We don't 'find out' consciousness is required for doubting, we declare it to be so. — Isaac

That a person needs to hold a doubt for there to be a doubt, is implicit in the definition of doubt: "a feeling of not being certain about something, especially about how good or true it is."

Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?

Because folk bring their baggage with them.

Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?

Because folk bring their baggage with them. — Banno

Rather, because it's about the very baggage they bring into the analysis: their capacity of analysis is the object of the analysis. The reflexiveness of the problem is what makes it so wicked.

What Olivier5 said.

↪bert1 I'll wait for you to state clearly your "concept" which you claim I and Banno lack and then I may further elaborate on what I've already written here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/771417 — 180 Proof

Consciousness is the capacity to feel.

What is the hard problem, in your own words?

So? Again, I'm not seeing how that prevents us from being mistaken about it. Deities (of various sorts) were equally central at one point, we're clearly wrong about (at least some of) them. — Isaac

Firstly, how do you know "we" (was it us?) were "clearly wrong about (at least some of) them? Anyway the story at issue here is the human notion of self-awareness, of being aware. What does it mean to be aware? Why is it said that we are aware? One answer is that we have ideas about ourselves and can spontaneously come up with stories about ourselves. I haven't heard of any machines that do that, have you?

I don't even know what that means. What kind of experience is 'experiencing myself as being aware'. What would experiencing myself as being unaware consist of? — Isaac

I know what experiencing myself as being aware is, it is simply being aware of being aware. If you don't know that experience I can't help you beyond what I've just said. I'll warrant that if you asked almost anyone in the street if they have ever been aware of being aware, they'll say of course they have. It's not something you could be mistaken about. What could it even mean to be mistaken about it? Perhaps you should try some meditation or mind-altering drugs to free up your thinking.

If you are not able to be conscious of your own awareness, then that says something about you, not about others or humans in general. — Janus


Ah. Back to the "If you disagree with Chalmers you must have a brain defect" argument. I appreciate your concern, rest assured I will get the possibility checked out forthwith. — Isaac

Don't put words in my mouth. I said nothing about Chalmers. I said that if you don't have a certain kind of experience that says something about you, not about others who do have that kind of experience.

Neuronal activity and 'objects of conversation' are in two different worlds. The latter is constrained by the former, but not dictated by it. — Isaac

We agree on that much at least, and that's the very reason I say that neuroscientist findings are not relevant to phenomenological understandings of human experience; they are two very different and incommensurate domains of discourse.

"We" means a collection of "I"... It's telling that you couldn't express your idea here without using a personnal pronoun.

If one doubts that there is a self, who is doing the doubting? A doubt implies a person having it, a "mind" rejecting a belief. It can't be an independent doubt, free-floating in the universe. — Olivier5

If all we needed to demonstrate the existence of some substantial self in the Cartesian sense was the fact that we speak of "I" and "we" and so on, then it would have been proven long ago and no longer controversial.

All the bright and shinny feathers of all the birds in the world are composed of the same material as your hair and your nails: keratin — Olivier5

Sure, I haven't said there are not structural physical commonalities to be found everywhere in nature; that is obviously well known. But the human body/brain/mind is the most complex system known and the potential for diversity is enormous. That said, of course the commonalities are enormous too.

I read The Conscious Mind over 10 years ago just to figure out what the hullabaloo was. For awhile I was persuaded by Chalmer's property-dualism.

These days I'm not as confident as I once was in such claims, but not because of the problem or how its stated but more general concerns.

I think I have a coherent notion of Chalmer's description of the hard problem. I'd say the inverted spectrum argument is probably my favorite because it demonstrates how while it's surely advantageous in a functional sense to be able to "feel" the world around you, it doesn't really matter that my red is your red -- the old "my red could be your blue" line of thought. As long as we are able to distinguish the world similarly enough to use language together that's all that's functionally needed. Yet I have a fairly clear idea about what it would mean for my red to be your blue. So, whatever that is -- why my red is my red -- that's what the hard problem of consciousness is about. It's the feeliness of the world. And the thought, so my memory of what I was lead to believe at least, is that there is as yet no scientific explanation for why my red is my red (or, perhaps another way to put it, there's no scientific way to tell what my red is -- whether it is your blue or not -- yet I certainly see red)

their capacity of analysis is the object of the analysis. — Olivier5

If consciousness is the capacity to analyse, this thread is somnolent.

Analysis requires detailed, close work. It's not going to happen on a free-for-all such as this.

...the inverted spectrum argument... — Moliere

It's oddly specific to sight.

Imagine applying it to other sense. As if your smooth could be my rough, your sour, my sweet, your loud, my quiet.

The swap would soon be seen as incoherent.

