Dualism posits two substances of different kinds, i.e. mental and material. But consciousness doesn't have to be conceived of as an 'immaterial thing' apart from but different to the physical. Rather it pertains to a different order, namely, the subjective or first-person order, in which it never appears as an object. Rather it is that to which (or whom) all experience occurs, the condition for the appearance of all knowledge. — Wayfarer

Right, so instead of substance-dualism you have two orders or perspectives or property-dualism. All the same, when we want to explain how two phenomena are related to each other, yet assume that they are fundamentally different in a way that makes is hard or impossible to understand how they could be related, then the problem might be in the assumption.

The past and future are irreconcilably different, — Metaphysician Undercover

In research on gravity, there's talk of backwards causation and that time is not a fundamental property of the universe. I don't know, but it doesn't seem to be a hard problem to explain how the past creates the future.

Actually, direct realism is part of the hard problem. In asserting that you see the world as it is - as static objects and physical brains, and comparing that to how the mind appears and is described as being non-physical and immaterial is how the hard problem arises. — Harry Hindu

:roll: That's not direct realism. Why bother?

I asked you what an observer is, and you didn't answer the question. — Harry Hindu

For example, a bird observing its environment,, birdwatchers observing the bird, a prison guard observing prisoners, a solo musician observing his own playing, an audience observing the musician, scientists observing their experiments, a thinker observing his own thinking (e.g. indirectly via its effects).

Actually, direct realism is part of the hard problem. In asserting that you see the world as it is - as static objects and physical brains, and comparing that to how the mind appears and is described as being non-physical and immaterial is how the hard problem arises.
— Harry Hindu

:roll: That's not direct realism. Why bother? — jkop

In the philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind, direct or naïve realism, as opposed to indirect or representational realism, are differing models that describe the nature of conscious experiences; out of the metaphysical question of whether the world we see around us is the real world itself or merely an internal perceptual copy of that world generated by our conscious experience. — Wikipedia

If you're using direct realism in a different way then I would hope that you would explain.

I asked you what an observer is, and you didn't answer the question.
— Harry Hindu

For example, a bird observing its environment,, birdwatchers observing the bird, a prison guard observing prisoners, a solo musician observing his own playing, an audience observing the musician, scientists observing their experiments, a thinker observing his own thinking (e.g. indirectly via its effects). — jkop

All you are saying is that an observer observes. :confused:

Yeah, don't bother. :roll:

They take him to be saying that he denies consciousness. Dennett always says, he's not, and adds "Consciousness exists, obviously, but it's not what most people think it is." So Dennett and those I mentioned must be talking about two different things.

Yeah, red or sour or music is nothing more than things we perceive as red, things that taste sour and things that sound like music, but I find them to be very important.

Honestly, it doesn't matter much to me, in the sense that I find other people much more interesting than Dennett. I think you are interpreting him a bit too charitably, but that's fine. I could be misunderstanding him like others.

It looks to me like Dennett style approaches, shared to some extent by the Churchlands and even more radically by Rosenberg, try to step over "the hard problem". But there's plenty of hard problems in philosophy, not "only" experience.

The hard problem is only a problem for dualists and physicalists, or those that believe the world is composed of a quantity of static objects independent of other things and then try to reconcile that with the qualitative aspect of the perception of quantities of static objects. — Harry Hindu

Things "relating" to one another does not entail qualitative aspects, unless from the start, that is your metaphysics.. aka panpsychists. That is fine, but that is basically what it is. If all relations have a qualitative aspect, then ok, that's your position. If only some relations have a qualitative aspect, then it is that which still has to be explained. You cannot get around this. Whether "process", "event" or "object" or combination thereof.. the problem remains as none of that entails qualitative aspects. It is not WOO either. I already mentioned the problem earlier and you are not refuting it:

The map becomes confused with the territory. Or perhaps, the territory has no room for the specific kind of territory and we are back to square one.

