Logical proof that the hard problem of consciousness is impossible to “solve”

Skalidris

Let's first assume that the hard problem of consciousness is not the lack of scientific knowledge in that domain but the paradox it creates when thinking of consciousness as an object in the world. Any materialistic theories about it is followed by this question "why are these materialistic phenomena accompanied by experience?". And any materialistic attempt to answer that question also ends up being followed by the same question, creating a circularity that seems impossible to escape.

To me, this type of reasoning implies impossible premises. And to show that, let's first start with possible premises. We know that:

1) One indispensable element for the perception of objects is consciousness.
2) Time flows in one direction.

The logical conclusion from this is that consciousness cannot be viewed solely as an object since it has to be there for the perception of objects. Consciousness can only be viewed as consciousness (cannot be broken down into something else since it is always there as a whole in our reasoning).

However, when we ask ourselves “why are these materialistic phenomena accompanied by experience?”, we trigger a self referential explanation that has no other outcome than being circular because it circles back to incorrect premises that contradict the rest of the reasoning.

It can do so by contradicting the first premise: imagining that we can be “detached” from consciousness, that we can study it from an outside point of view without having to use it in the explanation (which we do, the moment we have thoughts about it…). In other words, it’s like trying to understand what the logical connector “and” means without using it in the explanation. Which is literally impossible since we reason by connecting things, and this connection is just another word, or a more complex version of “and”. "And" cannot be broken down into smaller concepts, just like consciousness (as in the feeling of it) can't.

Going against the second premise is a bit stretched. It seems that people sometimes either forget that something cannot exist prior to its conception, or can reason with a distorted vision of time, leading them to enter a reasoning of how something was created as if it did not already exist and was not used throughout the reasoning. As if things could exist and not exist at the same time.
It's kind of like the liar paradox “this sentence is false” that implies the attribution of a truth value before the sentence is created, which creates some kind of weird time distortion where future and past events get mixed up and circle back to each other because they are contradictive.
"This sentence" refers to a future reference which is "this sentence is false". So it's attributing a truth value to itself that is not constructed yet. And the analysis after the creation contradicts the analysis based on events that did not happen yet so it's continuously changed

The only "solution" that doesn’t imply impossible premises is to consider this premise:

3) Other “beings” could visualise objects without “consciousness”

Which would imply that they would be able to view our “consciousness” as an “object”, without the self reference to consciousness. Although there is nothing that guarantees that their vision of “objects” is similar to ours.

In this light, it is possible to see that consciousness could be completely material and a sort of “illusion”, although we cannot make sense of the idea and that the hard problem of consciousness will always remain for those who try to visualise consciousness as an object. So there is no actual "solution".

It seems like it's only a problem because impossible premises are used. With "possible" premises, it just seems like consciousness (as in the subjective experience) is a building block of our mind that we cannot reason without.

Carlo Roosen

There are a few things I do not understand about the discussions on consciousness. The consciousness we know ourselves to be, that is the first person experience. That consciousness is the container of everything in our personal world. There is our conceptual reality, and our non-conceptual perceptions. Part of that world is both the knowledge and the perception of our body, our sense perceptions, other people etc. Those people, we call them conscious, but that is of a completely different kind than that container of concepts and perception we are aware of as being ourselves. We see their eyes are open and they act in a sensible way, that is what we call 'he/she is conscious'.

So I agree that "....the hard problem of consciousness is impossible to solve", but I don't see the logical proof because it seems we are talking about two different things both referred to as consciousness.

kazan

Dreams, hallucinations and imagination don't fit easily into discussions on consciousness, do they?

Carlo Roosen

↪kazan

I do not understand who/what you are commenting on. Nobody talked about dreams, hallucinations and imagination. I tried to understand where you are coming from, but neither your "about" page not your haiku poems give away that much. Do you just prefer to live in a cloud? I'm ok with that, but please make it clear.

Carlo Roosen

I did a search on the word "hallucinations" to be sure that nobody mentioned them, and the browser found one more than there actually are... Give me my pills.

I like sushi

↪kazan

They do. They are all conscious states.

Skalidris

So I agree that "....the hard problem of consciousness is impossible to solve", but I don't see the logical proof because it seems we are talking about two different things both referred to as consciousness. — Carlo Roosen

Well, I'm also talking about the " first person experience", and people who explore the hard problem of consciousness are also talking about this, aren't they?

