I would think that the difference is that one is a subjective experience while the other is objective biological material; seems to me like a significant difference.

So I say, "how does physicalism account for consciousness?" And you say, "look, you have a brain and brain's are conscious! Therefore you are conscious NotAristotle! That's how we determine what things are conscious, by whether they have brains or not."

But then surely my reply is: "perfect, Nosferatu, now why is the brain conscious?" And how would you answer that in physical terms?

I wouldn't say research like this would be helping with the Hard Problem of consciousness though. Ofcourse, the more we learn, the more we might precisely we will be able to relate experiences to neural activity but that isnt necessarily the same as explaining why specific phenomenal experiences are related to certain mechanisms.
And I don't think there an explanation to that is even possible as I think such a duality is illusory.

Personally, I don’t think brains are conscious. But I do think organisms are. Organisms are conscious (or unconscious) because that’s what their physiology entails. The reason we cannot know what it’s like to be a bat is because we’re not bats. Closer than that, I believe consciousness and the organism are one-and-the-same. It is the object under observation in both cases, after all.

Okay, but then I would ask you what about organisms is so special and different than other matter/energy arrangements that makes organisms conscious? Because of the physiology, right? But then, what about the physiology entails consciousness? It would make sense if organisms contained "consciousness atoms" and that is why they are conscious, but they do not; they are made of the same atomic material as other non-conscious matter.

I would have thought that the distinction between sentient beings and insentient objects is a fundamental not only in philosophy. — Wayfarer

The point of the hard problem is to demonstrate the limits of what we can know about consciousness and sentience in others besides their behavior. Like you said, there is no brain correlate to what a person subjectively feels as pain, only what a person expresses or is observed to be in pain. Logically, this means we cannot state what a person feels like or does not feel like. Meaning, we cannot know the subjective feeling beyond their behavior. This also means we cannot know the subjective feeling despite their behavior.

This leads to the P-zombie. The creature that acts conscious, but we do not know if it subjectively feels conscious. But a P-zombie can sometimes confuse the issue as well, as people get stuck on the behavior. You know the debates. A rock is a more simple way of getting to the heart of the problem by removing the idea of behavior entirely. A rock does not act conscious, but we do not know if it subjectively feels conscious. For if we did know that it does or does not subjectively feel conscious apart from its behavior, then we would have an objective way of telling if something does or does not subjectively feel conscious. That is something we can never know be it rock, bug, animal, plant, or human.

The point of the hard problem is to demonstrate the limits of what we can know about consciousness and sentience in others besides their behavior. — Philosophim

That's an interesting issue, but it's not the hard problem.

I found myself nodding at Wayfarer’s take on all this above:

“[N]o objective description of brain-states can convey or capture the first-person nature of experience. The kind of detailed physiological understanding of pain that a pharmacologist or anaestheologist has, is not in itself pain. Knowing about pain is not the same as being in pain.”

It’s really the difference between “explanation” and “experience.”

When we see a red apple and ask, “Why and how can this red apple be seen?” – and we want an explanation – then we can expound on all manner of material stuff (physics and neuroscience). That is, “red” is a certain wave length of light, and to see it requires retinal cone photoreceptors, a visual cortex, etc.

But if we ask the same question, “Why and how can this apple be seen?” – and we want an experience – then we must look at the apple and, assuming there is sufficient light and our eyes and brain are functioning normally, then we have a perception of a red apple. And the only way others can have this experience is for them to look at the apple too – where light is sufficient for them, and their eyes and brains are functioning normally.

Most notably: these conscious experiences – the perception of red apples – are private. No amount of explaining them physically and/or neuroscientifically can do them justice. The fact is, explanations of phenomena – no matter how accurate – are not the same as the experiences of these same phenomena. Someone else, although able to have their own visual perceptions, are unable to have mine. Similarly, only they can actually feel their own physical pain, while I can only feel mine. Again, we can explain how these perceptions and feelings occur via physics, neurochemistry and neurophysiology, but knowing about these explanations are not the same thing as having them (to paraphrase Wayfarer above).

And by the way, this is not to imply that there is something mystical going on here, or that consciousness is necessarily some sort of spiritual or immaterial substance. Maybe it's just a fact of biological existence that experience (consciousness) is private, whereas explanations of experience are (or can be) public. (?)

In any event: explanation is not experience.