If you go and say "but material can be inner aspects" the question is "how". If you say "illusion" that has to be accounted for. If you say that physical is qualitative, then you become a sort of panpsychist or idealist and no longer a materialist. It's more tricky than you are letting on. — schopenhauer1

Really, I see the hard problems as a direct critique at Materialism. Materialism proposes that everything is material or abstractions of material. There is no room for "inner aspects" because that itself is not material. The map becomes confused with the territory. Or perhaps, the territory has no room for the specific kind of territory and we are back to square one. — schopenhauer1

Chalmer's work does not insist upon figuring out the limit of the physical but is interested in building models where consciousness is the function of something we are given phenomena to explore. The 'physical' is not a given packet of phenomena.

The problem is 'hard' because of correspondence. The success of scientific methods is that models fit the objects being pursued by restricting what is counted as an event. Our given experience of being conscious beings is an event. Can it be understood in the way other phenomena are understood? Or attempted to be understood?

What more would you need to know though? If you can explain what every physical state means mentally, then you've answered all the important questions.

Do you ever question why gravity exists? Or why pi is 3.14 and not some other number? Questions like "How can consciousness exist" seem to be in a similar vein to those.

And even if we answer it, what practical difference does it make? Or is it just pure curiousity?

Also, the Hard problem of consciousness presumes a dualist standpoint which comes loaded with plenty of problems (this being one). Perhaps then the issue is in dualism.

David Chalmer's original essay, Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness, really is addressed to 'scientism'.

Scientism is the belief that the scientific method is the best or only way to understand the world and solve problems. It is often associated with the belief that science can or should be applied to all areas of knowledge, including those that are traditionally outside the scope of science, such as morality and the meaning of life. Some people view scientism as a positive approach that can lead to new discoveries and insights, while others see it as a narrow-minded or reductionist way of thinking that oversimplifies complex issues. — ChatGPT

Daniel Dennett is 'Professor Scientism'. His book Darwin's Dangerous Idea lays it all out. He says that Darwinian evolution is a 'universal acid' that eats through everything it touches. And the very first thing it touches is philosophy!

This is the topic of my two first (and possibly only) essays on Medium.

The biological reality and the first person reality are one and the same thing. All we need do is answer the easy problems in order to answer the hard problem.

First of all, using the title "A potential solution to the hard problem" is itself biased already because, without first allowing the thread responses to express their criticisms to the points discussed in the article, saying it ahead of time is leading.

I haven't worked out my approach to the problem. It's on my list of chestnuts that I would like to get my head around one day. But I would start by making sure that the problem isn't in the way it is formulated. My suspicion is that it is not capable of solution — Ludwig V

Not to be dismissive of the article myself either. Roughly I agree with you -- the "proposed solution" that the article offers is not the problem (the inquiry) that the ongoing philosophical movement of consciousness is facing.

I can already see some good objections and points of weaknesses. It's because there are neuroscientific studies out there that can deny what his article said. I also find some points to be coming out of thin-air.

For example this passage:

Whenever it happened, it’s bound to have been a psychological and social watershed. With this marvellous new phenomenon at the core of your being, you’ll start to matter to yourself in a new and deeper way. You’ll come to believe, as never before, in your own singular significance. What’s more, it will not just be you. For you’ll soon realise that other members of your species possess conscious selves like yours. You’ll be led to respect their individual worth as well.

I find the underlined cringe-worthy as an analysis of a philosopher. We've always had awareness of the plurality of existence and our own existence. In fact, to refer to "us" presupposes already that I am counting "myself", and vice versa. When philosophers say that the "self" came later after the awareness of others like ourselves, it doesn't mean that we were not aware of our private sensations and perceptions apart from others' private sensations and perceptions. It means that philosophically, or metaphysically, we did not first deliberate on what a "self" is. It was Descartes who first formalized (you can correct me on this) the duality of mind and body. But as common observers of our environment, the early humans and modern humans had it. They got it.

Anyone who wants to deny what I said just above is welcome to correct me.

(Some more criticisms -- "sentition" and "feedback loops". I do get the need in our theory to name our terms as long as we're not trying to re-invent the wheel. And I find that the article attempts to do that. I maybe wrong. )

To cap this, you’ll soon discover that when, by a leap of imagination you put yourself in your fellow creature’s place, you can model, in your self, what they are feeling. In short, phenomenal consciousness will become your ticket to living in what I’ve called ‘the society of selves’.