Dreams, hallucinations and imagination don't fit easily into discussions on consciousness, do they? — kazan

Dreams and hallucinations are often considered to be altered state of consciousness, so it's still consciousness. But it's interesting because a lot of things we associate with consciousness can disappear in these states, like the self awareness can become very fleeting, or the sense of reality.

jkop

Let's first assume that the hard problem of consciousness is not the lack of scientific knowledge in that domain but the paradox it creates when thinking of consciousness as an object in the world. — Skalidris

What or where could anything be but in the world?

If you assume, for example, that the feeling of hunger is non-physical, then it's paradoxical to think of the feeling as an object in the physical world. But why would you? I don't know of a good reason to split the feeling of hunger from the hunger.

The feeling does not merely accompany the physiology, it has a hierarchical structure in the sense that it emerges from its constitutive lower-level functions in the brain, which in turn are causally constrained by hormones, the level of glucose in the blood, and an empty stomach. The feeling of hunger is not detached from an empty stomach, they're parts of the same structure.

Carlo Roosen

Well, I'm also talking about the " first person experience", and people who explore the hard problem of consciousness are also talking about this, aren't they? — Skalidris

1 yes and 2 no. I believe the two of us are talking about the same thing. But most people, and especially everybody I've seen here so far, seems to talk about consciousness as an object. To me that implies they are talking about something different than I am. Wayfarer yesterday jumped from intelligence to consciousness as if it is the same thing. If two people are not talking about the same thing, no logical argument makes sense.

I wonder if most people ever have tried to simply be aware of their own consciousness (yes, that IS circular). Most people, and especially here on the forum, are so caught up in thinking that they only can have a conceptual understanding of consciousness. No wonder you never can say anything sensible about the topic.

Philosophim

First, lets clarify what 'the hard problem is'. Is it that we're conscious? No. Is it that the brain causes consciousness? No. The idea that consciousness is caused by our physical brains is the easy problem. The hard problem is, "Will we ever know what it is like to BE a conscious individual that isn't ourselves".

In other words, we ever be able to duplicate the experience of being another person? Or an animal? An insect? Because despite all of our capability to study the actions of a consciousness, we can't 'experience' what its like to be that consciousness. Its very much like the question of, "What does it feel like to be water?" We say its not conscious because of its behavior, but what is it to BE water?

Lets say that one day we're able to replicate what seems to be consciousness from the brain. How do we objectively determine this? Do we don a helmet on another person and ask them, "We're emulating your consciousness. Does this feel what its like to be you?" Beyond the fact that it would be a conscious being thinking about the consciousness outside of their consciousness, where's the objective test? The measurements that don't rely on subjective experience? They don't exist. Because to know what its like to be conscious is a subjective experience. There is no objective measure but the honesty of the subject itself. And can such experiences be communicated in words? Can the person experiencing a perfect replica of the consciousness as a third party observer really have the full experience?

If anyone tells you, "The hard problem is proving that the brain causes consciousness," they misunderstand. It isn't even "Why does this cause concsiousness" that's the hard problem either. Its really saying, "How can we objectively measure and explore the purely subjective experience of being conscious?" With our current understanding of science, we can't.

Carlo Roosen

With our current understanding of science, we can't. — Philosophim

I believe this is the point Skalidris is making: it is not about the advances in science. Even defining consciousness leads to problems.

I personally believe it is even more simple, we are not talking about the same "thing". Any thought experiment you try will fail on me, because you are not talking about the sense of being conscious, but about the content of that consciousness. For me consciousness is the 'container'. The only way to access it directly is by 10 seconds of non-thinking.

Skalidris

What or where could anything be but in the world? — jkop

It's not so much about whether things "actually" are physical or not but about our representation of what's physical. And since that representation requires consciousness, it's impossible to imagine consciousness solely as an object in the world because that reasoning already implies consciousness to view it as an object, creating a self reference. Do you know what I mean?

Whether physical or not physical, consciousness cannot be viewed as anything other than consciousness because it's there in any reasoning we have.

Wayfarer yesterday jumped from intelligence to consciousness as if it is the same thing. — Carlo Roosen

Interesting.

