I don't see how anything I've read here is inconsistent with the idea that the experience of consciousness is a manifestation of biological and neurological processes. — T Clark

The authors of the Stanford Encyclopedia article would agree with you. They are among those who believe that a ‘mutual enlightenment’ between cognitive science and phenomenology is desirable and attainable. Husserl himself believed that trying to ground phenomenology in empirical science was putting the cart before the horse. I believe that it can eventually be possible to naturalize phenomenology , but this will require innovations in thinking within the psychological sciences that haven't taken place yet. Using current models within biology, neuroscience and cognitive psychology to underpin Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology would completely misrepresent the subject matter.

between a science that recognizes that reality is inextricably tangled with human cognition and one that doesn't. — T Clark

Any examples come to mind of sciences or scientists that do?

Phenomenology, insofar as it understands consciousness to be intentional, is still working in dualistic terms, and I see it as helping to understand how things seem to us in our everyday dualistic mindset; I don't see how it it can offer anything beyond that. — Janus

You seem to be understanding ‘dualism’ in an odd sort of way. When phenomenologists claim to be transcending dualism what they mean is the splitting of the subjective aspect of experience from the objective. Their solution is to be make the subjective and the objective indissociable poles of all experience
This is what intentionality means. It does not mean a subject aiming at an object. There is no pre-constituted, or ‘ inner’ subject for Husserl. There is only the interaction, which precedes both subject and object. Your solution to dualism , by contrast, seems to assume an inner feeling or experience of some sort that just subsists in itself, outside of time and interaction. This sounds like something like Michel Henry’s view of self-awareness. Dualism depends on the idea of a pure in-itself outside of relation to something else. Both the subject and the object have their own in-itself, interiority, intrinsicality, from out of which they encounter each other . That’s what your ‘non-dualistic’ awareness seems to consist in.

Joshs - I read in the above blog post 'Hence, any individual object necessarily belongs to multiple “essential species,” or essential structures of consciousness, and “everything belonging to the essence of the individuum another individuum can have too…”

Do I not detect the echo of hylomorphism in these kinds of sentiments from Husserl? Where 'forms' or 'ideas' are now transposed as 'essential structures of consciousness'? — Wayfarer

I don’t fully agree with the way that blogpost characterizes how Husserl conceived of the constitution of spatial objects. I’m not denying that for Husserl form or morphe is an essential aspect of intentional constitution of objects , along with the hyle or ‘stuffs’.
But an individual object is general for Husserl not because a particular car belongs to a general category of cats, but because the unity of an object is an intentional achievement produced by a synthetic act uniting memory , anticipation and actual presence. The self-same object is an objectivating idealization concocted out of a changing flow of senses , and thus a generalization.

:up:

The "hard problem" is so hard because it's built upon the idea that we can solve all the easy ones, but what's left... that... that is the hard problem.

There is no light switch. No "on" and "off". Consciousness - as we know it - emerges via biological mutations and time. It begins with avoiding danger and gathering resources and grows in it's complexity over enough time and mutation. We know that consciousness - as we know it - is existentially dependent upon certain brain structures as well as all sorts of other biological machinery.

There is no "aha there it is!" moment. The "hard problem" is all in the name and the purported criterion of consciousness that is being taken into consideration.

The authors of the Stanford Encyclopedia article would agree with you. They are among those who believe that a ‘mutual enlightenment’ between cognitive science and phenomenology is desirable and attainable. Husserl himself believed that trying to ground phenomenology in empirical science was putting the cart before the horse. I believe that it can eventually be possible to naturalize phenomenology , but this will require innovations in thinking within the psychological sciences that haven't taken place yet. Using current models within biology, neuroscience and cognitive psychology to underpin Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology would completely misrepresent the subject matter. — Joshs

This gets at something I've been thinking about as I read the SEP article. Phenomenology isn't really philosophy at all. It's psychology. So much of it makes definitive statements about phenomena and processes that can be verified or falsified using empirical methods. It's making scientific statements without providing evidence. Maybe I just haven't read enough to find it.

Any examples come to mind of sciences or scientists that do? — Wayfarer

This is something I've thought a lot about, with much frustration. I'll try to come up with a response tomorrow.