Again, semantic invention. Except that it didn't happen this way.

Oh sure, plenty of silly mysticism surrounding this topic. Which is strange, because, as I think you would agree, consciousness is what we are most acquainted with out of everything there is. So the problem must be elsewhere, and lamentably, I agree with Chomsky again (lamentable, because I have difficulty disagreeing with him): the problem is matter, not experience.

We can't understand how the thing we study through physics and biology could possibly lead to experience, that's the problem.

Locke put the issue in a religious matter, which can be interpreted naturalistically, and be on the same page w/Chalmers, or to be more accurate, Chalmers with Locke, as when the latter says:

"We have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know
whether any mere material being thinks or no; it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover whether Omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter, fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to matter, so disposed, a thinking immaterial substance: it being, in respect of our notions, not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that GOD can, if he pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than that he should superadd to it another substance with a faculty of thinking; since we know not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort of substances the Almighty has been pleased to give that power, which cannot be in any created being, but merely by the good pleasure and bounty of the Creator."

[Bold added]

Replace "God" with "nature", and you have the hard problem, stated over 300 years ago.

Apologies for the length, I got motivated. :cool:

f you assume anything is primitive, you can answer the same "how" question. How does consciousness arise? — flannel jesus

If it is primitive consciousness doesn't arise. What would arise is intentional 'subject/object consciousness,

It's primitive. How does life work? It's primitive (see Vital Force, an idea which lost favour when scientists were able to build up a picture of life working via electro chemical processes).

Life is a different issue.

Some things are primitive, of course, and it may be that consciousness is, but it feels more like a non answer to me than an answer. It feels like giving up.

Why do you think this? It allows us to construct a fundamental theory. This is the answer given by Perennial philosophy, for which no hard problems arise. Rather than giving up this is the only way forward.

Maybe it's fundamental, but probably, I think, we just don't have the answer yet, and the idea that it's primitive will start disappearing when we have a picture of the mechanisms involved, like life itself.

This the dream of the materialists, but you've just argued it's a pipe-dream.

The idea that consciousness is primitive will never disappear. The 'Perennial' philosophy will never go away since it is not conjectural and it works. The problem is only that few people take any notice of it. Then they cannot make sense of metaphysics or consciousness and conclude that nobody ever will. It's an odd and rather surreal situation. .
.

The hard problem is, "Will we ever know what it is like to BE a conscious individual that isn't ourselves". — Philosophim

Just for the record, that isn't the standard way of stating the problem, and it isn't David Chalmers' way (he coined the phrase). You can listen to Chalmers describe it here: He defines the problem as "how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experiences in the mind." When we solve this problem (I do believe it's when, not if) we may or may not know "what it's like" to be someone else. That's a separate, though perhaps related, issue.

Just for the record, that isn't the standard way of stating the problem, and it isn't David Chalmers' way (he coined the phrase). You can listen to Chalmers describe it here: He defines the problem as "how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experiences in the mind." When we solve this problem (I do believe it's when, not if) we may or may not know "what it's like" to be someone else. That's a separate, though perhaps related, issue. — J

To know "what it's like" to be someone is to experience what they experience. Such experiential knowledge cannot be gained through propositional knowledge of how experience works. There is no mystery or paradox in this, of course, and as you note, this is not the "hard problem."

We need consciousness to think, therefore we need consciousness to make any inference about consciousness, that's the problem. — Skalidris

You haven't explained why this creates a logical impossibility. The limitations of the child in the lego example don't seem to amount to a logical impossibility either. You're applying physical constraints and the absence of means of gathering evidence to the situation to make it practically or empirically impossible for the child to do something. It's like saying the detective can't solve the crime if you set up a scenario where the clues are out of his reach. Sure. Nothing to do with logical impossibility though. A logical impossibilty should entail a contracition in the laws of logic, like require a square circle or 2 + 2 to equal 5. It's a very high threshold on the impossibility ladder. Maybe, you mean metaphysical impossibility, something that cannot obtain in any possible world (due to our understanding of the basic principles of reality) but may still not violate the laws of logic (e.g. ex nihilo (causeless) creation), or conceptual impossibility to do with semantic contradictions (e.g. "a colourless green cup") etc. But I think you are drawing unjustified conclusions concerning the nature of possibility from the problem of self-referentiality here.