↪Philosophim

It seems that we're talking about the same problem, what you're describing also arises from the problem that our consciousness is like a building block in our mind, that we cannot escape it. We'll never know what it is like to be someone else's consciousness because we're only aware of ours, and it's there all the time, in any reasoning we have, so it's impossible to imagine what it would be like with another building block. Any thoughts we would have about it implies our consciousness, not someone else's, so it's impossible to know.

"How can we objectively measure and explore the purely subjective experience of being conscious?" With our current understanding of science, we can't. — Philosophim

Well we can't, however advanced sciences become, that's what this "logical proof" is about.

Philosophim

I believe this is the point Skalidris is making: it is not about the advances in science. Even defining consciousness leads to problems. — Carlo Roosen

I only put that because perhaps one day we will actually be able to know what its like to be someone else. But with the knowledge we have today, this is the hard logical limit of our understanding, and thus we have an issue of objectively evaluating subjective experience.

Any thought experiment you try will fail on me, because you are not talking about the sense of being conscious, but about the content of that consciousness. — Carlo Roosen

Correct. We can monitor and map your brain to when you say you experience consciousness. We can map the brain to your behaviors, and even note what you are thinking before you are aware of it. But we cannot know what it is like to BE you. To BE your consciousness.

Philosophim

Any thoughts we would have about it implies our consciousness, not someone else's, so it's impossible to know. — Skalidris

Correct.

"How can we objectively measure and explore the purely subjective experience of being conscious?" With our current understanding of science, we can't.
— Philosophim

Well we can't, however advanced sciences become, that's what this "logical proof" is about. — Skalidris

Never say never! Yes, this seems impossible today. But science is full of 'making the impossible possible'. Did we conceive that cell phones would exist 300 years ago? That mankind would ever be able to travel to the moon? Judging what is possible in the future based on what we know today has a history of throwing egg on the face of our collective human race. :)

This is why it is viable to call it 'the hard problem' instead of 'the impossible problem'.

The hard problem is, "Will we ever know what it is like to BE a conscious individual that isn't ourselves". — Philosophim

Just for the record, that isn't the standard way of stating the problem, and it isn't David Chalmers' way (he coined the phrase). You can listen to Chalmers describe it here: He defines the problem as "how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experiences in the mind." When we solve this problem (I do believe it's when, not if) we may or may not know "what it's like" to be someone else. That's a separate, though perhaps related, issue.

SophistiCat

Just for the record, that isn't the standard way of stating the problem, and it isn't David Chalmers' way (he coined the phrase). You can listen to Chalmers describe it here: He defines the problem as "how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experiences in the mind." When we solve this problem (I do believe it's when, not if) we may or may not know "what it's like" to be someone else. That's a separate, though perhaps related, issue. — J

To know "what it's like" to be someone is to experience what they experience. Such experiential knowledge cannot be gained through propositional knowledge of how experience works. There is no mystery or paradox in this, of course, and as you note, this is not the "hard problem."

↪SophistiCat

An interesting dilemma follows from the idea of "experiencing what X [someone else] experiences." Am I having that experience, or is X? If it's me, then it would appear that I'm not experiencing what X experiences, since she surely experiences it as herself and not me. But the other horn of the dilemma is equally unappealing: If I have somehow become X when I experience what it's like to be X, then it what sense have I had this experience? Have I suddenly birthed a second identity?

Patterner

The hard problem is, "Will we ever know what it is like to BE a conscious individual that isn't ourselves".
— Philosophim

Just for the record, that isn't the standard way of stating the problem, and it isn't David Chalmers' way (he coined the phrase). You can listen to Chalmers describe it here: He defines the problem as "how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experiences in the mind." When we solve this problem (I do believe it's when, not if) we may or may not know "what it's like" to be someone else. That's a separate, though perhaps related, issue. — J

:up:

An interesting dilemma follows from the idea of "experiencing what X [someone else] experiences." — J

Rather, an interesting dilemma would follow from the idea of "experiencing what X [someone else] experiences," if it was possible to experience what X experiences. I don't suspect that will ever be possible, regardless off what the solution to the Hard Problem turns out to be.

