but the parts weigh 1 stone each, then the whole has a property - weighing 10 stone - that none of the parts have.

If someone wants to use weak emergence to mean something else, that is a verbal disagreement. But it is not a criticism of my claim. One might as well say 'I know someone called 'Emergence' and they're strong. Therefore there is strong emergence.

Good will account: overdrawn.

And for those interested in my actual argument, weak emergence is where the whole has a feature not found in the parts but that is not of a different kind from that found in the parts, whereas strong emergence is where you have a feature emerging in the whole that is different in kind from the parts.

Those totally uninterested in the argument are free to use the terms however they wish.

That really makes no sense at all. I'm afraid your good will account is empty now too. Have a lovely day.

No, I'm afraid you used up whatever store of good will I may have had for you. Sorry about that.

You are simply restating Chalmers’s explanatory gap and treating it as if it were the problem I am raising. It simply isn't.

I am not arguing that consciousness is puzzling because it is private, first-personal, or resistant to third-person description. I made it abundantly clear in the OP that I consider all of those pseudo problems.

If you think consciousness can be generated from a base that entirely lacks it, then you are committed to getting out what was never put in. Everything else you’ve said is irrelevant to the issue at hand.

Oscar Wilde has nothing to fear

Life is only getting shorter. You haven't grasped the point never mind addressed it. So really this isn't worth continuing.

Further demonstration that you haven't grasped the point. Life's too short for our exchange to continue.

You're giving a historical diagnosis, not raising an objection or highlighting some flaw in the reasoning.

The historical diagnosis is incorrect. Consciousness has been considered a property of a non-physical thing for time immemorial. Consciousness was already understood as something that could not be accounted for in purely material terms, which is precisely why it was excluded from physics in the first place.

You mention Chalmers - but as I made clear in the OP, the genuinely hard problem I am drawing attention to is not the one that he is labelling the 'hard problem of consciousness'. Chalmers is a physicalist and what he's doing is raising a pseudo problem and just ignoring the real one (for the real one seems decisively to refute his view and establish either panpsychism or dualism.

Again: call it what you want. You're getting out what was not put in. End of story.

If there's no rabbit in the hat, you can't get one out. that's true even if it's not a hat, but a cap. it's not about understanding more about how hats work. It's about not being able to get out what wasn't put in. It's painfully simple.

Ironically given the science envy that so many seem to have, you are being fantastically unscientific. Science would never have progressed at all if scientists just proposed magical newe property generating laws - for if that is genuinely a satisfying explanation nothing further would need to be investigated.

It is scientific to recognize that you can't get something for free. Which is precisely the principle I am appealing to. And it entails that consciousness is either a property of something non-physical, or it is a property of atoms.

Clearly you haven't as you persist in thinking further information about the arrangement of the brain will supply an answer. Until you can see why this isn't going to work, you haven't grasped the point

It was.
Call it whatever you want, the point does not alter. Unless a new kind of property is already in the base, no amount of complexity - or whatever - will conjure it. That is the point you haven't grasped.

That’s an ad hominem. The argument does not depend on ignorance of neuroscience. It depends on a principle of reason: reorganisation cannot create a new kind. If you deny that, explain why. Otherwise, the point stands.

Complexity does not create new kinds of property. It only reorganises existing ones. Until you explain how phenomenality appears from a base that lacks it entirely, the argument stands.

Note, it is those who think you can get out what was not in any way put in who are being unscientific and illogical.

Emergence is a slippery term, but no one would call this any kind of emergence:

Combining objects of different weights will result in a whole that weighs more than any of its parts. The weight is said to be weakly emergent.
— Clarendon — SophistiCat

That is a paradigm example of weak emergence.

bigger sigh. Okay then - again

Anderson’s “new properties” are not new kinds of property. They are new patterns of behaviour grounded in microphysical structure and laws. That is weak emergence, which I have never denied. Again, if we're giving each other advice then you need to familiarize yourself with the distinction between weak and strong emergence and to do that I suggest you read philosophers not physicists.