In any case, it's seems to be either a conceptual issue (an essentially linguistic problem) or an empirical issue (one that we can pursue scientifically). To Chalmers, and most others, it's empirical. The hard problem is to explain how the property of consciousness / subjectivity arises from physical matter (presumed to be in the brain) and, not only have empirically testable theories been put forward to examine that, actual experiments have been done. Here's a link to one avenue being explored: Testing Penrose's Theory of Consciousness

Again, to me your thesis isn't clear enough and rests on a muddled presentation of logical impossibility that is too quickly inferred from the self-referentiality issue you bring up.

Is factually incorrect. Chalmer’s argument is directed at the inadequacy of physical accounts to accurately capture first-person experience, yours or anyone else’s.
— Wayfarer

Didn't you and I already address this on your first response to me? My point was that the heart of why this was is because we cannot know what its like to be another subjective individual. — Philosophim

You may have addressed it, but you are still using an inaccurate definition of the HPoC. As J pointed out early on:

The hard problem is, "Will we ever know what it is like to BE a conscious individual that isn't ourselves".
— Philosophim

Just for the record, that isn't the standard way of stating the problem, and it isn't David Chalmers' way (he coined the phrase). You can listen to Chalmers describe it here: He defines the problem as "how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experiences in the mind." When we solve this problem (I do believe it's when, not if) we may or may not know "what it's like" to be someone else. That's a separate, though perhaps related, issue. — J

Alright, then try to counter these points, because these points note that our autonomy is physical.

1. Drugs that affect mood and decisions. A person getting cured of schizophrenia by medication for example.

2. The removal of the brain or physical processes that result in life from the brain, and the inability of autonomy to persist.

3. Brain damage resulting in differing behaviors and consciousness. — Philosophim

These things change various aspects of how the brain works, and, therefore, what we subjectively experience. They don't address how it is that we subjectively experience them at all. That's the HPoC.

...you are...using an inaccurate definition of the HPoC. As J pointed out early on... — Patterner

The hard problem is, "Will we ever know what it is like to BE a conscious individual that isn't ourselves" — Philosophim

Just for the record, that isn't the standard way of stating the problem and it isn't David Chalmers' way (he coined the phrase). You can listen to Chalmers describe it here: He defines the problem as "how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experiences in the mind." — J

And I'll note again, the only reason we cannot figure out how physical processes give rise to the subjective experiences of the mind is because we have no way of objectively knowing what it is to hold that subjective experience, because you must BE that being having that subjective experience. — Philosophim

I think your point above makes an important clarification: there's something about the native point of view of the sentient that obstructs, so far, our understanding how (or if) physical processes give rise to the subjective experience.

...we have no way of objectively knowing what it is to hold that subjective experience, because you must BE that being having that subjective experience. — Philosophim

As I understand you, you're implying that the subjectivity of the sentient is insuperable i.e., it is a container which has no exit. This claim, if true, leads us into the very complicated business of examining the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity.

If it’s true that the subjectivity of the sentient is insuperable, that then calls into question the possibility of objectivity in general. If the sentient cannot know what it’s like to be beyond its own subjective being, then it follows that the sentient cannot know what it’s like for anything, other than itself, to be, whether a stone, a galaxy or another person.

Well, if objectivity in general is in doubt, then, as you all know, that lands us right back into the territory of solipsism: how can I be sure what I perceive is existentially independent of my perception of it? Indeed, how can I have such knowledge if I’m forever locked inside of my subjectivity?

So, we now see that the HPoC is another angle of view – a very complex and perhaps ultimately fruitful angle of view – focusing on the gnarly problem of the possibly inescapable self-enclosure of solipsism.

It sounds strange, but, in my context here, when we claim to know the chemical composition/interactions of a rock, we’re also claiming to know “what it’s like to be that rock.”