SophistiCat

↪J

↪Patterner

Agreed, the very idea of having someone else's experience seems to be incoherent. Perhaps it can be approached by atomizing experience into distinct qualia that could, hypothetically, be imbibed without completely relinquishing your core self. One could imagine, for example, a blind person having a visual experience that would otherwise be denied to them by their own faculties. But the closer you approach someone else's what-it-is-likeness, the less of your self you can retain.

Patterner

↪SophistiCat

It's all very strange to think about, eh? Could someone telepathically share their experience with me without also sharing all of their memories that make the particular experience what it is? Would the feeling of nostalgia automatically come with all relevant memories, since they must be actively remembered to some degree for them to feel it? Or would I get just the feeling, and not know what it's about?

↪Patterner

↪SophistiCat

Strange indeed. I have a friend who refers to this as "the impossible problem," for the reasons we've just laid out. The good news is that such absolute immersion in another's experience may not be necessary in order to get a wonderful sense of "what it's like" to be some other consciousness. We already have vehicles for accomplishing this in part -- fiction, films, virtual worlds, anything that invites empathy and identification. Time will tell whether we can create a technology that transfers this from an imagined to a real experience of an other.

Baden

Let's first assume that the hard problem of consciousness is not the lack of scientific knowledge in that domain but the paradox it creates when thinking of consciousness as an object in the world. — Skalidris

It doesn't imply that. For Chalmers, who came up with the hard problem, consciousness is not an object but a property of objects (and distinct from physical properties by its nature). So, your argument is a bit like saying it's logically impossible to prove the existence of time because it's an object in the world and we can't perceive it as such because each act of perception is a static measurement that never captures its flow. The way you've framed the problem may create a logical impossibility, but I think that's an issue with the framing. It may turn out to be that the problem is insoluble for other reasons or that it may be a conceptual issue (more of a non-problem), but I don't see logical impossibility applying here.

Philosophim

↪J

Just for the record, that isn't the standard way of stating the problem, and it isn't David Chalmers' way (he coined the phrase). You can listen to Chalmers describe it here: He defines the problem as "how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experiences in the mind." — J

Correct. I'm noting it in a way that avoids the standard confusion of, "So we don't know if the brain causes consciousness? Its the subjective point that needs focusing on for most people. Because we cannot currently objectively know what a subjective experience is like, this makes it incredibly hard to say, "This is the subjective experience the brain has, and this is the objective physical brain mapping that causes it."

Consciousness, as a behavior, is capable of being mapped to the brain and is the "easy problem". We can monitor your brain, vitals, and behavior and say, "Objectively, they're in pain". But can we objectively say, "And this is their subjective experience of pain"? No. That's the hard problem.

↪Baden

Agree. I've noticed a tendency for many people to get exercised about the so-called problem of "treating subjectivity as an object." Like you, I can't see this as a genuine problem. We're not trying to replicate it or inhabit it or experience it, we just want to think about it, much as we would any other non-objective property. In doing so, we will of course keep its unique character in mind.

Skalidris

Never say never! Yes, this seems impossible today. But science is full of 'making the impossible possible'. Did we conceive that cell phones would exist 300 years ago? That mankind would ever be able to travel to the moon? Judging what is possible in the future based on what we know today has a history of throwing egg on the face of our collective human race. :)

This is why it is viable to call it 'the hard problem' instead of 'the impossible problem'. — Philosophim

This would require a little more than improvements in transportation or communication… This would require that our mind is restructured in a way that does not require “consciousness” to be a building block in our mind. And even if that is managed, this would be replaced by another “building block” and we would then face the same problem for this other building block. We use tools from our mind to understand the world, just like in the Lego analogy I explained later in this message, and it’s impossible to explain these tools when all we have to do so are the same tools we’re trying to explain...

your argument is a bit like saying it's logically impossible to prove the existence of time because it's an object in the world and we can't perceive it as such because each act of perception is a static measurement that never captures its flow. — Baden

You're comparing apples and oranges. You're talking about the inability to understand something because we would assume that we don't have the right tools in our mind (which couldn't be a certainty solely based on logic), and I'm talking about the inability to understand something because it's self referential. We need consciousness to think, therefore we need consciousness to make any inference about consciousness, that's the problem.