You understand that my point is not Chalmers' point? And you understand that where the impossibiilty of strong emergence is concerned, all Chalmers does is posit laws that permit it, as if that'll somehow deal with it?

that's really all I have to say on Chalmers. The problem of consciousness I am raising is not the one he's talking about and it is not one he's done anything to deal with.

You are describing exactly what I have already granted: weak emergence.

Voice, gait, accent, vocabulary, chess moves - they're all patterns of behaviour realised in physical processes that already have the relevant kind. No new kind of property appears. Nothing phenomenal is generated.

The fact that history matters, that outcomes are not predictable from initial conditions, or that laws underdetermine behaviour is completely irrelevant. Indeterminacy and complexity do not create new kinds of state; they only select among possible instances of the same kind.

So nothing you have said even begins to touch the argument. You have given a catalogue of weakly emergent patterns and treated that as if it showed how a wholly new kind of property could arise. It does not.

You are clearly assuming that any hard problem of consciousness just is the one Chalmers is talking about. It is not. This is the 'hard problem' fallacy, we might say. Anyone who raises a hard problem of consciousness 'must' be talking about what Chalmers is talking about. No, if you understood Chalmers you'd understand that in my opening post I was explaining why the 'hard' probem he perceives there to be is a pseudo problem.

Chalmers’s hard problem concerns explanation: that functional and causal accounts leave consciousness no work to do. My point is not that one at all. It concerns generation: whether a property of a wholly new kind could come into existence from a base that contains nothing of that kind at all ( to which the answer is a self-evident 'no'). You don't seem to be grasping the difference.

Chalmers does not resolve that problem. He sidesteps it by positing fundamental psychophysical laws. But that is not an answer to the generative question. It simply says that consciousness appears because the laws say so. But such laws are just labels for magic, not solutions. It's not different from explaining how the magician produced a rabbit from the apparently empty hat by simply saying 'there is a hat-rabbit law'.

So this is not a matter of my rejecting Chalmers’s solution. There's no solution to reject. But anyway, as you're clearly locked-in to thinking that any and all hard problems of consciousness are the ones Chalmers was talking about, there is - again - no point in us continuing this (about which we already agreed, I thought).

First, physicalism does claim that everything that exists is ultimately physical, in the sense that all facts supervene on physical facts. Denying that physicalism is committed to this simply misunderstands the position.

Second, appealing to supervenience does no work here. Supervenience states a dependency relation; it does not explain how a wholly new kind of property could come into existence from a base that entirely lacks it. It is irrelevant, then, to the issue at hand.

Third, nothing I have said denies that external stimuli affect the brain, or that there are correlations, mechanisms, and bidirectional interactions. Such observations are beside the point. They do nothing at all to explain how consciousness could arise from combining objects that entirely lack it.

So unless you think that supervenience allows you to get out what was never put in, you have not yet engaged with the argument.

“you can't get out what you don't put in”— baloney. — T Clark

Have you thought about working that up into an article?

This isn't worthwhile. You don't seem to understand either Chalmers or me.

I haven't denied that consciousness can be a fundamental property of matter. I don't think it is. But I haven't denied the possibility. I have said quite explicitly - numerous times now - that the physicalist must either attribute consciousness to the base (which is what that would be doing) or give up physicalism

No, you're conflating two different points. the quote you gave does not state my principle. It states the familiar explanatory point that functional and behavioural explanation leaves experience unaccounted for.

I am saying a physical base that contains nothing of the phenomenal kind - so, no consciousness - cannot intelligibly generate anything that has it. That is why appeals psychophysical laws do not answer the objection. They stipulate that consciousness appears at some level of complexity without explaining how a new kind can arise from ingredients that lack it.

So yes, I have read Chalmers. My point is that he does not confront this stronger problem head on. He treats the hardness as a challenge due to consciousness's explanatory superfluity, rather than recognizing that there is a principled barrier to ever getting consciousness out when it hasn't been put in.

But if you're just going to insist that any hard problem of consciousness must be whatever Chalmers is talking about - and that it suffices to have raised the problem I am raising just to say 'it's hard to explain how physical things can be conscious' then yes, I agree that we are not going to get anywhere.

Which quote - this one? "Even when we have explained the performance of every cognitive and behavioral function in the vicinity of experience, the question of why there is experience at all remains unanswered.”