To be sure, knowing a rock by knowing its chemical composition/interactions is a much more simple phenomenon than knowing another person by knowing their consciousness, but the difference is a difference of degree, not a categorical difference.

If we’re locked out of objectivity because of insuperable subjectivity, then we’re thrown all the way back to securing our beliefs on the basis of faith rather than on the basis of science.

Existence precedes essence because science can only get started by assuming the existence of things prior to any possibility of analysis and its attendant logic and the subsequent scientific disciplines.

Existentialism, which is centered on “existence precedes essence,” gives us a way forward with our database of scientific disciplines and their methodologies. We, as existentialists, can assert that we don’t really know the world beyond realistic-seeming narratives that, ultimately, in the absence of epistemological certainty, we hold as true on the basis of faith. Going forward from there, we try our best to have integrity as we hold faithful to our realistic-seeming narratives.

I don't agree with it. I just don't have a problem with it — Philosophim

You're taking issue with it, saying he's mistaken, so don't be too polite about it. :wink:

I disagree with his solution to the problem, because he also currently has no evidence to deny that subjective consciousness could be an aspect of matter and energy. — Philosophim

A lot is resting on 'aspect' there. You could mean panpsychism, or dual aspect monism or some other view. Certainly as physical beings we are constantly energetic. If you read more of Chalmers, you will see he in no way discounts the neurological perspective. But he says it must be combined with a phenomenological approach because that methodology specficially integrates a first person perspective.

Speaking of evidence - and here we're talking philosophically not scientifically - matter is only known to us contingently and indirectly. We don't know what it actually is. We receive visual and auditory data about it, on that we all agree, and then interpret it. When you say that 'neurons cause consciousness', that they are an aspect of consciousness, that is not in doubt. What that leaves out is the mind that makes the judgement. As it must, because mind is not objective. But then as Schopenhauer says, 'Materialism is the attempt to explain what is immediately given us by what is given us indirectly'.

Space is a concept we use in relation to matter. We measure it with matter, yet space itself is not matter, but the absence of it. Time is not an existent 'material' concept, but it is is determined by watching and recording the differences in materials. Subjective consciousness as well, if it can only be known by being a material, is still known and defined in terms of the material that it is. — Philosophim

What do you make of this, then? it does have bearing as I will explain.

The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers.

Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time looses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe.

So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271

The point being, physicalism only gets to a certain point before having to admit the reality of 'the observer', who is not in the picture. Happens at the other end of the scale, too. It is another aspect of the 'hard problem'.

It is great that you like the idea of subjective consciousness as another category of thinking — Philosophim

I don't think that its another category of thinking. It's the first- and third-person perspectives.

Report: RH = RH. — ucarr

I’ll need photographic evidence in this case ;-) — Wayfarer

Write the math onto a marking board, put your right hand alongside the math and then take a picture. The math represents the right hand with bifurcation of its identity; this is a two-in-one of identity elaborated. This is picturing for literal sight of the ultimate self-referential grabbing.

We could say of someone, ‘she has a brilliant mind’. In that case her mind is indeed an object of conversation. — Wayfarer

You can also use ‘see’ metaphorically, as in ‘I see what you mean’. — Wayfarer

But in both cases the metaphorical sense is different to the physical sense. — Wayfarer

The radical nature of QM resides in the fact the resolution of Schrödinger's cat paradox is effected literally, not metaphorically. The observational property of consciousness as a) measurement; b) resolution of superposition to simple position is literal, not metaphorical.

These objectified claims about consciousness are not limited to an individual's subjective experience of Schrödinger's cat paradox. QM physics claims it for everyone.

Furthermore, regarding the mind's eye, since our focus is consciousness, within this context even the mind's eye is literal. We're literally talking about the observational property of consciousness and it's mathematical and experimental verification in physics: public, measurable, repeatable.

The stunning revelations of QM arise from it having already objectified consciousness.

In order to deny this objectification, you must defeat both: a) The Copenhagen Interpretation and b) The Many Worlds Interpretation of QM with counter-examples. That means doing science, not philosophy.

