So you're saying that the way you defined "and" isn't A = A? — Skalidris

The way I defined "and" does not say "A = A."

You defined it as: "the "and" operator is an attractor that puts multiple members into one set" — Skalidris

Here's the correct translation of my verbal equation to a math equation: Given A, A (two unconnected, identical machine parts), with the entrance of the conjunction operator $∧$ we get
{$A∧A = 2A$}.

A = A is not a multiplicity of A twice; it is one A, itself.

You used multiple to define it but multiple is just a step further from "and" (if you take one element AND another, you have MULTIPLE elements). — Skalidris

No. I did not use "multiple" to define the conjunction operator. I used "attractor" to describe what it does: connect. Perhaps you'll argue that connecting is just the same as multiplying. They're related, but they're not identical. We can prove this by showing how 3+4 = 7, whereas 3x4 = 12.

Also, as you say, “multiple is just a step further from ‘and…’”. Well, one step further is a positive distance from the previous step, so the two positions are different. What this means in our context here is that

…(if you take one element AND another, you have MULTIPLE elements). — Skalidris

Your description shows us that the conjunction operator is a function that renders a connection linking multiple parts. This process that renders connected parts is distinct from the connection it produces. The connection is the result of the process. We know the two things are distinct because parts don’t connect without a process that renders the connection. An example is a truck and the trailer it pulls. The truck and the trailer don’t connect unless there’s a trailer hitch that performs the function of connecting the two.

Suppose "trailer hitch" is defined as "a connector that links truck and trailer." This definition has the same form as "...the "and" operator is an attractor that puts multiple members into one set." I want you to show how both definitions are indistinguishable from the definition of "and."

If A = B but the only meaningful way to define B (or an element within B) is B = A, it's the same as A = A. It's only meaningful in language, if you don't know the word for "and" and that someone tries to explain what that means, they can use words that you know that imply the concept "and", but that doesn't mean they've defined it in a meaningful way. — Skalidris

The underlined part of your quote is incorrect. With A = B, you've set up an equation of the type:
5 = 2+3. This is not A = A, which could be 5 = 5, or 2+3 = 2+3. A and B, as your eye can see, are not identical, as the case with A = A. Stop conflating equivalent with identical.

When you stop conflating equivalent with identical, you’ll see clearly that saying: “He tried to bother me.” differs from saying: “He tried to harass me.” The two verbs are roughly equivalent, but certainly not identical.

But if A is an element of C and that C= B∧A, defining A as C without B isn't meaningful. — Skalidris

If A is an element of C such that C = {A∧B}, then defining A as C is a non-sequitur.

For clarity, consider you have a pizza with mushrooms and bell pepper toppings. This establishes bell pepper as an element of the pizza. Does it make sense to go from there to saying bell pepper equals the pizza?

I now see that your argument denounces my definition as redundant. The issue in our debate is whether my definition is distinct from Webster’s definition of “and.” This is a very different issue from arguing that a definition is neither meaningful or useful. Since you've used these words to make your argument, claiming my definition possesses neither attribute, I've been assuming they accurately express the point of contention. They don't.

Although my definition says nothing not already said, I claim it is still distinct from Webster’s definition of “and.” My definition emphasizes “connect” within the context of set theory.

As I now think you're saying a fundamental definition cannot be redefined usefully because of redundancy, I go along with you most of the way, but not all of the way because of the issue of context. If it’s best to insert 5 into one context, whereas it’s best to insert 2+3 into another context, then that stands as a minor example of usefully spinning a fundamental definition.

No. I did not use "multiple" to define the conjunction operator. — ucarr

In other words, the "and" operator is an attractor that puts multiple members into one set — ucarr

You did, you used multiple in the definition. If you only want to used attractor, when you define attractor, you'll still have two use a word similar to multiple, several, and, connect, which all contain the same essence that's fundamental and can't be defined in a meaningful way (or, since you don't like saying that, it simply can't be explained). In other words, if you can't define/explain "and" with smaller parts it's made of, it creates the circularity, the self reference. Do you know what I mean or don't you? Because it's not clear from your response, I'm not sure about where you're going with this.