Imagine a child is trying to figure out how a plastic Lego brick was made, but all they have to work with are other Lego bricks. The child could build something that looks like a drilling rig out of the bricks and they can pretend that this rig drills deep into the ground to extract some natural substance (also made of bricks) and then use another set of bricks to build a pretend fire, imagining that the substance is somehow broken down by the fire to create the bricks themselves. But the child can't actually break down or change the bricks. They're trying to use the very bricks they're made of to explain how those bricks came into being, which creates the self-referential problem. The “hard problem of the Lego brick” could be that whatever they try to build, they’ll have no way to actually check if what they built is truly like what’s happening in reality because they’ll never be able to actually build a brick.

Even if we can study our brain and associate phenomena with consciousness, our understanding of it is made through consciousness, through this subjective notion in our mind. And breaking down consciousness is impossible: it's always there as a whole, at least if we consider the whole to be the experience of the subject (you could study altered states of consciousness to learn more about the missing elements in these experiences).

Wayfarer

First, lets clarify what 'the hard problem is'. Is it that we're conscious? No. Is it that the brain causes consciousness? No. The idea that consciousness is caused by our physical brains is the easy problem. The hard problem is, "Will we ever know what it is like to BE a conscious individual that isn't ourselves". — Philosophim

That is your particular intepretation of the problem. David Chalmer’s original paper doesn’t say that. He says that understanding the specific functional aspects of consciousness and their correlation with neural processes are comparatively easy:

The easy problems of consciousness include those of explaining the following phenomena:

* the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;
* the integration of information by a cognitive system;
* the reportability of mental states;
* the ability of a system to access its own internal states;
* the focus of attention;
* the deliberate control of behavior;
* the difference between wakefulness and sleep. ...

There is no real issue about whether these phenomena can be explained scientifically.... If these phenomena were all there was to consciousness, then consciousness would not be much of a problem. — Chalmers

Compare with:

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.

He surveys a number of proposed causal links between brain and conscious experience and finds them wanting. Further on he says:

I suggest that a theory of consciousness should take experience as fundamental. We know that a theory of consciousness requires the addition of something fundamental to our ontology, as everything in physical theory is compatible with the absence of consciousness. We might add some entirely new nonphysical feature, from which experience can be derived, but it is hard to see what such a feature would be like. More likely, we will take experience itself as a fundamental feature of the world, alongside mass, charge, and space-time. If we take experience as fundamental, then we can go about the business of constructing a theory of experience.

Where there is a fundamental property, there are fundamental laws. A nonreductive theory of experience will add new principles to the furniture of the basic laws of nature. These basic principles will ultimately carry the explanatory burden in a theory of consciousness. Just as we explain familiar high-level phenomena involving mass in terms of more basic principles involving mass and other entities, we might explain familiar phenomena involving experience in terms of more basic principles involving experience and other entities.

In particular, a nonreductive theory of experience will specify basic principles telling us how experience depends on physical features of the world. These psychophysical principles will not interfere with physical laws, as it seems that physical laws already form a closed system. Rather, they will be a supplement to a physical theory. A physical theory gives a theory of physical processes, and a psychophysical theory tells us how those processes give rise to experience. We know that experience depends on physical processes, but we also know that this dependence cannot be derived from physical laws alone. The new basic principles postulated by a nonreductive theory give us the extra ingredient that we need to build an explanatory bridge. — Chalmers

Which he proposes as a 'naturalistic dualism'. He never states that the problem is what it is like to be a conscious individual that isn’t ourselves. His key point is the emphasis on 'experience' which is by nature first-person. That could be intepreted as saying that 'we can't directly know the experience of another person', but he doesn't directly state it.

The stumbling block for the objective sciences - the actual problem that has to be faced up to - is that experience is not objective, as the OP kind of says. Consciousness is the property of the subject to whom the experience occurs, so the exclusive emphasis on objective, third-party measurement which is the backbone of modern scientific method can't accomodate it. Which is why elminativism wants to eliminate it.

The idea that consciousness is caused by our physical brains is the easy problem. — Philosophim

But the nature of that causal relationship is the very heart of the issue. Physicalism assumes that it possess an in-principle explanation, but that is what is being called into question.