Since thought, language and mind do not occur apart from brain, how can you claim brain and mind are parallel?

Regarding emergent properties of the brain, they exemplify the differential circularity of the higher-orders of thermo-dynamics: morphodynamics, teleodynamics.

...the subjective elements of experience were assigned to the 'secondary qualities' of objects in the early days of modern science. — Wayfarer

It seems to me that here you're tipping into phenomenology.

But I cannot see the act of seeing (or for that matter grasp the act of grasping) as that act requires a seen object and the perceiving subject (or grasping and grasped). It is in that sense that eyes and hands may only see and grasp, respectively, what is other to them. — Wayfarer

As I claim, brain is integral to thought, language and mind, not parallel.. So, again, the mind's eye in our focus upon consciousness is literal, not figurative. You exemplify this with your prescription for perception: "eyes and hands may only see and grasp, respectively, what is other to them."

You could not deliver this prescription with authority if your perceptual eyesight were not literal. In the context of consciousness, perceptual eyesight is just as literal as optical eyesight. Were this not the case, you would not be writing declarative sentences about what perceptual eyesight can and cannot do: "...I cannot see the act of seeing." This clause, like the sentence: "This sentence is false." simultaneously declares what it denies. (At the level of perception, in order to make a declaration that you cannot see the act of seeing, you must see it.)

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. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos

That is the background, if you like, that the 'hard problem' is set against. If you don't see that, you're not seeing the problem. — Wayfarer

You're trying to set boundaries for the context of the HPoC debate.

The central question of the HPoC goes as follows: How is it the case that subjective experience is associated with the physical processes of the brain?

Apparently, you accept the Galileo_Descartes binary of brain/mind as the proper structure and scope of the HPoC debate. Modern physics, with the backing of QM and the measurement problem, rejects the binary as falsity. If you want to defend immaterialism via the binary, then I think you must firstly defend it scientifically. I don't think facile references to emergent properties will be enough.

I appreciate your taking the time to lay all this out for me. Could I ask you to take this to a simpler level, and describe to me what you think happens when I imagine a purple cow? I'm still concerned about the hard problem, understood as the emergence of subjectivity (or the illusion of subjectivity, if you prefer) from chemical/neuronal activity, — J

I'm certainly not claiming that I am certain in what I am saying. I'm just trying to make sense of the mind-body problem by thinking that the problem is more of a language problem than anything else.

What I'm saying is that what you refer to as "chemical/neuronal activity" is just another process that lies outside of the process of your mind. We can continue to use those terms of "chemicals" and "neurons" but instead of thinking of them as physical things, we think of them as other processes. There are processes in the brain that are not related to our conscious mind. We can be unconscious and there is still brain activity. So when you imagine something your conscious process is accessing certain mental information stored in an unconscious process of your brain.

You might ask, 'Why would we need to be conscious of an imagining?" Why can't a p-zombie do the same thing but without the actual experience of imagining a purple cow? The answer is that I don't think the p-zombie is a valid argument. Blind sight patients still respond to their environment even though they don't have a visual experience but only to a limited degree. Blind-sight people do no behave in the same way than people that do have visual experiences. A blind-sight person would not be able to drive or operate complex machinery. Consciousness is necessary for learning and making predictions. It is a type of working memory. Just think of how you learn something and eventually become proficient at it. When you are learning something new you are fully conscious of what you are doing. You have an idea or prediction (which is the same thing as an imagining about some future state) about what you want to accomplish and use your senses to be aware of the current state and you process the information about how to get from the current state to the predicted state. You engage in certain behaviors to get to your predicted state and then observe the effects, and then try again (creating a sensory-behavior feedback loop) and again until you accomplish your goal. Once you are able to repeat the process to and continue to get the same results you become proficient at the task and eventually the information process is off-loaded to unconscious processes where you can accomplish those tasks without thinking much about it. Think about when you learned to ride a bike. You were fully conscious of every movement you were making and your balance in practicing to ride a bike. Now you can ride it without thinking about it, or without much conscious effort.