Perhaps you'll argue that connecting is just the same as multiplying. They're related, but they're not identical. We can prove this by showing how 3+4 = 7, whereas 3x4 = 12. — ucarr

Multiple isn't the same as multiplying... Just as you said here.

multiple | ˈməltəp(ə)l |
adjective
having or involving several parts, elements, or members — ucarr

The underlined part of your quote is incorrect. With A = B, you've set up an equation of the type:
5 = 2+3. This is not A = A, which could be 5 = 5, or 2+3 = 2+3. A and B, as your eye can see, are not identical, as the case with A = A. Stop conflating equivalent with identical. — ucarr

No, the problem I mention is when A = 7-2 rather than 2+3. But the analogy with numbers doesn't work because we know that we can break down 5 in a lot of ways, and the problem I mentioned is when 5 can't be broken down into smaller units, smaller operations. Basically the question "how do you make 5?" is left unanswered and the only way to "define it" is to take a "bigger" category and remove other elements from it, or to use synonyms.

Does it make sense to go from there to saying bell pepper equals the pizza? — ucarr

Bell pepper equals pizza (containing bell peppers) minus all the other elements. That's what I meant when I said "C without B", it means C minus B.

you're saying a fundamental definition cannot be redefined usefully — ucarr

Again, no, I did not say that. I mentioned the use in language here:

It's only useful if you don't know the word for A — Skalidris

If it’s best to insert 5 into one context, whereas it’s best to insert 2+3 into another context, then that stands as a minor example of usefully spinning a fundamental definition. — ucarr

Yes, trouble is that, in the context of primitive notions, you can't define 5 as an addition of smaller parts.

Physicalism Is Dead — Marc Wittmann

Thank goodness that's finally settled!


:rofl:

No. I did not use "multiple" to define the conjunction operator. — ucarr

You did, you used multiple in the definition. If you only want to used attractor, when you define attractor, you'll still have two use a word similar to multiple, several, and, connect, which all contain the same essence that's fundamental and can't be defined... — Skalidris

...if you can't define/explain "and" with smaller parts it's made of, it creates the circularity, the self reference. — Skalidris

In other words, the "and" operator is an attractor that puts multiple members into one set — ucarr

I need to change my definition as follows:

In other words, the "and" operator is a connector that links multiple things that are to be taken jointly — ucarr

The word changes do not alter the meaning of the definition except to make it a more accurate description: to connect by linking things together.

and (conjunction) -- used to connect things that are to be taken jointly

multiple (adjective) -- having several parts

When you look at the two definitions, why do you think they are one and the same?

3x4 = 12 — ucarr

Multiple isn't the same as multiplying... Just as you said here. — Skalidris

Regarding the equation with the multiplying function, why do you deny that 12 is a multiple of 3 and 4?

...the problem I mentioned is when 5 can't be broken down into smaller units, smaller operations. — Skalidris

It's true prime numbers are limited as to how they're factored, but your argument includes more than the primes.

Bell pepper equals pizza (containing bell peppers) minus all the other elements. — Skalidris

This statement says bell pepper stands alone, or B = B. B $≠$ B + P

...you're saying a fundamental definition cannot be broken down into subordinate parts — ucarr

This is true.

You're saying when the terms of a fundamental definition are not known to someone, synonymous terms of equal meaning known to that person are useful in the effort to communicate the definition to them.

This is true.

What Chalmers thinks Experience Is
Chalmers says “It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis”. This is true. Chalmers speaks for an orthodoxy. He speaks not just for himself, but for an age, for a zeitgeist.

