Do we need to subdivide, so that neuroscience somehow gets its own dedicated branch of philosophy? — Pattern-chaser

This is already done. Within philosophy of science we have philosophy of physics, philosophy of biology, etc. So you could call it neurophilosophy or you could call it philosophy of neuroscience. I would leave it up to the practitioners to name it. But I don't see it taking over all of philosophy in any case.

What I originally said was that it's clear what "conscious experience" refers to. — Echarmion

And I said, that doesn't fit well with the claim that attempts to define and explain it are futile. I proposed, as a way forward, clarification of the reference of the term, from agreed clear cases towards less clear but more explanatory ones.

I meant to welcome your example and merely cast a preliminary glance at possible refinements (less clear cases) ahead. I don't blame you for not being impressed with those off-the-cuff suggestions.

Right, but uncertainties of memory aside, while we "recall" it, we are certainly consciously experiencing. — Echarmion

Yes, and the goal for me is to describe that experience accurately. Rightly or wrongly I sense a need to persuade against a defeatism about that goal. Hence the need to agree common ground.

I am not sure we can know when we are not conscious. How would we differentiate between not having been conscious and simply not remembering? — Echarmion

By the same token, though, popular assumptions about the "integration" of consciousness might be questioned. (E.g. Searle's idea of consciousness as a "field".) Again, I am opposed to defeatism about the prospect of knowledge about such things, even based on introspection. Perhaps we can learn to become less oblivious of the gaps in conscious experience. (Have you tried staying conscious whilst falling asleep?! :nerd: )

Anyway, thank you for hearing my objection to your defeatism, as I saw it, about the feasibility of explaining or defining consciousness.

Out of interest, for my informal survey... roughly at what point, if any, are you prepared to assume complete unconsciousness of a creature/device:

Mammal
Fish
Insect
Plant
State of the art AI
Smart phone
Pocket calculator
Rock
Molecule
None of the above

Thanks

But thinking is the process of thinking. We don't know where the thoughts we experience as our thoughts ultimately come from, but we do know what a thought is, when we have one, and how one thought leads to another etc. — Echarmion

But judging cases of thinking and not thinking would be a perfectly good place to start finding out what thoughts are. — bongo fury

The question of what something is is a question of constitution, structure and function, though. We all know what a tree is in the sense of being able to recognize one when we see it, but very few of us know what trees are in the sense of understanding their constitution, structure and function. I'd say being able to know when you are thinking, or being able to recognize a thought when you have is just like being able to recognize a tree; it is just a first (of course necessary) step towards knowing what a thought is.

You're making some assumptions here. That there is a "sensed world" (I take it you mean "external world"?), that there are other people, and that we have bodies.

But even granting all that, to say conscious experience is "only a tiny part" A) isn't true (it's the most foundational thing we have. It permeates our every waking moment), and B) even a tiny bit of conscious experience has to be explained, and we're back to the same problem: how does interacting matter give rise to conscious experience? — RogueAI

For us there is definitely a sensed world external to our bodies. Whether there is a sensed world in any absolute or ultimate sense (which is what I guess you are alluding to wanting to know) is either unanswerable or not even a coherent question; take your pick.

To say that consciousness is foundational is just to interpret the situation from a certain perspective. To say that matter is foundational is to interpret it from another. Neither interpretation is, in any real sense, foundational.

We have an intuitive idea of what consciousness which may well be completely off the mark. Or there may be no mark to be off, and our idea of consciousness is just one of many possible ideas of what it is. The same goes for our idea of what matter is. The so-called "Hard Problem" arises in the context of certain conceptions of what consciousness and matter are, and does not arise in the context of others. I would say that in the context in which the HP arises, there is no possibility of an answer because of the incommensurability or incompatibiblity of the conceptions of consciousness and matter. If that is right then it would be better named the "Impossible Problem".