I agree that the subjectivr and objective are "indissociable poles of all experience" as experience is modeled. I think experience itself is prior to this conception of it.

I don't disagree with much of what you say here, but you've switched from opposing frames to alternate frames, which is why I don't find much to disagree with.

It's true that one way of looking at this is dualist. Or is in some ways more constructivist than perhaps I would prefer. Or that there are some useful and valid paradigms which provide a neat frame for many of the discussions around consciousness. But none of them are necessary, and that's the position I originally argued against. The notion that neuroscience and its approaches fail in some way to answer a question. I'm not arguing that alternative answers are not out there, nor am I arguing that they are less useful, or less accurate. I'm arguing that the answers given in the reductionist framework (which I don't even subscribe to by the way) are no less valid within their paradigm than phenomenological answers are within theirs.

Of course consciousness is a state. At any time you may be either conscious or unconscious. The point of general anesthesia is to change your state of consciousness to off. An anesthetic works if it changes your conscious state, and doesn't work if it does not. If consciousness is somehow merely a description, how does an anesthetic have causal efficacy? — hypericin

Anaesthetics work on neurological signals. They work entirely because we directly identify consciousness with certain neurological activity. If consciousness were something in addition to that activity then anaesthetics would not work since they only act on chemical activity, not 'the realm of consciousness'. 'conscious' is, in this frame, our name for certain neurological activity. We don't need to further explain why we named it thus.

As I said earlier, the component parts of a car are the same as 'the car'. There's not an additional thing on top of the components. The sort of consciousness dealt with by anaesthetics just is a particular set of neurons acting in a particular way. the answer to the question "why do they do that" is that they are stimulated to do so by preceding neurological activity. The answer to "why do they do that" in teleological terms is "because there's some evolutionary advantage to doing so and we're evolved creates". there's no sense to any other 'why?' question.

If consciousness were something in addition to that activity then anaesthetics would not work since they only act on chemical activity, not 'the realm of consciousness'. — Isaac

Just because you aren't a dualist about consciousness doesn't mean the question just disappears.

Consider a DVD. Is the movie "on" the DVD something in addition to the physical layout of the DVD platter? No, the movie is that layout. Nonetheless, one has to ask, how is it that, when some DVDs are inserted into the proper device, video plays. Whereas if other DVDs, blanks say, are inserted, there is no video.

Imagine a technologically naive culture, cut off from the rest of the world, or maybe part of a multi-generational dystopian experiment, where DVDs and DVD players are a given. There would eventually arise a hard problem of DVDs. You can't answer that problem by saying "movies are just a name we give to certain DVD microstructures". You have to explain how it is that the material DVD "contains" audio and video.

We are in a culture where consciousness are a given, and the hard problem of consciousness has arisen. We have to explain how it is that neural activity "contains", "instantiates", "embodies", "is", whatever you prefer, the features of consciousness.

. When phenomenologists claim to be transcending dualism what they mean is the splitting of the subjective aspect of experience from the objective. Their solution is to be make the subjective and the objective indissociable poles of all experience — Joshs

This works with the inside/outside relation, if we take process ontology, and make all of reality activity. Then we have no real boundaries between inside and outside, just two directions of activity or causation, inward directional and outward directional. There must be interaction between the two, reversal of direction, which could be represented with circles, or biofeedback loops, etc..

The problem with this type of metaphysics is that it really has nothing solid, no substance to account for the reality of homoeostasis, balanced activity, being. Then the speculators get a hold of this process ontology and make proposals like symmetries to account for balance, but these are just ideals produced from the mathematical axioms, which are not supported by real evidence.

So this perspective really does nothing to bridge the gap between the two incompatible descriptive formats of "being" and "becoming". The scientific (empirical) approach leads us toward the conclusion that all is "becoming", while philosophy and logic require a substantial "being". Plato and Aristotle demonstrated that the two are fundamentally incompatible. So when science describes everything as processes, becoming, and it cannot account for the reality of "being", mathematicians simply produce the required axioms and being appears, in the form of mathematical equilibriums.