Chalmers says that experience cannot be characterised by reducing it to physical terms. This, I believe, is a valid point.
However his analysis of experience is hobbled from the start by a misunderstanding of experience and a mischaracterisation of it.
And whilst he overtly states that experience may not be reduced to the physical many remarks that he makes indicate that in fact he does think of experience as something physical.
His list of “relatively easy problems of consciousness” straightaway reveals an unclear grasp of what he is talking about. His list fails to identify the critical distinction between our sense of the body or brain as something physical and our sense of it as something that has a will. He divides up mental categorisation into two separate problems. He divides up cause and effect issues into two, and puts one of them in with one of the categorisation problems. He includes within this list a problem that goes right to the heart of the hard problem.
So I would divide up these problems in the following way:
• The ability to discriminate, categorise and integrate information in the way a piece of filter paper in a funnel set over a beaker divides up dirty water into dirt and water. It discriminates between dirt and water, integrates the separate parts of water with one another, in the beaker below, and integrates the bits of dirt with one another on the top of the piece of filter paper, and it categorises things into the categories, Pure Water and Pure Dirt.
• The ability to focus attention in the way a blast furnace extracts iron from iron ore. Just as only the most intense stimulus gets through to the brain from the senses, so only the heaviest material in the blast furnace, iron—because it blocks the way for all other lighter material because of its weight—passes out of the trap door at the base of the blast furnace.
• The ability to react to environmental stimuli in the way a stone reacts to the sun, by warming up. “React” is a Newtonian word. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. A dead frog is galvanised by electricity. Something is prodded and it yells. This is cause and effect.
• The difference between wakefulness and sleep in the way a smoke detector behaves differently in the presence of smoke whether or not it is wrapped in a material that partially prevents smoke from getting to it.
• The ability to choose to discriminate, integrate and categorise in a way that you please. The ability to choose to focus you attention in a way that you please. The ability to choose a certain behaviour over another.
• The ability off a system to access and report on its mental states.

The first four identify experience with physical processes. That Chalmers calls these problems relatively easy consciousness problems shows that he thinks of consciousness as physical—in spite of his overt avowal that it may not be understood as something physical. The second two of these identify experience with cause and effect, which is to identify consciousness with a physical process, (but, by the by, there is nothing even relatively easy about the topic of cause and effect, and so even it is a consciousness problem, it is not a relatively easy one).
The fifth is to do with the relationship of consciousness to the will. Either Chalmers thinks we are just mechanisms, and that free will is illusory, in which case again, he is identifying consciousness with something physical, or he thinks there is such a thing as free will, in which case the fact that will is associated with consciousness makes this certainly not a relatively easy problem.
The last of these I am going to talk about in a minute. It is, I believe, not separate from his “hard” problem but goes right to the heart of it.
In other remarks it is revealed that Chalmers in fact thinks experience is something physical.
Experience “arises” from the physical. Though it seems likely that he chose this word particularly so as not to identify the relationship between experience and the physical as that of causation, it does suggest a relationship of dependence, one-way dependence, of which causation is one version, indeed perhaps the paradigmatic version. Something, Y, arises from something else, X, when, whilst Y is non-identical to X, nevertheless somehow all the ingredients for Y are already contained within X. Y is independent of X in that the removal of Y would not also be the removal of X—you could take away experience but the physical would remain—but Y is not independent of X in that the removal of X would also be the removal of Y—if you took away the physical you would take away experience too. So within X, within the physical, you have everything you need to make Y, experience.
Experience is something based on a “whirr of information processing”. In other words it is based on something that is like a computer.
Experience is something that organisms have, which are physical things. It is located where organisms are located.
Experience is a “fundamental property”. “Property” is a word we use for things like mass, charge, spin, colour, texture, hardness, etc.: physical things. Of course a person can have the “property” of being lazy, or spontaneous, or conscientious, but we don’t usually use the term “property” in these contexts.
Experience is a bit like electromagnetism in that it is just a given. It is not something to be explained in the way that matter is not something to be explained. It just is. It is at the end of the line of explanation; it is an explanans, not an explanandum.
However at the same time Chalmers argues that experience may not be explained and understood by reference to the Physical, and that it is something that is to be solved, that it is a problem, indeed a hard problem—in the way that the existence of matter say, is not something to be solved, is not a problem.
So what is Chalmers saying? Is he saying experience is a problem? Or is he saying that—having identified experience as something fundamental, like electromagnetism, only different—he has in fact solved the essence of the problem?