And by the way, this is not to imply that there is something mystical going on here, or that consciousness is necessarily some sort of spiritual or immaterial substance. — Thales

Welcome to the Forum, Thales, and thanks for the mention!

I might add, another theme I explore in many threads, is the way in which Descartes' 'res cogitans' has been so often seen as a kind of 'spiritual or immaterial substance'. After all, 'res' in 'res cogitans' means 'thing', and so it is easily interpreted (or misinterpreted) as a kind of ghostly essence. Indeed, I think Gilbert Ryle's depiction of the 'ghost in the machine' is based on this interpretation of Descartes. It's very much embedded in modern culture.

(An alternative way of depicting it is to understand mind as the ability to perceive meaning or to see reason. That is nearer in meaning to the Aristotelian 'nous', although exploration of that topic would take us a long way from the OP.)

For if we did know that it does or does not subjectively feel conscious apart from its behavior, then we would have an objective way of telling if something does or does not subjectively feel conscious. That is something we can never know be it rock, bug, animal, plant, or human. — Philosophim

However, the fact of my own consciousness is apodictic (beyond doubt) for each of us, is it not? That is the sense that Descartes' cogito is right on the mark, is it not?

However, the fact of my own consciousness is apodictic (beyond doubt) for each of us, is it not? That is the sense that Descartes' cogito is right on the mark, is it not? — Wayfarer

Yes, definitely. The hard problem does not exist for our own selves. For we are the experiencers of that particular locus of matter called the brain. I would be able to measure my brain waves and find out exactly what brain state made me feel what I feel. The problem is, I could never communicate that exact subjective feeling to others in an objective way. The hard problem is not in objectively measuring our own subjective experience with our brains, its in communicating our own subjective experience to another subjective being with an objective means of verification.

Its really really another variation of, "Is the green I see the green you see?" We both have the wavelength of light enter our eyes and processed by our brain a particular way. We both call it green. We could see the process of the brain and wait for each of us to say when we see green. But do we subjectively experience what we each call green exactly the same way? That's something beyond our capability to objectively know.

We don’t have hungry, sad, or sleepy atoms either. These adjectives describe the organism as a whole. That’s what the word “conscious” does. We’re just describing the organism, the mode of his biology, what he’s doing, etc. It wouldn’t make sense if these adjectives, or any other derivative quality, can be applied to any other object like an atom.

You are not describing the HPoC. It's true that nobody/thing can experiences my subjective experiences. But the HP is not that we can't communicate subjective experience; it is how a clump of matter can have them at all. In The Conscious Mind, David Chalmers writes:

Why should there be conscious experience at all? It is central to a subjective viewpoint, but from an objective viewpoint it is utterly unexpected. Taking the objective view, we can tell a story about how fields, waves, and particles in the spatiotemporal manifold interact in subtle ways, leading to the development of complex systems such as brains. In principle, there is no deep philosophical mystery in the fact that these systems can process information in complex ways, react to stimuli with sophisticated behavior, and even exhibit such complex capacities as learning, memory, and language. All this is impressive, but it is not metaphysically baffling. In contrast, the existence of conscious experience seems to be a new feature from this viewpoint. It is not something that one would have predicted from the other features alone.

That is, consciousness is surprising. If all we knew about were the facts of physics, and even the facts about dynamics and information processing in complex systems, there would be no compelling reason to postulate the existence of conscious experience. If it were not for our direct evidence in the first-person case, the hypothesis would seem unwarranted; almost mystical, perhaps. — Chalmers

That's a good explanation of the problem.

The solution? In Until the End of Time, Brian Greene wrote:

And within that mathematical description, affirmed by decades of data from particle colliders and powerful telescopes, there is nothing that even hints at the inner experiences those particles somehow generate. How can a collection of mindless, thoughtless, emotionless particles come together and yield inner sensations of color or sound, of elation or wonder, of confusion or surprise? Particles can have mass, electric charge, and a handful of other similar features (nuclear charges, which are more exotic versions of electric charge), but all these qualities seem completely disconnected from anything remotely like subjective experience. How then does a whirl of particles inside a head—which is all that a brain is—create impressions, sensations, and feelings? — Greene

And Christof Koch, a neurophysiologist who is the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, who has been trying to solve the mystery for decades, made a bet with Chalmers 25 years ago, because he's thought we would know how neurons explain it by now. He just paid off the bet, because the answer has not been found. While that's not proof that neurons don't explain it, it's certainly not proof that they do.