Philosophim

That is your particular intepretation of the problem. David Chalmer’s original paper doesn’t say that. — Wayfarer

Correct, I was not quoting Chalmers. And its not an incorrect interpretation of the problem either, set for a layman's understanding. At the core of the hard problem, the issue is that we cannot objectively evaluate subjective experience, or what it is like to be another being. I go into more depth in some other posts here, see if my answers jive or not.

He never says that the problem is what it is like to be a conscious individual that isn’t ourselves. — Wayfarer

If we were able to objectively evaluate the subjective experience of an individual, we would have no hard problem. He doesn't have to say those exact words to understand the reason behind his claim.

Which he proposes as a 'naturalistic dualism'. The key point being the emphasis on 'experience' which is by nature first-person. — Wayfarer

Right, we cannot objectively evaluate subjective experience. So since we can't use objectivity in regards to 'what it is like to be the consciousness', we have to use non-objective terms. He can use the word dualism if he wants, but he's not implying that subjective consciousness isn't physical or some 'other'. He's just noting there's no objective way to evaluate the subjective experience of being consciousness in physical terms, as we have no way of evaluating what its like to be something we are not.

The point is to hammer home that the hard problem is not, "Is our consciousness in our brains?" Yes, it is. There is no soul, or other essence as neuroscience has shown repeatedly. It just means that we cannot objectively talk about the subjective experience of being conscious, because we have no way of objectively knowing what the personal experience a person is feeling when they say, "I feel pain". We can see their bodily reactions, their actions, and their brain functions, but we cannot currently understand what that 'feeling' is, unless we are that person themself. Perusing through your Chalmer's quotes, I don't see where I'm at odds, so we might be in agreement here.

Wayfarer

he's not implying that subjective consciousness isn't physical — Philosophim

He jolly well is!

Chalmers asks:

We have seen that there are systematic reasons why the usual methods of cognitive science and neuroscience fail to account for conscious experience. These are simply the wrong sort of methods: nothing that they give to us can yield an explanation. To account for conscious experience, we need an extra ingredient in the explanation.

That 'extra ingredient' is missing from physical explanations:

It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does. ...

For any physical process we specify there will be an unanswered question: Why should this process give rise to experience? Given any such process, it is conceptually coherent that it could be instantiated in the absence of experience. It follows that no mere account of the physical process will tell us why experience arises. The emergence of experience goes beyond what can be derived from physical theory.

So he's explicitly rejecting physical reductionism.

Wayfarer

There is no soul, or other essence as neuroscience has shown repeatedly. — Philosophim

I might as well try and spell this out, as it's been a bone of contention between us in many debates. There is a deep philosophical problem here. To say that mind is not reducible to physical constituents, is not to posit some ethereal substance or 'ghost in the machine' (if that is what 'soul' means to you). That view is grounded in Cartesian dualism, which posited body as extended but mindless substance and mind (res cogitans) as non-extended pure intelligence. Cartesian dualism is written deeply into the fabric of modern philosophy and science. In general terms, in the following centuries, science tended to res cogitans as an incoherent idea, and to concentrate on material causes, res extensa, as the ground of explanation in natural science. And I think that is in the back of your mind whenever we get into this topic. That is why for you, and for many others, it is axiomatic that the mind has to be understood in terms of physical (or neurological) causation.

I don't think Chalmers is trying to suggest that there is a soul or essence in that sense. I'm certainly not trying to resurrect a Cartesian soul! But I also think that the physicalist picture that arises from denying the reality of consciousness (in effect) is also mistaken, because it's grounded in faulty premisses from the outset, on an artifical distinction between abstractions. Rather, the whole picture of Cartesian dualism, and the physical reductionism that descended from it, has to be called into question. That is the philosophical background as I see it.

Philosophim

We have seen that there are systematic reasons why the usual methods of cognitive science and neuroscience fail to account for conscious experience. These are simply the wrong sort of methods: nothing that they give to us can yield an explanation. To account for conscious experience, we need an extra ingredient in the explanation.

That 'extra ingredient' is missing from physical explanations: — Wayfarer

Yes, and that extra ingredient is the inability to objectively grasp other subjective experiences. Again, this does not mean there is some actual essence we're missing. It means we are at a limitation of what we can evaluate objectively: the personal subjective experience. This does not mean subjective experiences aren't physical. We can evaluate a brain objectively and state, "According to what we know of behavior, this brain is in pain." We just can't objectively state 'how that brain is personally experiencing pain'.