But an individual object is general for Husserl not because a particular car belongs to a general category of cats, but because the unity of an object is an intentional achievement produced by a synthetic act uniting memory , anticipation and actual presence. The self-same object is an objectivating idealization concocted out of a changing flow of senses , and thus a generalization. — Joshs

This is exactly what happens with such an ontology, there is no such thing as an object, therefore no such thing as being, or beings. However, in practise the existence of objects is very real, so the appearance of them (though it's only an appearance from this ontology) needs to be accounted for. This requires positing principles of balance, homoeostasis, symmetry. So a mathematics of equilibrium is produced. But the reality, and cause of such balance cannot really be accounted for, it's just represented by this math.

Simply put, the result here is that the classical boundaries of an object (separating the supposed internal from external of the empirical object) are replaced with a balance of activity, and this balance becomes the new representation of the object. The problem though is that this balance of activity is commonly represented by systems theory which requires boundaries distinguishing the inside from the outside of the system. So the science minded people who take hold of this philosophy and speculate, bring us right back to the old standard, boundaries between inside and outside. Therefore this philosophy has not really gotten us away from internal/external boundaries. it just allows more freedom to arbitrarily place such boundaries, and employ vague or undefined boundaries which are simply assumed to be somewhere. This renders objects, beings, and being in general, as unintelligible.

The result of making the subjective and objective into two extremes of one scale, rather than keeping them separate by dualist principles, is that the subjective principles are now allowed to corrupt the objective science. This is due to the one-way directional nature of time, causation, and necessity. If we look from the inside outward, the way of philosophy, we look from the realm of possibility, potential, so there is no necessary boundaries. Boundaries are something to be created for one's purposes. But if we look from the outside inward, we only see parts, and these have necessary boundaries. Without the boundaries the parts would not be seen.

So when the science of observation, looking from the outside inward, takes principles from the philosophical observations of looking from the inside outward, it is corrupted by those principles. From the inside looking outward it appears like there are no real boundaries, just potential boundaries to be produced at will. But looking from the outside inward, in the way of science, the boundaries are very real and necessary, because if they were not there, the internal parts could not be seen. To allow the scientist looking inward to place the boundaries arbitrarily, in the way that the philosopher does looking outward, allows the scientist to disregard the empirical data, therefore corrupting the scientific enterprise.

You have to explain how it is — hypericin

I am suspect that, like @Art48 and some others in this discussion, you are not clear on what the Hard Problem of Consciousness is supposed to be. It is not about describing in detail how consciousness works - that is supposed to be the Easy problem (hah!) The Hard problem is explaining "qualia" - first-person experience, what-it-is-likeness - in an objective, third-person scientific framework. So the framing already assumes a certain kind of dualism in the world: objective vs subjective, first-person vs third-person.

To compound the problem, those engaged in this discussion often aren't clear on just what they are looking for in an explanation. The complaint from the consciousness-can't-be-explained camp often comes down to nothing more specific than "consciousness can't be explained to my satisfaction." But what would satisfy them?

Imagine a technologically naive culture, cut off from the rest of the world, or maybe part of a multi-generational dystopian experiment, where DVDs and DVD players are a given. There would eventually arise a hard problem of DVDs. You can't answer that problem by saying "movies are just a name we give to certain DVD microstructures". You have to explain how it is that the material DVD "contains" audio and video. — hypericin

Great. So given that we know the answer to this one, in your own words, what type of answer would this yield? What's the answer to "how does a DVD contain audio and video?"

What's the answer to "how does a DVD contain audio and video?" — Isaac

How does a DVD player work?

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I agree with all of that. I think the quest for a theory of consciousness will be a grand adventure. It's fed by a lust to know. Maybe it will generate technologies that allow some aspect of subjectivity to be recorded and that could be used for medicinal or artistic purposes.