So someone who knows a ton more about the properties of particles, laws of physics, and the forces, than the vast majority of people, and has put a good deal of thought into consciousness, says those things don't offer an explanation for it. And a guy who knows a ton more about neurons, the brain, and nervous systems, than the vast majority of people, has put far more thought into consciousness than the vast majority of people, and has done more experimentation and testing into how the neurons, brain, and nervous system produce consciousness, than the vast majority of people, says we don't know how it happens. With those two people in mind, I don't think we have the answer.

Consciousness certainly seems inextricably bound to brain activity. But that's not the same as explaining how it happens. How do the same physical properties and processes that explain the abilities to: perceive photons, differentiate different patterns and frequencies within a certain range of the electromagnetic spectrum, initiate action potentials that lead to bodily movements in response to the perceptions, store perceived patterns, and incorporate the stored information into the initiation of future action potentials also explain how those abilities have awareness of themselves, or awareness of their own awareness. If anyone can answer that, they are keeping it from Koch and Greene.

I often cannot follow what you're saying. I'm always trying to read various books on all this stuff, but it doesn't come easily to me. I'm always looking up words, the definitions of which often lead me to other words I have to look up, and onto others, and then back to the original. If you can explain more about what you mean by design. When I think of design, it comes with a designer. If that is not what you mean, then maybe I can participate. we might say, snowflakes, in general, have a design, and each one has its own unique design. But I would use the word *cough* pattern, instead of design. is that the kind of thing you’re talking about?

The solution? In Until the End of Time, Brian Greene wrote:
And within that mathematical description, affirmed by decades of data from particle colliders and powerful telescopes, there is nothing that even hints at the inner experiences those particles somehow generate. How can a collection of mindless, thoughtless, emotionless particles come together and yield inner sensations of color or sound, of elation or wonder, of confusion or surprise? Particles can have mass, electric charge, and a handful of other similar features (nuclear charges, which are more exotic versions of electric charge), but all these qualities seem completely disconnected from anything remotely like subjective experience. How then does a whirl of particles inside a head—which is all that a brain is—create impressions, sensations, and feelings?
— Greene — Patterner

What does Greene follow that up with?

I don't get the impression, based on the following Greene interview, that he would agree much with the way you are using that quote.

At 1:24, he says:

My own feeling, and there's no proof to this, but my own feeling is that...

And in my quote, he says nothing we know from our sciences even hints at it. I think he would agree with me that we don't have the answer.

You are not describing the HPoC. It's true that nobody/thing can experiences my subjective experiences. But the HP is not that we can't communicate subjective experience; it is how a clump of matter can have them at all. — Patterner

You may have misunderstood that point within the full context of what I was communicating, or I was unclear. It is not that we cannot communicate our subjective experience. Its that we cannot experience another's subjective experience. Meaning that there is no objective way to measure another's subjective experience.

We can very clearly identify and even medically manipulate consciousness. We use anesthesa to put people unconscious. You can drink alcohol, get drunk, and alter your consciousness. Consciousness is clearly physical. How we define consciousness through behavior, and test to understand it at a mechanistic level is the easy problem. Have we fully solved the easy problem? Not at all. Science will likely take centuries to uncover how the brain works at a complete physical level.

The bet you referred to, as I understood it, was about the Easy problem. You can read it here.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02120-8 I'm careful to make a full claim on this because this is one article from a news reporter who may not have understood the full subject. But from my understanding, the neuroscientist believed they would have a neuronal explanation of what causes consciousness. This is the easy problem. Even if this is answered, the hard problem of what it is like to experience consciousness for any particular subject will still exist.

" Explaining why consciousness occurs at all can be contrasted with so-called “easy problems” of consciousness: the problems of explaining the function, dynamics, and structure of consciousness. These features can be explained using the usual methods of science. But that leaves the question of why there is something it is like for the subject when these functions, dynamics, and structures are present. This is the hard problem.