What Chalmers Thinks the “Hard” Problem of Consciousness Is
So what is the “hard” problem, according to Chalmers?
Experience is a kind of stuff, that has an identity with brains, or with the information processing of brains. It is in the same place as the brain. It is a mode of presentation of the physical; it is of the physical, but not the physical itself.
Chalmers would want to say that of the two, the physical and experience, only experience is directly accessible to us. There is something underlying experience, the Physical, but we can only really infer it.
I think however that what is going on in Chalmers’ mind, when he is identifying his problem is this. Take his example of the sound of a clarinet. He has two processes that he is comparing. One of them is what you might see through a microscope, of the timpanum vibrating, the transmission of this vibration through the bones of the ear, the pulse of electicity that travels from them to the aural region of the brain (with attendant releases of tiny quantities of chemicals)—then further, and more complex, pulses of electricity (and releases of tiny quantities of chemicals). Etc., etc. —Then, contrasted with this, there is the sound of the clarinet that we hear. All we can really say about that sound is that it is clarinet-sound-like.
These two ideas of what is going on when we hear a clarinet, which appear so different, are in fact, puzzlingly, the same thing. Why is there this extra thing, the clarinet-sound-like sensation—over and above what is at its basis, the neurological information processing? How do they seem so different when there is some identity between them? (They are in the same place; they happen at the same time, you can correlate elements from the one —the various notes, for example—with the other; if you take away the information processing, you take away the clarinet sound too.) How is this one thing, me, both a physical thing and a thing that is made of experience? And why should there be this extra, inessential thing: experience?
Chalmers is asking: How are these two stuffs, one of which is physical stuff, brains, or electricity, or information processing (such as what goes on inside computers), and the other of which is experience stuff—which are different—also the same, in that they are in the same place and happen at the same time?

Why Chalmers’ Misidentifies the “Hard” Problem
Chalmers’ identification of the “hard” problem derives from his mischaracterisation of experience.
(A separate, tangential point: the hard problem that he is trying to get at is only one of the hard problems, the other of which concerns the will.)
Chalmers asks how two non-identical stuffs are yet identified with one another, in that they are in the same place (and at the same time).
I think this is quite wrong. I think the hard problem is the following: How is some stuff that is in a different place from my brain (whatever I am perceiving, or thinking about) also in my brain? How are these different stuffs, the stuff that is my brain, and the stuff I am looking at (say the shed at the bottom of my garden I am looking at now) apparently in the same place, in my brain? How do I know the world? How is my brain about my shed? —Or, if you don’t believe that the brain is “about” the world, how do we account for this apparent “aboutness”?
Of course the shed can’t be in the same place as my brain. The literal, physical, shed, cannot be in the same place as my brain. That is one fact that seems certain. And yet it seems to be. This perception that I am having, this thought, seems to be shed-like. There is something of the outside world, inside me, inside this brain. How can this be?
The problem Chalmers is addressing is: How is experience related to the physical? His framing of the question assumes that experience is a kind of stuff that overlays the brain. But this is a misunderstanding of the problem of experience. The problem of experience is this age-old problem, though it is expressed in a number of ways. How do I know the world? How can I, inside this brain, have access to the outside world? How are my thoughts about the world? What is the relationship of the subject to the object? How does a name mean what it means?
To reiterate, and to characterise the difference between what Chalmers identifies as the hard problem and what I think is the hard problem, in the baldest, and the simplest way:
Chalmers asks how can two different stuffs, physical stuff and experience stuff, be in the same place.
I ask how two different physical objects, my brain and the shed, can make one stuff: experience. How are these non-identical things, my brain and the shed, somehow forced together, like two north poles of two magnets, into one thing. They want to spring apart. The situation is not resolved. There seems to be a contradiction.
That is to say that I think the hard problem of consciousness—and indeed the hard problem that is at the basis of Chalmers’ hard problem—is the problem of representation.