That does not articulate the problem I am raising. He is saying what I said he says - that consciousness is expalnatorily superflous.

I have read him. I think you need to read him more carefully. you seem to be committing the fallacy I mentioned earlier. That is, of thinking that as he has talked about a 'hard' problem of consciousness then any hard problem of consciousness is the one he's talking about.

I don’t think Chalmers really recognises the force of the problem I am highlighting. He never explicitly states it, after all.

I mean, he is certainly aware that it is hard to see how consciousness could arise from the physical. But he treats this as a difficulty about explanation or theory choice, rather than as a principled barrier grounded in reason. He doesn't articulate the point I am making: which is that it is hard because you'd be trying to get out what you haven't put in. When that is highlighted as the hard-making factor, it goes from hard to insurmountable. Consciousness must be attributed to the base - so atoms have now to be said to have consciousness - or physicalism must be abandoned. I am not merely pointing out that we lack a scientific story or that conciousness is weird. the whole project of trying to make sense of consciousness against a physicalist background is misguided from the get go.

Chalmers’s response is to posit fundamental psychophysical laws: at a certain level of organisation, consciousness appears. But claerly that does not address the problem at all. It simply stipulates around it. It is a “hey-presto” move: consciousness appears because the laws say so. Only in this case too. Everywhere else you can't get out what you don't put in - logic, and so on. But in this one case there is this magical exception - you can get consciousness out without putting it in. So let's not beat about the bush: Chalmer's theory of consciousness is that it's magic - it just magically appears. You can't normally get a real rabbit out of an empty hat, but you can get real consciousness out of a meat hat, despite none having been put in.

That is precisely why he does not foreground this issue. Taken seriously, it would undermine the entire physicalist framework within which he wants to work. So he treats consciousness as a datum to be accommodated, rather than as the decisive reason why physicalism cannot make sense of consciousness in the first place. And thus he is driven to suppose magic occurs.

He'd have us believe that the 'hard' problem of consciousness is one to do with its apparent explanatory superfluity - we don't hve to posit conscious states to explain why our bodies do what they do. But that's a strawman problem compared to the one I'm drawing attention to.

I think he's certainly aware of this proper hard problem of consciousness.
But he has no solution to it. His response is to posit fundamental psychophysical laws. That is, he thinks we can just say that at a certain level of complexity and arrangement it is a law of nature that consciouos states strongly emerge. Now, that's not a solution at all. For one cannot overcome a profound metaphysical problem by simply relabeling it. We can call this special law a 'hey presto' law, for that is what it is. It just says 'and at this point - hey presto - consciousness appears, despite in no way being present up to this point'.

This is why Chalmers would rather we see the 'hard' problem as consisting of the pseudo problems I mentioned in the OP and not foreground the real problem - for the real problem is one that defeats him.

Note too that Chalmers is as committed a physicalist as the next contemporary philosopher, for though he calls himself a 'property dualist', this is once more a matter of labels rather than substance. For he means by this just that he thinks consciousness is not reducible to any other arrangement of states. But that's true of size and shape, but it would be absurd to call oneself a property dualist because one holds that shape is not reducible. Kinds of state are, by their very nature, not reducible- they would't be basic if they were!

The fact is that property dualism makes no real sense (unless by it one means simply that there is more than one kind of property). If one does not think consciousness is a property of a wholly distinct kind of entity, then one is not a dualist about consciousness. For states cannot exist absent the objects of which they are states. And so one can't in all seriousness describe oneself as a 'property dualist' where consciousness is concerned if one holds - as he does - that it is nevertheless a property of an arrangement of physical things.

Chalmers’s “hard problem” concerns explanation: we can explain what a system does without mentioning consciousness.

That is not the problem I am raising. Explaining an object’s behaviour without mentioning one of its properties is not in itself a problem. We can explain how a key opens a lock without mentioning its colour. Does that mean there's a problem with locks and keys having colour?

My problem is not about explanatory superfluity. It is about generation: how a property of a wholly new kind could come into existence from ingredients that entirely lack it. (Indeed, it can't - and so the problem confronting the physicalist is that they must either abandon their physicalism or attribute consciousness to base materials).