In more detail, the challenge arises because it does not seem that the qualitative and subjective aspects of conscious experience—how consciousness “feels” and the fact that it is directly “for me”—fit into a physicalist ontology, one consisting of just the basic elements of physics plus structural, dynamical, and functional combinations of those basic elements. It appears that even a complete specification of a creature in physical terms leaves unanswered the question of whether or not the creature is conscious. And it seems that we can easily conceive of creatures just like us physically and functionally that nonetheless lack consciousness. This indicates that a physical explanation of consciousness is fundamentally incomplete: it leaves out what it is like to be the subject, for the subject. There seems to be an unbridgeable explanatory gap between the physical world and consciousness. All these factors make the hard problem hard."

https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/#:~:text=The%20hard%20problem%20of%20consciousness%20is%20the%20problem%20of%20explaining,directly%20appear%20to%20the%20subject.

It's also about the fact that no objective description of brain-states can convey or capture the first-person nature of experience. The kind of detailed physiological understanding of pain that a pharmacologist or anaestheologist has, is not in itself pain. — Wayfarer

No objective description of trees, mountains or rivers can capture the nature of trees, mountains or rivers. The physical understanding of a tree, a mountain or a river is not itself a tree, mountain or river.

The bet you referred to, as I understood it, was about the Easy problem. — Philosophim

Not so. The byline of the article you cite says 'Christof Koch wagered David Chalmers 25 years ago that researchers would learn how the brain achieves consciousness by now.' The bet was lost.

the neuroscientist believed they would have a neuronal explanation of what causes consciousness. This is the easy problem. — Philosophim

No, it's not. That is just the problem that hasn't been solved. Again, look at the reference I provided upthread on the neural binding problem. The section of the article in question is only a few hundred words, but it spells out what it is about the subjective unity of experience for which neuroscience cannot find a physical cause, and even cites Chalmers' original essay.

We can very clearly identify and even medically manipulate consciousness. We use anesthesa to put people unconscious. You can drink alcohol, get drunk, and alter your consciousness. Consciousness is clearly physical. — Philosophim

I don't think that there is as strong a correlation as you're claiming. Certainly all of those influences affect the brain, and the state of the brain then affects the nature of conscious experience. But that doesn't amount to proving that consciousness is physical, as it's still not clear what consciousness actually is, other than it is something that, for organisms such as ourselves, requires a functioning brain in order to interact with the sensory domain.

There are also many hugely anomalous cases of subjects with grossly abnormal brains who seem to be able to function (see Man with tiny brain shocks doctors).

There is the case of psycho-somatic medicine and the placebo effect, wherein subjects beliefs and emotional states have physical consequences. They can be regarded as being 'top-down causation', in that the effects of beliefs and mental states operate 'downward' on the physical brain. (There was a classic experiment years ago where subjects who were trained to imagine they were doing piano exercises showed very similar neural changes to subjects who trained with actual pianos. And that opens up the whole area of neuro-plasticity, which also has vast implications for the effect of intentional actions on neural structures.)

And finally the claim that 'consciousness is physical' is the very subject of the entire argument, and your claims in this regard still suggest, to me at least, that you're not seeing the point of the argument.

Why physicalism?

Physicalism is paradigmatic for modern philosophy and culture because the generalised method of the application of precise measurement to the quantifiable attributes of physical bodies has been extraordinarily successful across an enormous range of phenomena, from subatomic to the cosmic scales. This method relies on reduction to those attributes which can be represented and measured numerically, pioneered by Newton, Galileo and Descartes. The whole ethos of Enlightenment science is that this method is truly universal in range and scope and that there is nothing that could fall outside it (or at least, nothing worthy of consideration.) This is where the problem of consciousness originates - because by definition consciousness is excluded from this paradigm.

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them.

Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36

Thomas Nagel, quoted above, was also referenced in Chalmer’s original essay and is a leading critic of philosophical reductionism. He adds:

The scientific revolution of the 17th century, which has given rise to such extraordinary progress in the understanding of nature, depended on a crucial limiting step at the start: It depended on subtracting from the physical world as an object of study everything mental – consciousness, meaning, intention or purpose. The physical sciences as they have developed since then describe, with the aid of mathematics, the elements of which the material universe is composed, and the laws governing their behavior in space and time.

We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe, composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.

However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.

So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory. — The Core of Mind and Cosmos

Addendum to:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/768274

Not this tired old 'idealist/antirealist' caricature again ... :roll:

Why physicalism? [ ... ] This is where the problem of consciousness originates - — Wayfarer

"The problem originates" with semantically reifying the abstraction, or concept, of "consciousness" and thereby reducing a self-reflexive activity to a discrete thing (i.e. reduce what human brains intermittenly do to the contents (outputs) themselves).