The Actual Hard Problem
What I identify above as the real hard problem is really only one half of the hard problem, or one version of it. That version is, in shorthand, How is the world in my brain? How is the world somehow in here, when it can’t be in here?
The other version is the mirror image of it. How am I out there? How is my brain where the world is? How is it that I, this brain, reaches out, is spread out, to what I am looking at, to the world all around me? How is my perspective on the world, the appearance of the world to me, the two-dimensionality of objects, as they are to me—identified with the world itself, of matter, of things that are nothing to do with me? How is the me-like version of the world identified with the non-me-like version, the world itself? How is the surface of things, which is a plane, and which is my version of Reality, identified with a volume, which is the world’s version of Reality? How is the gossamer-thin surface of things identified with the substance of things? How is this, over here, this perspective that is centred on this brain, or this eye, identified with that, over there, out there? The objects of the world seem to be ranged around my brain in a circle, or rather, in a sphere, and I go right up to the outer surface of these objects; what I know is whatever there is up to the surface of those objects, but no further: whatever is beyond that surface, or inside it, is forever mysterious to me. That is my limit, my knowledge, or whatever it is that I sense. But how is this, this sphere, that is distinct from thie objects of the world, also identified with them? How is this perspective identified with the perspectiveless world? How is a view identified with something that isn’t a view, that is just matter? Or the problem can be put like this: How do I know these objects, in that I perceive them, in that I can touch them, or touch them with my eyes—and also do not know them, in that what they really are is the substance that is behind the appearance? Or the problem can be put like this: How is the appearance of things to me quite different from the appearance of things to you—they are non-identical, as non-identical as the two different points from which the world is viewed—and yet each is identified with one and the same thing, the world? How is the greenness of that leaf, not the electromagnetic waves, but the phenomenological stuff, the stuff associated with me—out there, identified with colourless matter?
There isn’t, in addition to the world (every object that is not the object that is my brain), and in addition to my brain, a third thing, a stuff, that is wrapped around the substances of the world, Appearance, identified with the world, but not the world itself. The question, the puzzle, is not how there is, in addition to substance, also appearance, surface, in the same place as substance. The question is, the puzzle is: how I do I reach right up to the substances of the world, when in fact I am distinct from the world?
This is the essence of the problem that Plato and Aristotle are addressing. Their version of Chalmers’ hard problem is: There seem to be these two things, appearance (forms, universals) in the same place as substance, and yet they are different things. They are asking: how is there subjectivity out there, in the world? Or, if it not a problem, for Aristotle, then it is just a statement of how things are: The world is made of things, and those things are a combination of substance and form. Plato and Aristotle take this version of the problem as central. We (our age, of which Chalmers is a prominent proponent) takes the mirror image of their question as central: there seem to be these two things, experience and brain, and they are in the same place and yet there are different things. Or, if you like, and this seems the basis of Chalmers’ solution, and he is like Aristotle in this: the world is made of many things, some of which are people, and these things are a combination of brains (or information-processing, or electricity and chemicals) and experience.