Much the same thing happens with an inverted spectrum; it could not be consistently maintained. But that this is so is not as obvious with sight as with the other senses. It's a classic case of philosophers considering only a limited example so that it supports their invalid observation.

The existence of red-green colourblindness and the rarer blue-yellow colourblindness shows that colours do indeed appear differently to some people. An "inverted spectrum" would be an extreme case, perhaps never found.

The analogy with the other, simpler senses, doesn't tell us much, if anything. For example the rough/ smooth example is silly simply because a rough surface can do actual work that a smooth surface cannot. Likewise with the loud/soft example; a loud enough sound can cause objects to vibrate and even break. A better sight analog would be 'dark/light'.

In this case I think even one example might be enough. It's not that all of our feels will be different, it's that it's possible, in a functional, physicalist sense, for them to be so.

It's that sense which is under attack in Chalmer's set up, at least as I remember understanding it.

When I imagine applying the notion to the other sense, I'll admit the loud-quiet one doesn't seem to fit (except in a mundane sense). The others I could see, though that probably says more about what I'm willing to entertain than reality.

Either way, though, I hope the above makes sense: the attack is on the set up of a functionalist, physicalist account of all reality, or whatever, and noting how here's a phenomena -- the feeliness of the world -- that doesn't really seem to fit into that picture.

Or would you say that this still falls to the philosopher's habit of overgeneralizing?

Red/blue, rough/smooth, loud/soft - these are public distinctions, not private ones.

The inversion thought experiment seeks to show that they are private. It doesn't work with the other sense, (as @Janus agrees) and it doesn't work with colours, although some philosophers have more difficulty seeing this.

Public/Private, though, are distinctions from a way of doing philosophy that is not the target of the hard problem -- the functionalist account of the mind.

They are public distinctions, of course. But I'm not sure that the inverted spectrum argument attempts to argue they are private.

Different between people, perhaps. But we both understand this, so it's not private.

If consciousness is the capacity to analyse... — Banno

... and to observe, and to know, and to doubt. To be confused, to argue, to imagine. And we are doing all of that here.

The tool we bring to the discussion are the subject being discussed. It's like using a wrench to work on a wrench. Hence the bloody mess.

If all we needed to demonstrate the existence of some substantial self in the Cartesian sense was the fact that we speak of "I" and "we" and so on, then it would have been proven long ago and no longer controversial. — Janus

It never was controversial, and it was proven by Descartes a long time ago.

Meh. Being reflexive is not in itself a problem.

The point I was making is that folk are bringing their views on god, society, spirituality, ontology, and even politics into the discussion. That's what messes it up.

So while the thread is amusing, it is not going to achieve anything like a consensus. It might be more productive to break it into multiple threads on the seperate topics - sense, cognition, neuroscience and so on.

. It's not that all of our feels will be different, it's that it's possible, in a functional, physicalist sense, for them to be so. — Moliere

Am I right in thinking that there's also a modal angle to Chalmer's argument? I vaguely recall there being a link from the inverted spectrum to conceivability of the difference, to the metaphysical possibility of the difference, which negates the metaphysical necessity of their identity. So the motive force in the argument is largely establishing entailments between modality concepts (conceivability=metaphysical possibility), then using the inverted spectrum as a conceivability premise? Is my limited recollection anyway.

Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard? — Banno

Again - the point of Chalmer's essay was the audience he has in mind, namely, those who claim that the whole question is basically one for science. It's a 'hard problem' for those who think the nature of consciousness (or being) can be given in purely objective terms. But as per your usual practice, you're seeking to steer the debate in a way that allows you to dismiss it, but without actually ever having indicated that you're addressing it.

So again, for the sake of the debate, the key paragraph from Chalmer's original paper:

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 of Consciousness

States of experience inhere in subjects of experience, and the subject of experience is never found amongst the objects of scientific analysis - hence, according to the 'eliminative materialists', cannot be considered real. (If I missed anything, let me know.)

Yes, there is! I mean, the P-zombie argument has an obvious modal angle too, right? And for Chalmer's, again in memory and all that, the very conceivability of P-zombies demonstrates his point. (Actually, this gets to why I'm somewhat suspicious now... notice how close that looks to ye olde ontological argument?)

But, in terms of being more specific than "yes, there's a modal angle" -- I'd have to actually commit to something. :D

I just noticed the conversation kinda got into a lull and was still thinking about the hard problem so I thought I'd throw my 2 cents in.

Actually, this gets to why I'm somewhat suspicious now... notice how close that looks to ye olde ontological argument?) — Moliere

I don't think it's an ontological argument. It's just that functionalists will have to prove that there's nothing more to phenomenal consciousness than function. We can't just assume that.