– because by definition consciousness is excluded from this paradigm.

Physicalism only excludes non-physical concepts from modeling (i.e. explaining) how observable states-of-affairs transform into one another. In this way "the paradigm" is epistemologically modest, or deflationary, limiting its inquiries to only that which can be publicly observed – accounted for – in order to minimize as much as possible the distorting biases (e.g. wishful / magical thinking, superstitions, prejudices, authority, etc) of folk psychology/semantics. We physicalists do not "exclude consciousness" (i.e. first-person experience) but rather conceive of it as a metacognitive function – e.g. phenomenal self-modeling – of organisms continuously interacting with and adapting to each other and their common environment.

As far as I can discern it, Wayfarer, 'first-person subjectivity' is like one-dimensional information processing for which the higher dimensions (e.g. third-person objectivity) it is imbedded in are completely transparent to the one-dimension (like the circle in Flatland (E. Abbot, 1884)) sustaining the illusion of 'first-person subjectivity' as either (A) all-there-is, (B) the ontological basis of all-there-is or (C) a separate substance from whatever-else-there-is. Physicalism helps to philosophically dispel this (folk) illusion much in the way prescription lenses correct for acute myopia.

I would have thought that the distinction between sentient beings and insentient objects is a fundamental not only in philosophy. — Wayfarer

Again, unwarranted Cartesian-Heideggerian dualism. The fact is, Wayf, a very very tiny fraction of all "insentient objects" ever on Earth have also been "sentient beings", and we know this by observing that the latter are subject without exception to all of the same objective conditions and forces to which the former are subject. At most, functionally, "sentient" only predicates – is a way of describing – (some very rare) "objects" but is not itself a "fundamental distinction" any more than wings on butterflies are "fundamental distinctions" from wingless larvae or caterpillars.

:up:

:100: Yes, maps =/= the terrority.

The bet you referred to, as I understood it, was about the Easy problem.
— Philosophim

Not so. The byline of the article you cite says 'Christof Koch wagered David Chalmers 25 years ago that researchers would learn how the brain achieves consciousness by now.' The bet was lost. — Wayfarer

As I noted, I was a bit uncertain as to my claim. Thank you for the correction.

the neuroscientist believed they would have a neuronal explanation of what causes consciousness. This is the easy problem.
— Philosophim

No, it's not. That is just the problem that hasn't been solved. Again, look at the reference I provided upthread on the neural binding problen. — Wayfarer

Fantastic article, thank you for the reference! They noted there was nothing in the visual part of the brain that could map to a very specific subjective experience of consciousness, namely why we see things in high resolution. This is not the same as not finding neuronal mapping to all subjective experiences.

"There is now overwhelming biological and behavioral evidence that the brain contains no stable, high-resolution, full field representation of a visual scene, even though that is what we subjectively experience (Martinez-Conde et al. 2008). The structure of the primate visual system has been mapped in detail (Kaas and Collins 2003) and there is no area that could encode this detailed information. "

Reading this carefully, there are a few things to note. First, he can say that there is currently no area in the visual system that has been found to encode this detailed information from a book written in 2003. That is true, but not the hard problem. I also did not find a valid reference to his second claim from Martinez-Conde. I looked at his article and found this in the available abstract (I could not find the full article):

"Because all of our visual experience occurs in conjunction with eye movements, understanding their perceptual and physiological effects is critical to understanding vision in general. Moreover, the neural mechanisms underlying perceptual suppression during eye movements may be very important towards narrowing down the neural bases of visual awareness."

"Recent developments have led to new insights through a combination of behavioral, psychophysical, computational and neurophysiological research carried out under conditions that increasingly approach the complex conditions of the natural retinal environment. Among these, fixational eye movement studies comprise a promising and fast-moving field of research. This special issue of Journal of Vision offers a broad compilation of recent discoveries concerning the perceptual consequences of eye movements in vision, as well as the mechanisms responsible for producing stable perception from unstable oculomotor behavior. "

So I'm having a difficult time finding out how the author of the primary article can validly claim his conclusions. I still see the idea of mapping neuronal states to consciousness as the easy problem while being able to scientifically objectify the subjective state of consciousness as the easy problem.