How the Actual Hard Problem is really not different from the Problem of Representation
The Actual Hard Problem has two halves: How is the world in my brain? And how is my brain out there in the world?
This question is really the same question of how there is representation. How is it that you can have two distinct things, say a picture, and what that picture is of, that yet have some sort of identity? How can one represent the other? What is it about a picture that enables it to represent that which it represents? How can one be represented by the other? How can that which is represented be picked out, identified, by something other than it? Imagine a painting, on canvas, of a horse. How does that painting reach out across air and space and take us to the horse? How does it point to the horse? How is it the case that if you travel to the painting, you also travel to the horse? How too is there something in a place other than the horse that somehow contains that horse? How is there a thing, quite other than the horse itself, that is also identified with the horse?
Compare this problem with the problem of how a word represents a thing in the world. Consider the word “Escargot” (which was the name of a famous racehorse). How does that word refer to the horse Escargot? How is the horse Escargot referred to by the word “Escargot”? This is a different problem for the following reason. If you look at the picture of the horse, whilst it is a different object from the horse itself—it is in a different place; it is made of canvas and pigment—there is nevertheless something that might account for the identity. The two look the same. The horse has a head and a tail; the picture of the horse has a head and tail. The horse is brown. The picture of the horse is brown. The horse has four legs; the picture of the horse has four legs. They share a form, at least, though not a substance. But now look at the word “Escargot” and compare it to the horse Escargot. These two things seem to have nothing in common. You will look in vain amongst the letters, at the chemical constitution of the ink and of the paper pulp: you will find nothing of the horse Escargot, in that word. And yet the one “Escargot” does indeed seem to represent the other, Escargot. How is this possible? And how are these two different cases both seemingly examples of one and the same concept: Representation?
The problem with this account of representation is that it doesn’t matter how identical two things are in form: this is not sufficient for Representation. Two identical twins are very similar, indeed far more similar than the canvas painting and the horse. Not only do they look the same, they are also made of the same kind of stuff (flesh and bones). And yet one twin is not the representation of the other.
Or what about this: a pinhole camera and a horse. There is an image of the horse inside the pinhole camera. Light comes into the aperture in the front of the camera and terminates on the screen of the pinhole camera. The image of the horse represents the horse, and the horse is represented by the image inside the pinhole camera. These two things, the screen inside the camera, made of paper, and a horse-shaped pattern of light—and the horse, are distinct from one another, two separate things, and yet there is an identity, of sorts between them. How is this possible? Well, the image on the screen of the camera is caused by the horse. Light, emitted by the horse travels through the air and impresses itself on the screen. One and the same light is both initially identified with the horse, and then finally with the camera. There is a certain stuff, light, that is both identified with the horse and with the camera. Thus there are two things, two non-identical things, and a third thing, the light, that is identified with both. Thus representation is possible.
The problem with this account of representation is that being the effect of a cause doesn’t make the one a representation of the other. A stone heats up in the sun. The warmth of the stone might have been caused by the sun but it is not a representation of the sun. You might claim it is, but first you would have to stretch the definition of “Representation” so widely that it incorporates all instances of causation. And secondly you would either have to rule out the case of words representing things, or, alternatively, you would have to trace a very tortuous and elaborate chain of causation from the thing to the word.
Compare these cases to the case of the brain representing some object in the world (an object that is not the brain). This seems to be a case like the painting of the horse or like the pinhole camera image of the horse. If you inspect the word “Escargot” you will find nothing of the horse Escargot in it. If you inspect the brain however, you will find something of the object that that brain is perceiving (say). If I am looking at a horse there is an image of that horse on my retina, and, more than that, there is a correlate of that image in the electrical or chemical impulses that transmit this image to the visual part of the brain, and there, in the visual part of the brain, there is a correlate to those impulses. Indeed—though it doesn’t look like the image on the retina, nor indeed like the horse—it is a sort of picture of the horse. This sort of picture of the horse in the brain (though written a language opaque to us) is caused by the horse (through a chain of causation that passes from the horse, to the eye, to the brain) and it also has some formal identity with a horse: there is a something in the brain that correlates to the head of the horse, its tail, its four legs, its brownness, etc.). These perceptions, visual, aural and all the rest, are the basis of the contents of the mind. These are chopped up, reassembled in different ways, etc., filtered, processed, categorised, etc.. But the model is really an Empiricist one, a Lockean or Humean one, of things in the world writing on the tabula of the brain, or “impressing” themselves on the soft tissue of the brain.
All these accounts of representation, the painting, the pinhole camera and the brain, are wrong. They fundamentally misunderstand representation. They are wrong because they fail to account for how a word represents.
What is absolutely required for representation is that there is, as well as identity between that which represents and that which is represented (otherwise there is no link between the things) non-identity.
A thing cannot represent itself. Nothing represents itself. In fact anything—except itself—in the entire universe, can represent a thing—there are no other restrictions whatsoever. Any supposed counterexample doesn’t work. Examples you might see in the philosophical literature in fact, clandestinely, split up—and must split up—that which is supposedly one thing that represents itself into two things. A critical factor in how the painting of the horse represents the horse, is that the horse is one thing, a thing in one place, and the painting is another thing, in another place. What enables the pinhole camera to represent the horse is that the pinhole camera is not the horse. What enables the brain to peceive the horse, indeed think about the horse, know the horse, is that the brain is a different lump of matter from the lump of matter that is the horse. In order that I know something I must be separate from that thing. Knowledge is a relationship, a relationship between a minimum of two things. What enables me to know the world (or rather to know everything that is not me, the knower) is that I am separate from the world. The world can’t know the world, because the world is the world. The world cannot represent the world because the world is the world. There may well be something within my skull wall that has some identity of some kind with the horse (an identity of form or an effect of which the horse is caused, or both) but what is also critical is that there is something that is entirely separate from the horse, and indeed entirely separate from whatever is inside my skull wall that has an identity with the horse, the image on my retina, or the electricity in my visual cortex.
That I perceive the world, know the world, is that there is both some identity between me and the world, and some non-identity. Indeed that I perceive or know anything at all is that there must be both this identity and non-idenity. That therefore I introspect, that I have knowledge, not of the world, but of my experience, that I may access my experience or report on my experience (in Chalmers words) is that there is both some identity between that which knows and that which is known (and this condition is satisfied in that both of these are me, are inside my skull)—and also some non-identity. There must be a part of my brain that is not my experience, that looks at my experience, that accesses and that reports. That is why I divide myself into my experience and my brain. Another version of this division is my body or outer half, my senses, and then my inner half, my brain. Another version is a homunculus inside my brain. Another is a pineal gland inside my brain. Another is the “global workplace” inside the brain.