Every step of the way, someone will be pointing out that we're fooling ourselves and the truth we're finding is relative to a particular culture? That's ok. That's always how it is, right? — frank

Philosophers have talked themselves into believing experience isn't "really happening" by framing the claim that something is happening in metaphysics. Of course, this is a very loose way to speak, but I am not trying build an argument. One has to "close in" on the existential foundation of existence by, in the long run, ignoring language and culture (see Kierkegaard on this, his Concept of Anxiety) and allowing the disentangled gravitas if just being here to announce itself. Then one realizes that terms like being, existence, and reality are just abstractions of what is there, and shouldn't be discussed like this (and Wittgenstein would agree). Being is always already some impossible "value-being" and the primordial self is a value entity first and foremost. I see the cup on the table, and the question for epistemological interest is not about S knows P. It is about S values P and knowing is value-knowing. It is the interest in P, the fascination, the adoration, the loathing, the desire, and so on. Language is inherently analytical, that is, it takes the world apart, dividing what is, again, some impossible primordial unity; but it is always an interested analysis, curious, seeking consummation, affirmation, and it is this desire dimension that seeks fulfillment that rules here. The purely cognitive end of this is like Wittgenstein's "states of affairs", entirely absent of "the good" as he called it.
I think following Husserl's reductive method closes in on something genuinely revelatory. Ask Siddhartha Gautama, the master of the reduction. This grand enterprise called philosophy is not looking for, heh, heh, "propositional knowledge". It has to realize this. The proposition is almost incidental. Language is tool, says Quine.

Cool.

How does the brain work?

Job done then. Thread closed.

Thread closed. — Isaac

Fine. Have a good day. :razz:

It is not about describing in detail how consciousness works - that is supposed to be the Easy problem (hah!) — SophistiCat

What trips people up is conflating an understanding of consciousness with understanding the NCCs (neural correlates of consciousness). You can imagine in the future that we might have a complete accounting of the NCCs, a complete description of all the relevant brain structures and how they interact with one another. But nonetheless, we still can't conceptually make the leap from this description to the first person features of consciousness: qualia, what-is-it-like, etc. On the one side, in the third person, is the objective description of neural structure and activity. On the other side, in the first person, is the consciousness stuff. Unifying this dualism is the task of the hard problem.

I think we are in basic agreement here?

What's the answer to "how does a DVD contain audio and video?" — Isaac

My understanding:
The audio and video of a movie is encoded as a set of 0s and 1s, which is one enormous base-2 number. This binary number is encoded on the DVD platter as tiny unreflective pits on a thin mirror, in a spiral pattern, which most of the material of the DVD simply protects. The laser of the DVD player shines on the spinning mirror, and a sensor interprets interruptions of the laser's reflected light as 0s, and their absence as 1s (or the reverse). These 0s and 1s are then translated on the player into a format amenable to the display device, which produces audio and video.

This is a very rough and broad account, but there are no mysteries here, every one of these steps can be explained in arbitrary, excruciating detail. This is a story which unifies two seemingly irreconcilable domains: the gross matter of the dvd, and the ethereal images and sounds coming from the TV. The hard problem asks for a similar account, unifying the seemingly irreconcilable domains of third person neural activity and first person consciousness.

The audio and video of a movie is encoded as a set of 0s and 1s, which is one enormous base-2 number. This binary number is encoded on the DVD platter as tiny unreflective pits on a thin mirror, in a spiral pattern, which most of the material of the DVD simply protects. The laser of the DVD player shines on the spinning mirror, and a sensor interprets interruptions of the laser's reflected light as 0s, and their absence as 1s (or the reverse). These 0s and 1s are then translated on the player into a format amenable to the display device, which produces audio and video. — hypericin

Consciousness is encoded as a set of neural signals, which is one enormous dynamic network of continual signals. This flow of data is encoded on the brain as axon potentials and neurotransmitter concentrations, which most of the brain is not involved in most of the time. The working memory of the brain receives some of these signals, and the network of logic gates created by forward and backward acting signal propagation interprets signals as something to pass on. These signals are then translated by our language cortices and conceptual recognition neural clusters as suiting the term 'consciousness'.

What trips people up is conflating an understanding of consciousness with understanding the NCCs (neural correlates of consciousness). — hypericin

I would include here all scientific and scientifically informed studies of consciousness, including psychology and some philosophy of mind.