I don't think that there is as strong a correlation as you're claiming. Certainly all of those influences affect the brain, and the state of the brain then affects the nature of conscious experience. But that doesn't amount to proving that consciousness is physical, as it's still not clear what consciousness actually is, other than it is something that, for organisms such as ourselves, requires a functioning brain in order to interact with the sensory domain. — Wayfarer

You and I have touched on this a bit in the past, and I'll refrain from going over them again. To sum, its a difference in approach towards knowledge that you and I take. I'm actually very open to there being alternative reasons for consciousness besides the brain. The thing is, I need evidence. Currently I have found no evidence that provides any indication of consciousness, in humans, without the brain. What would consciousness be if not matter and energy from a neuronal system? Without something concrete to examine, we have an unfalsifiable God of the Gaps consciousness, which I am not interested in. Do we need people like yourself who keep looking for some other evidence of consciousness besides the brain while science grapples with its problems? Absolutely. But until the day something is found, what we can safely claim knowledge to is that consciousness is caused by the brain.

There are also many hugely anomalous cases of subjects with grossly abnormal brains who seem to be able to function (see Man with tiny brain shocks doctors). — Wayfarer

He functions with an IQ of 84. That's the 'normal range' but hardly normal or Einstein. There are brains besides animals that are much smaller than ours, but still conscious. Show me a man without a brain who is conscious and you'll have something.

There is the case of psycho-somatic medicine and the placebo effect, wherein subjects beliefs and emotional states have physical consequences. They can be regarded as being 'top-down causation', in that the effects of beliefs and mental states operate 'downward' on the physical brain. — Wayfarer

Right, but where do beliefs and emotional states come from? The brain. The brain affecting the brain is a well known event. Show me something entirely outside of the physical realm that affects consciousness, and that will be something.

And finally the claim that 'consciousness is physical' is the very subject of the entire argument, and your claims in this regard still suggest, to me at least, that you're not seeing the point of the argument. — Wayfarer

No, the point of the argument is the hard problem. The hard problem has never claimed that consciousness is not physical, if we are regarding physical as matter and energy. Matter and energy has the capability to be conscious if organized right, just like water and hydrogen has the capability to be water if organized right. That's the point of the easy problem, to show that yes, they understand that consciousness is a physical manifestation of the brain. But will we ever be able to map consciousness objectively to what it is like to subjectively be conscious? That seems impossible.

You have described Einstein's equation as an expression of three states of being: a) invisible; b) tangible; c) non-dimensional. On one side of the equation you have the invisible state; on the other side of the equation you have mass and the speed of light as tangible matter. You agree that mass and the speed of light, contrary to your description of e=mc2, possess invisibility. — ucarr

Actually, I didn't comment on the visibility of Mass & C. But, for the record, all of the equation's elements are imaginary & invisible abstractions. And none of them is tangible Matter, although Mass is a numerical measurement (mentalization) of Matter, a concept, not an object. So, I don't know how you decided that the invisibility of of numerical concepts contradicts my description of Einstein's equation, in which I referred to Matter, not Mass, as "tangible". Does any of that "matter" to you? :joke:

PS___ One inference from the equation is that invisible Energy can transform into visible & tangible Matter. But we only know Matter (actual) by measuring the "gravity energy weight" of Mass (potential) with our senses. Energy & Mass are both forms of causal EnFormAction, hence Potential Mental (subjective cause) not Actual Material (objective effect). That's a key distinction in the EFA thesis : the mental map is not the material terrain.

Let me add that, in my view, numbers, like the environment in which they have meaning, are physical. . . . . If numbers are not precisely physical, then they're a good candidate for the bridge between the material and immaterial worlds. — ucarr

Sorry, I don't follow your definition of "unary". I assumed it was a reference to Unity or Holism. Personally, I would distinguish metaphysical (mental) "numbers" from the physical (material) objects they enumerate. But, as forms of Information, I can agree that numbers could be construed as a "bridge" (link) between the material (real) world, and the immaterial (ideal) world. The link between mental (nominal) number and material (actual) object is symbolic (pointing). :nerd:

Physical :
a> relating to the body as opposed to the mind.
b> relating to things perceived through the senses as opposed to the mind; tangible or concrete.

