Because we are misled by what we think are the "easy problems". We think we have much better intuitions than we do. There are several hard problems, not just consciousness.

By science I mean the instruments that detect physical matter....Not saying we can't go beyond that if we understand the problem.

What does green sound like? How much does love weigh?

Just being able to string words together in question format doesn't imply an answer is wanting. — Isaac

In these cases, yes, they are nonsense questions. And in my case, using an apple as feeling was nonsense as well. I hope you didn't ignore the point to focus on one loose example. Can you know what it will feel like to be a bat without being a bat yourself? No.

The difficulty is not that we lack a theory (we have theories, but none are widely accepted or even compelling, afaik), but that we lack a theory of a theory: not only do we not know how material processes lead to consciousness, but we don't even know what a theory which explains it would look like. In other words, we cannot conceive it.

We have not yet explained irritable bowel syndrome either. I — Isaac

The comparison is not apt. Even if it is not explained, we understand what a theory of IBS would look like: a cascade of biological processes, in one form or another, lead to and explain the observed symptoms. This is readily conceivable.

But we cannot conceive how a cascade of biological processes can lead to the observed symptoms of consciousness, because we cannot conceive how any physical process can lead to consciousness. There is an explanatory gap.

I disagree with this. Scientists don't generally say that biology is nothing but chemistry. In the same way, mental processes, including consciousness, are not nothing but biology. But they are bound by biology in the same way that recorded music is bound by a CD or MP3 reader or radio. Music is not nothing but electronic equipment and electrical processes. — T Clark

The difference here is that compact disk's relation to musical sounds is clearly explained by the science. Here, it is precisely this relation that science cannot explain.

Just being able to string words together in question format doesn't imply an answer is wanting. — Isaac

:fire:

If it can't be known by science, how can it be known. How do you know it?... You don't. — T Clark

:100:

But they are bound by biology in the same way that recorded music is bound by a CD or MP3 reader or radio. Music is not nothing but electronic equipment and electrical processes. — T Clark

You seem certain of this. Is this an article of faith? Or do you have evidence for this? Is that evidence conclusive?

Any study of consciousness using neuroscience alone will surely fail and here's why. — Mark Nyquist

Maybe. But not for this reason:

Our brains contain networks and catalogs and hierarchies of biologically contained non-physicals that will never be detected by any physical means, ever, regardless of the science. — Mark Nyquist

Presumably there is a lot more you could say to substantiate this. By itself this is not enough.

But just as the wood and spring of the mouse trap in no way explain how a mouse trap could be consciousness, the laws of biology, chemistry, electricity, and quantum mechanics in no way explain consciousness—or even hint that consciousness is possible. — Art48

Intuitively I agree. The answer to the question "Why can't all that happen without consciousness?" is rarely forthcoming. Yet that is what is needed for a plausible theory of consciousness in terms of physical processes.

If you start with a bad theory of information the problem of consciousness will be unsolvable.

By science I mean the instruments that detect physical matter....Not saying we can't go beyond that if we understand the problem. — Mark Nyquist

As far as I can see, there's no reason to think that consciousness can't be understood in terms of principles we already are aware of. I don't see any hard problem.

it is precisely this relation that science cannot explain. — Constance

That science has not explained. I see no reason to believe it can't.

You seem certain of this. Is this an article of faith? Or do you have evidence for this? Is that evidence conclusive? — bert1

Not faith, confidence. Could I be wrong? Of course. But the fact that many people cannot conceive that consciousness might have a physical basis is not evidence that it doesn't.

That science has not explained. I see no reason to believe it can't. — T Clark

In order for science to do this, there must be in place at least some working concept of epistemic relations that is grounded in observational discovery. I can't imagine.

I don't see any hard problem — T Clark

:up:

:100:

Not faith, confidence. Could I be wrong? Of course. — T Clark

:fire:

order for science to do this, there must be in place at least some working concept of epistemic relations that is grounded in observational discovery. I can't imagine. — Constance

Integrated information theory is a stab at creating a theory grounded in direct experience. It's a beginning.

Integrated information theory is a stab at creating a theory grounded in direct experience. It's a beginning. — frank

Okay, I'll look into it, but it would have to be something like an alternative to causality. The only way this can work would be two very radical ideas: S knows P is the issue. One cannot disentangle P from justification, and it really looks like P and the justification are the same thing, that is, the nexus of the epistemic connection is not to be separated from P itself. Causality (perhaps you've read some of the proffered solutions/failures to those Gettier problems, the severed head, the barn facsimile, e.g.s) does not, of course, carry P to S, to put it plainly. P is lost instantly in the causal sequence describing the knowledge connection. One radical solution is to say S and P are bound in identity: In some describable way, P is part of S's identity, and the brain/object separation has to be dismissed. Another way is come up with the magical connectivity that allows S and P to be altogether independent entities, yet epistemically joined.

The former is in the bounds of what a phenomenologist might defend. All things I witness are witnessed in sphere of my personal totality. I suppose we are in Kant's world here, or some derivation. Husserl had to address the issue of solipsism. For clearly when I know P, P cannot be foreign to my powers of apprehension; it has to be IN this somehow. For objects to be MY objects justifying my knowledge claims, there must be a "belonging" that intimates P AS P, and not P as something that is not P. If P belongs to my own epistemic constitution, then the intimation is possible.