I don't think Chalmers is trying to suggest that there is a soul or essence in that sense. I'm certainly not trying to resurrect a Cartesian soul. But I also think that the physicalist picture that arises from denying the reality of consciousness (in effect) is also mistaken, because it's grounded in faulty premisses from the outset. — Wayfarer

There is nothing faulty with the physical evaluation of consciousness and the brain in observed outcomes and behaviors. Give a person anasthesia, and you can knock them unconscious. We can know personally what its like to be knocked unconscious, but we cannot objectively know what its like for another brain to experience being knocked unconscious. The physical experience does not deny that a consciousness has a subjective component, it simply understands that objectively explaining the personal experience itself is outside of the realm of testing, as we need to know what its like for another consciousness to be that consciousness.

Its really just a variation of the old, "I see green, you see green, but do we really experience the same color?" Does this mean that green is not a wavelength of light, or that our conception of green in daily use is faulty? No. We still have physical eyes, and physical brains that interpret that light into the subjective experience of 'green'. We could poke around in your brain and trigger you into saying, "I see a green tree," We just can't objectively know what the personal experience of 'I see a green tree' is to you specifically.

The problem is the 'hard problem' has been used far too often by people to mean more than it is stating. It does not deny the physical reality of consciousness that has been discovered by neuroscience. You are your brain. The question is, "Can we objectively understand your brain as a subjective experience?" That's currently outside of what we can objectively know, and may never know, at least in our lifetimes.

Its not a difficult concept, but people try to make it difficult because they think its a way to make us more than our brains. Its not. The only way we're going to get that answer is continual research into neuroscience. Philosophy may have more to bring to the table, but I'm not seeing any further discoveries from this line of thinking.

I'm interested in how Neurolink is developing for example. This is a great article on the idea of how it will feel. https://medium.com/swlh/neuralink-what-do-isobars-feel-like-when-they-move-ff3070198263

Here's an article on the first patient playing Mario kart with the Neurolink: https://www.pcmag.com/news/neuralink-patient-also-uses-brain-chip-to-play-mario-kart

As we can see, the physical brain and consciousness is alive and well in terms of behavior and interfacing with other forms of reality like computer chips. What does THAT feel like? What brain activity are they recording to do that? This is the exciting stuff we should be thinking and talking about. Will we be able to achieve the science fiction dream/nightmare of having chip interfaces do more for us like access memory, help regulate our emotions, and more? Will all of this data through multiple chip use begin to map out the brain in ways we haven't imagined yet? If we want philosophy to stay relevant, we need to follow the discoveries that are being made today, or find some way to push science into areas we want to explore like 'personal experiences'.

Wayfarer

Yes, and that extra ingredient is the inability to objectively grasp other subjective experiences. Again, this does not mean there is some actual essence we're missing. It means we are at a limitation of what we can evaluate objectively: the personal subjective experience. This does not mean subjective experiences aren't physical. We can evaluate a brain objectively and state, "According to what we know of behavior, this brain is in pain." We just can't objectively state 'how that brain is personally experiencing pain'. — Philosophim

You're still not seeing the point, though. There is some ability to infer some obvious physiological correlations like pain or epilepsy from neuroscience, but you still fall back on the assumption that subjective experiences are still ultimately physical, without addressing the real crux of the issue: the first-person, qualitative aspect of experience that resists explanation by objective, third-person descriptions. Even if we can identify some neural correlates—like specific brain states that accompany pain, color perception, or emotions—these correlations don’t explain why or how those states are accompanied by conscious experience, and there's no actual theory that does so. The subjective feel of pain, or what it is like to experience red, is not part of the objective description. That is the explanatory gap that you're explaining away by equating the subjective with the merely personal.

If we want philosophy to stay relevant, we need to follow the discoveries that are being made today, or find some way to push science into areas we want to explore like 'personal experiences'. — Philosophim

So to paraphrase, your response is, 'It's true that objective science can't capture personal experience, but it doesn't really matter. From brain science, we know that experience is basically physical in nature, let's hope philosophy catches up with that one day.'

Logical proof that the hard problem of consciousness is impossible to “solve”

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