I think people are making the mistake of thinking that because Chalmers coined the (somewhat unoriginal) phrase 'the hard problem of consciousness' then any hard problem must be the one he was talking about. My project was to find a genuine hard problem and distinguish it from pseudo problems.

Note: Chalmers believes in the strong emergence of consciousness. So he doesn't seem to recognize the problem I am raising.

I can only speak for myself, but I don't think you've understood the view.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with whether scientists can study consciousness. Nothing. The point is a very simple one. You can't get out what you don't put in. You can't get a sized thing from combining sizeless things.

This argument is valid: 1. If umbrellas are up, it is raining. 2. Umbrellas are up. 3. Therefore it is raining. The conclusion contains nothing not already there in the premises. It extracts their implications, but it does not add anything. Whereas this is invalid: 1. if umbrellas are up, it is raining. 2. Umbrellas are up. 3. Therefore I am rich. That conclusion doesn't follow from those premises. Why? Because nothing it claims is in the premises.

Now unless you think that you can make a sized thing from sizeless things, and that you can validly extract a conclusion about wealth from premises that don't mention it in any form, then you accept that you can't get out what has in no way been put in.

Thus, applying that same principle to consciousness, you cannot get consciousness out unless it has been put in. Thus, if you think that a complex physical thing has consciousness, then you must - on pain of believing in magic - believe that some of its components had consciousness. Otherwise, whence came it?

Note: I am not challenging 'science'. Nothing in science challenges what I've just said. Nothing in science challenges the idea that you can't get out what you didn't put in. It is those who believe that you can get a wholly new kind of property from ingredients none of which possess it who are being unscientific.

It doesn't rule out weak emergence as I have pointed out numerous times now. Weak emergence is fine. Strong emergence is magic. Weak emergence in no way licenses strong emergence. By combining shaped things you can create something that has a different shape from any of the shaped things you combined. That's weak emergence and its fine. Why is it fine? Because you don't have a new kind of property arising (as I've said again and again). What's not fine is thinking that by combining lots of shaped things you can create a wholly different kind of property - that's alchemy and it is as contrary to reason as supposing that from these premises - 1. If it is tuesday, it is raining, and 2. it is tuesday, one can validly derive the conclusion "therefore I will have fish for dinner tonite"

The gravity analogy misses the point. Gravity was always a physical magnitude governed by laws. What changed was the theory, not the kind of thing being explained. No new ontological category appeared.

Consciousness is already fixed as a kind: a subjective state, something it is like. Any theory must account for that.

Strong emergence does not propose a better theory of a known kind. It proposes that a new kind appears from ingredients that wholly lack it. That is not a scientific hypothesis but a metaphysical stipulation.

Energy is not an absence of mass relevant properties. It has mass energy equivalence by law. That is exactly why E = mc2 is true!

So your example was never a counterexample. It presupposes[/i] the very principle you're trying to use it to refute.

Walking away does not change that.

We know enough about consciousness to know that it is a state quite unlike size or shape. We know that it is a subjective state, that there is something it is like.

Strong emergence is not a provisional scientific hypothesis. It is the claim that a wholly new kind of state can arise from ingredients that entirely lack that kind. That's not a thesis that can be confirmed empirically.

Yes, the truth of logic that it is invalid to have in your conclusion something not contained in the premises is just a special instance of the general truth of reason I'm appealing to: that one cannot get out what has not been put in.
We can be surprised by a conclusion of a valid argument, just as we can be surprised at the shape that combining some shaped things gives us. But that's weak emergence, not strong. A strongly emergent conclusion is just another name for an invalid conclusion.

Re the 'something it is like' of conscious states - it seems unique to them; their defining feature.

If energy truly had no mass-relevant properties, then E = mc2 would be false.
So your example presupposes the very principle you think it refutes.

I don't think it's arbitrary at all. Consciousness picks out a clear phenomenon: there being something it is like for a subject. Pain, visual experience, felt thought, and so on.
Anyway, one can't get it out without putting it in, is my point. One can't construct it from that which does not have it at all - that would be no different from trying to get a thing of size by assembling things of no size. It's just not going to work.