How Representation is Impossible
But all of the foregoing assumes that there is such a thing as Representation, that Representation is possible. That there is a me, in the centre of the world, registering the world, representing the world, that inside those other skulls (that belong to my family and friends, and the people I see on the street) there are representations of the world.
That looking out into the garden, as I do now, that there is something that is doing the looking, in addition to what is being looked at. That there is a me in addition to the world.
That this greenery, those trees, that wall and that shed, that sky—are inside my skull, and that there is something that they represent. That there is a world in addition to me.
That Reality is two things, me and the world.
That there is identity between those things, in that the one represents the other, and that there is non-identity between them too.
But none of this is possible. A thing can’t be btoh identical to something else and also non-identical to it.

The Resolution of the Hard Problem
The actual hard problem, not the hard problem according to Chalmers, arises as the consequence of conceiving Reality to be two things, subject and object, Inner and Outer, me and the world, me in the world, Phenomenon and Thing-in-Itself (in Kantian terminology), Appearance and what appearance is of.
The resolution of the problem is very simple to state: it is a denial of the premises, a denial that Reality is dual in this way, a denial that Reality really is a division into me and the world, a recogntion that the Inner and the Outer are the same, that there is no world apart from me, that there is no me apart from the world, that the world is not independent of me, and that I am not independent of the world, that indeed, said long ago, that Atman is Brahman.
The resolution of the problem is very simple to state, but very hard to believe, very hard to trust in its truthfulness, very hard to imagine. This belief, that there is me and what is not me, is the foundation of all our thoughts about Reality. We cannot trust that it is true without also jettisoning everything we believe.

What's wrong, Dominic? Cat got your tongue?


:rofl:

Nice to get one comment at least... You pour out your soul here and you're met with blank stares...

You pour out your soul here and you're met with blank stares — Dominic Osborn

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