The point I was making is that folk are bringing their views on god, society, spirituality, ontology, and even politics into the discussion. That's what messes it up. — Banno

There's a reason for that, also. And the reason is, it's difficult to accomodate the basic fact of Chalmer's argument in the context of today's culture. Here's a snippet from an encylopedia article on Adorno's diagnosis of moral philosophy in capitalist culture:

[Adorno] argues that social life in modern societies no longer coheres around a set of widely espoused moral truths and that modern societies lack a moral basis. What has replaced morality as the integrating ‘cement’ of social life are instrumental reasoning and the exposure of everyone to the capitalist market. According to Adorno, modern, capitalist societies are fundamentally nihilistic in character; opportunities for leading a morally good life and even philosophically identifying and defending the requisite conditions of a morally good life have been abandoned to instrumental reasoning and capitalism. Within a nihilistic world, moral beliefs and moral reasoning are held to have no ultimately rational authority: moral claims are conceived of as, at best, inherently subjective statements, expressing not an objective property of the world, but the individual’s own prejudices. Morality is presented as thereby lacking any objective, public basis. — Morality and Nihilism

For 'instrumental reasoning', read 'scientific analysis'. So the dichotomy is, that if you question the ability of science to properly examine and explain the individual subject, then you're relegating the matter to 'the subjective realm' - because the culture no longer has any sense of shared moral values or principles, beyond those dictated by secular prudence and liberal political philosophy. So bringing this in is not 'messing it up', it is making clear the implications of the whole argument.

Can you state what the hard problem is, in your own words?

I think you can argue for a general resemblance between Chalmer's argument and the earlier Cogito arguments of both Descartes and Augustine. — Wayfarer

I think there are important differences between Chalmer's approach and these two philosophers. The experience of being oneself is given as a necessity that must be accepted before attending to what else exists in the Cartesian mode. Chalmers starts from a different direction:

Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? A simple explanation of the functions leaves this question open.

The explanatory gap Chalmers discusses is not an impassable barrier by definition. This is not a polemic against attempts to use reduction to find causes for events. The need to introduce complexity is a stepping back from assuming the 'first person' is synonymous with 'consciousness':

This is not to say that experience has no function. Perhaps it will turn out to play an important cognitive role. But for any role it might play, there will be more to the explanation of experience than a simple explanation of the function.

But as per your usual practice, you're seeking to steer the debate in a way that allows you to dismiss it, but without actually ever having indicated that you're addressing it. — Wayfarer

Works for me. As we've talked about previously, we agree that there is some sort of duality here, that you have characterised as first/third person (something I've also done previously), I've described as intentional vs causal, and Chalmers describes in terms of information.

But that doesn't render Chalmers argument here cogent. He might reach the right conclusion for the wrong reason.

I'm happy to have talk of sensations and perceptions and so on, but I'll continue to point out that claims that such things are ineffable, private or spiritual; are hokum.

So an interesting discussion here might involve working out where we agree, rather than where we disagree.

I think that this is an odd tactic.

You can state what the hard problem is. And others find it unsatisfying. What are you hoping to get out of these repeated questions?

t's difficult to accomodate the basic fact of Chalmer's argument in the context of today's culture. Here's a snippet from an encylopedia article on Adorno's diagnosis of moral philosophy in capitalist culture: — Wayfarer

Chalmers is not Adorno. That's an example of baggage from outside the discussion.

Consciousness is the capacity to feel. — bert1

So while unconscious one "lacks the capacity to feel"?

Btw, is it even possible for a panpsychist to be unconscious?

What is the hard problem, in your own words?

My charitable reading of Chalmer's notion is, in my own words, 'the difficulty of scientifically demonstrating that human beings are n o t zombies'.

I think that this is an odd tactic. — Moliere

It's not a game. This is a thread about the hard problem. Banno and 180 think it's bollocks. But I'm not sure if they even know what it is.

My charitable reading of Chalmer's notion is, in my own words, 'the difficulty of scientifically demonstrating that human beings are n o t zombies'. — 180 Proof

OK, thank you.

The hard problem can be paraphrased by the following Wittgensteinian semantic problem

"How are my perceptual and cognitive judgements that i express using my mother tongue, correlated with the public conventions that define my language"?

Once these two concepts are distinguished, the hard problem ought to evaporate, regardless of whether the two concepts can be put into correspondence. For there isn't a meaningful public answer as to whether or not Mary 'learns' new information about the concept of colour when leaving her black and white world; for none of Mary's perceptual judgements bear any analytic relation to public physical theories about colour .

Of course, Mary is likely to decide to associate her perceptual judgements with said physical theories as part of a private-dialect we might call "Mary's personal physical colour theory"