You can imagine in the future that we might have a complete accounting of the NCCs, a complete description of all the relevant brain structures and how they interact with one another. But nonetheless, we still can't conceptually make the leap from this description to the first person features of consciousness: qualia, what-is-it-like, etc. — hypericin

Well, this gets me back to what I said about explanations. We have a good idea of what a scientific explanation is (neuroscience, psychology, etc.) But you say: No, that's not it, that's just such-and-such "correlates" of consciousness. OK, but do you have an idea of what it is that you are looking for in an explanation of "the first person features of consciousness"? How would it differ from the other kind? How would you recognize a successful explanation?

And I don't mean to say that scientific explanations are the only explanations that deserve the name. But to even have a discussion about this, we should understand what it is that we are looking for. And that seems to be the one thing that is conspicuously missing in most such discussions.

I actually suspect that the brain does not produce conscious experience, but rather conditions it. — Constance

Is brain conditioning of conscious experience similar to modulation as, for example, a parallel to frequency modulation of radio waves?

Experience exceeds the physical delimitations of the physical object, the brain. Call it spirit?? — Constance

Does this hypothesis assume a duality of physical delimitations/that which exceeds physical delimitations?

Is the latter what you suggest might be called spirit, thereby attributing to you belief in a physical/spirit duality?

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

This sentence appears to my understanding as a confusion of declaration and question.

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. — Constance

(Please forgive the following apparent non sequitur) consider that S and P are bound by action-at-a- distance. Can we assume that such binding of identity nonetheless preserves much of the autonomy and self-determination of each correspondent?

Can we hypothesize the brain/object junction is a complex surface with some topology of invariance?

Consciousness is encoded as a set of neural signals, which is one enormous dynamic network of continual signals. This flow of data is encoded on the brain as axon potentials and neurotransmitter concentrations, which most of the brain is not involved in most of the time. The working memory of the brain receives some of these signals, and the network of logic gates created by forward and backward acting signal propagation interprets signals as something to pass on. These signals are then translated by our language cortices and conceptual recognition neural clusters as suiting the term 'consciousness'. — Isaac

This is revolutionary!

Machine consciousness has long been a holy grail of AI research. Nobody realized how simple it has been all along! All you have to do is arrange a bunch of signals, filter some of them, then have other modules categorize some of these signals as 'consciousness'. When this happens, we can even have a speaker box pronounce, "I AM CONSCIOUS!" Voila!

Are you seeing the problem here?

I don't want to get into a long discussion about how science has to proceed. — T Clark

Are you not evading an essential problem science (unwittingly) created for itself vis-a-vis study of first person experience when it defined itself as objective examination of entities, phenomena and facts, thus cordoning off itself from the personal mind, a something inherently subjective?

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

Is this declaration not made possible only by the previous evasion?

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. — Tom Storm

...it has become a 'god of the gaps' style argument, a kind of prophylactic against naturalism and a putative limitation on science and rationalism — Tom Storm

With your statements above, it's my impression you're assuming the role of historian, declaring that non-physicalist world views have entered their "last hurrah" (or echo of "last hurrah") phase.

If, as my per my perception, you see science crowding non-physicalist world views off the legitimate stage of public opinion, then I better understand why Joshs sometimes inveighs against scientism, which one should be careful not to confuse with science.

Subjective mind might not be out of bounds of effective scientific examination, but it shows promise as a good axis for pivoting into examination of scientific boundaries.

Are you not evading an essential problem science (unwittingly) created for itself vis-a-vis study of first person experience when it defined itself as objective examination of entities, phenomena and facts, thus cordoning off itself from the personal mind, a something inherently subjective? — ucarr

No evasion. I don't see it as relevant.

Like most people here, I am not a historian, scientist or philosopher. I was simply reflecting on the key issues which today separate the physicalist from the higher consciousness/idealism schools. I think what I say is accurate for that particular argument but I make no claims about science as a pathway to ultimate truth. I'm not in the ultimate truth business. Scientism is equally frustrating.

Subjective mind might not be out of bounds of effective scientific examination, but it shows promise as a good axis for pivoting into examination of scientific boundaries. — ucarr

I have no problem with this view at the present time and it can generate an interesting discussion.