Intangibles offer cold comfort for flesh ‘n blood mortals. — ucarr

Ironically, our intangible mental images are all we know of the tangible world. Our physical senses translate warm-blooded matter into cold (rational) concepts. Brrr! :smile:

Can We Know Objective Reality?
The subjective is characterized primarily by perceiving mind. The objective is characterized primarily by physical extension in space and time. The simplest sort of discrepancy between subjective judgment and objective reality is well illustrated by John Locke’s example of holding one hand in ice water and the other hand in hot water for a few moments. When one places both hands into a bucket of tepid water, one experiences competing subjective experiences of one and the same objective reality. One hand feels it as cold, the other feels it as hot. Thus, one perceiving mind can hold side-by-side clearly differing impressions of a single object.
https://iep.utm.edu/objectiv/

Consciousness...

describes the organism as a whole. sure
is a mode of biology. sure
is what he is doing. sure

I'm happy to concede all of those points and moreover to add that consciousness as we know it would not exist if not for the physical system that it is constituted by.

The problem though, the hard problem, is that when we consider the entire organism, or when we consider it at the physiological level, or at the neuronal level. or at the atomic level, or whatever level, we can't give an account of why that matter is conscious. It's obvious that there are conscious people, but why are they conscious? What, in physical terms, accounts for their consciousness. Again, we can't just point to the physiology. In fact, we can't point to anything physical. Why? Because as you said that will only amount to a description of the system in physiological or physical terms; it will not answer the question of why the matter considered is conscious.

No, the point of the argument is the hard problem. The hard problem has never claimed that consciousness is not physical, if we are regarding physical as matter and energy. Matter and energy has the capability to be conscious if organized right, just like water and hydrogen has the capability to be water if organized right. That's the point of the easy problem, to show that yes, they understand that consciousness is a physical manifestation of the brain. But will we ever be able to map consciousness objectively to what it is like to subjectively be conscious? That seems impossible. — Philosophim

I think the hard problem is not answering why consciousness is a physical manifestation, but why a physical manifestation should result in consciousness. And, it is quite unclear why any physical matter/energy arrangement should result in anything like consciousness. The consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms because consciousness is not a physical thing.

Physicalism only excludes non-physical concepts from modeling (i.e. explaining) how observable states-of-affairs transform into one another. In this way "the paradigm" is epistemologically modest, or deflationary, limiting its inquiries to only that which can be publicly observed – accounted for – in order to minimize as much as possible the distorting biases (e.g. wishful / magical thinking, superstitions, prejudices, authority, etc) of folk psychology/semantics. — 180 Proof

If physicalism is just an epistemological paradigm and not an ontological commitment, that takes a lot of the wind out of its sails, don't you think so?

There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — The Core of Mind and Cosmos

:up:

I think the hard problem is not answering why consciousness is a physical manifestation, but why a physical manifestation should result in consciousness. — NotAristotle

Written this way, I can accept that as well. For example, why does oxygen and hydrogen make water? Why is there existence at all? These are hard problems that may not have an answer besides, "It just does."

The consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms because consciousness is not a physical thing. — NotAristotle

Your former point does not lead to the later. That would be like me saying that water is not a physical thing because I don't understand why the combination of hydrogen and oxygen make it happen. That's ridiculous. Consciousness is clearly a physical thing. Please show me an example of consciousness that can arise without any matter or energy involved. Here are some examples that could work.

1. Consciousness able to exist despite a lack of physical capability to do so.

For example, move your consciousness apart from your head where it sits into the next room that you cannot currently see. I am unable to do so.

2. Demonstrate a conscious entity that has no physical or energetic correlation.

For example, prove that a completely brain dead body is conscious. Or Inebriate someone to a high blood alcohol level and demonstrate that their consciousness is completely unaffected.

3. If consciousness is not matter and/or energy, please demonstrate evidence of its existence without using a God of the Gaps approach.

An inability to pinpoint the exact physical workings of consciousness does not negate that it is physical. We understand that a car needs an engine to run like a body needs a brain to be conscious. I don't have to understand electromagnetism to understand that a car needs an engine to run, and I don't need to understand the full mechanics of how the brain works to understand you need a brain to be conscious (in humans at least).

Our inability to understand how an engine works or how a brain works does not give us justification to claim, "A car or a brain running is not physical".

Besides, the problem is not only about not knowing what it is like to be another kind of being — Wayfarer

I just want to point out that I think this is not exactly the hard problem, rather it is what Ned Block has articulated to be the "harder" problem of consciousness. I could be mistaken about that.

Sorry but I don't understand the question?