Then, working with a physical model seems hopeless. I actually suspect that the brain does not produce conscious experience, but rather conditions it. Experience exceeds the physical delimitations of the physical object, the brain. Call it spirit??

: S knows P is the issue. One cannot disentangle P from justification, and it really looks like P and the justification are the same thing — Constance

The beginning of a theory of consciousness would just start with guessing at what kind of system could produce the experience of gazing straight ahead, being aware of sights and sounds in a seamless unity.

I think you're focusing more on the philosophy of propositions?

Then, working with a physical model seems hopeless. I actually suspect that the brain does not produce conscious experience, but rather conditions it. Experience exceeds the physical delimitations of the physical object, the brain. Call it spirit?? — Constance

You're basically describing the hard problem, the point of which is that science needs to grow conceptually in order to have the tools to create a theory of consciousness.

The beginning of a theory of consciousness would just start with guessing at what kind of system could produce the experience of gazing straight ahead, being aware of sights and sounds in a seamless unity. — frank

The trouble is that on a physicalist model, and talk about nervous systems and axonally connected systems, neurochemistry, and the like, one is supposed to first get beyond a universal physical reduction. Of course, you can say, well, we just have to live with this and empirical science is the only heel that rolls, but I would disagree: A scientific idea has to have something to observe, and here, this would be self's interiority. This is not objective and empirical and science can't touch it.

Now Husserl called what he did a science because he was flowing the scientific method: observing descriptive features of thoughts, relations, phenomenal intuitions and so forth. Perhaps on the cutting edge of discovery is this century ago phenomenologist.

You're basically describing the hard problem, the point of which is that science needs to grow conceptually in order to have the tools to create a theory of consciousness. — frank

I certainly agree. I am coming to believe phenomenology holds the key.

I can't imagine. — Constance

"I can't imagine" is a pretty pitiful argument.

"I can't imagine" is a pretty pitiful argument. — T Clark

And worse, simply not true. I can imagine it. It is just far away from empirical science.

That science has not explained. I see no reason to believe it can't. — T Clark

It's not complicated. Science (or at least a lot of it) begins with the presumption of objectivity, that it is studying something that really so, independently of your or my opinions. It assumes the separation of subject and object, and attempts to arrive at objective descriptions of measurable entities. And the mind is not among those entities. The hardline eliminative materialists will insist that the mind nevertheless can be described completely in third-person terms without omission. That is the target of David Chalmer's original formulation of 'the hard problem', for instance, when he says:

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. — David Chalmers, Facing Up to the Hard Problem

My paraphrase of this is simply that experience is first-person. It cannot be fully described in third-person terms, as there must always be a subject to whom the experience occurs. What I think Chalmers is awkwardly trying to describe is actually just being, as in human being. And what I think the 'eliminativists' exemplify is what is criticized by philosophers as 'the forgetfulness of being'.

Husserl, as @Constance points out, anticipated this in his criticism of naturalism.

It assumes the separation of subject and object, and attempts to arrive at objective descriptions of measurable entities. And the mind is not among those entities. — Wayfarer

I don't want to get into a long discussion about how science has to proceed. I will say that there is no reason the mind would not be among entities amenable for study by science. You and @Constance are just waving your arms and promoting a ghost in the machine with no basis except that you can't imagine anything else.

From where I sit, there's no need to take this discussion any further. We clearly aren't going to get anywhere. I'll give you the last word if you want it.

I will say that there is no reason the mind would not be among entities amenable for study by science. — T Clark

Well, pack it and send it, and I'll check it out.

I don't want to get into a long discussion about how science has to proceed. I will say that there is no reason the mind would not be among entities amenable for study by science. You and Constance are just waving your arms and promoting a ghost in the machine with no basis except that you can't imagine anything else. — T Clark

It's an interesting one, isn't it? I think at this point in history there are a few key issues left to people who wish to find support for higher consciousness/idealism/theism worldviews - the nature of consciousness, and the mysteries of QM, being the most commonly referenced. I don't know if consciousness is a hard problem or not. It seems to depend on what presuppositions one brings to it. Nothing new there. But I do know that it has become a 'god of the gaps' style argument, a kind of prophylactic against naturalism and a putative limitation on science and rationalism and their questionable role generating Weberian disenchantment in our world. I'm suspicious of the arguments and I'm not sure the matter will be resolved in my lifetime.

:sparkle: Happy 2023 ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/699384 :smirk:

Can you know what it will feel like to be a bat without being a bat yourself? — Philosophim

The question simply makes no sense. What could an answer possibly be? "It feels like...?" What words could possibly fill the blank?

we don't even know what a theory which explains it would look like — hypericin

Again, the fact that you don't personally understand the neuroscience of consciousness is not an indication that there's nothing there to be understood. Dozens of researchers in consciousness think they know exactly what a good theory would look like and they've constructed their experiments closely around those models. The fact that you don't grasp them is not a flaw in the model.

we cannot conceive how a cascade of biological processes can lead to the observed symptoms of consciousness, because we cannot conceive how any physical process can lead to consciousness. — hypericin

I can. It's simple. Some collection of biological processes leads to the observed symptoms of consciousness. Why wouldn't they? What's in the way? What compelling physical law prevents biological processes from causing whatever symptoms they so happen to cause?

:clap:

The truly insurmountable problem is that one can't just magically endow consciousness with the ability to finally perceive itself as an object.

It really is not possible to prove what consciousness is, not free from assumptions, anyway.