Because we evolved the ability to link different concepts together to come up with new ideas that can be applied to the world means that there will be times that our brains link together new ideas that cannot be applied to the world, or not in the way you might think. Can imagining a purple cow cause you to then paint a cow purple or genetically engineer a cows to have purple fur or skin? Imaginings, hallucinations and dreaming are these types of imaginings. Predictions are imaginings with some type of goal applied to them, whereas dreams and imaginings of purple cows are not.

Dfpolis, thank you for the excellent post! — aporiap

You are welcome. I thank you for your thoughtful consideration and wish you and yours a joyful Christmas.

You explicitly state in the previous sentence the separation is [by substance?] mental. How would you categorize 'mental separation' if not as an ontological separation? — aporiap

The basis for logically distinct concepts need not be separate, or ontologically independent, objects. In looking at a ball, I might abstract <sphere> and <rubber> concepts without spheres existing separately from matter, or matter existing formlessly. Thus, by ontological separation, I mean existing independently or apart. By logical distinction, I mean having different notes of comprehension.

Further, while concepts may have, as their foundation in reality, the instances that can properly evoke them, they are not those instances. The concept <rubber> is not made of the sap of Hevea brasiliensis. Natural rubber typically its. So, generally, in contrasting logical and ontological I am contrasting concepts with their foundation in reality.

Finally, concepts are not things, but reified activities. <Rubber> is just a subject thinking of rubber.

1. Neurophysiological data processing cannot be the explanatory invariant of our awareness of contents. ....

Well I think this is a bit 'low resolution'/unspecific. It's definitively clear neurophysiological data alone isn't sufficient for awareness but that doesn't mean that a certain kind of neurophysiological processing is not sufficient - this is the bigger argument here. — aporiap

It is low resolution. My purpose was to convince the reader that we need more than mere "data processing" to explain awareness -- to open minds to the search for further factors.

In my book, I offer the following:

The missing-instruction argument shows that software cannot make a Turing machine conscious. If software-based con­­­scious is possible, there exists one or more programs complex enough to generate consciousness. Let’s take one with the fewest possible instructions, and remove an instruction that will not be used for, say, ten steps. Then the Turing machine will run the same as if the removed instruction were there for the first nine steps.

Start the machine and let it run five steps. Since the program is below minimum complexity, it is not conscious. Then stop the machine, put back the missing instruction, and let it continue. Even though it has not executed the instruction we replaced, the Turing machine is conscious for steps 6-9, because now it is complex enough. So, even though nothing the Turing machine actually does is any different with or without the instruction we removed and replaced, its mere presence makes the machine conscious.

This violates all ideas of causality. How can something that does nothing create consciousness by its mere presence? Not by any natural means – especially since its presence has no defined physical incarnation. The instruction could be on a disk, a punch card, or in semiconductor memory. So, the instruction can’t cause consciousness by a specific physical mech­anism. Its presence has to have an immaterial efficacy independent of its physical encoding.

One counterargument might be that the whole program needs to run before there is consciousness. That idea fails. Con­sciousness is continuous. What kind of consciousness is unaware the entire time contents are being proces­sed, but becomes aware when processing has terminated? None.

Perhaps the program has a loop that has to be run though a certain number of times for consciousness to occur. If that is the case, take the same program and load it with one change – set the machine to the state it will have after the requisite number of iterations. Now we need not run through the loop to get to the con­scious state. We then remove an instruction further into the loop just as we did in the original example. Once again, the presence of an inoperative instruction creates consciousness. — Dennis F. Polis -- God, Sceince and Mind, p. 196

Thus, we can eliminate data processing, no matter how complex, as a cause of consciousness.

John Searle points us in a different direction, suggesting that it may not be abstract, but embodied, data processing that gives rise to consciousness. In other words, that some cryptic property of the physical brain, and not its mere data processing, causes consciousness. I am happy to agree that consciousness is unexpectedly (from the perspective of physics) found in humans. Still, the claim of emergence from cryptic (aka "occult") properties of matter is not an explanation, but a belief.

In natural science care what Ptolemy, Brahe, Galileo, and Hubble saw, not the act by which the intelligibility of what they saw became actually known. Thus, natural science is, by design, bereft of data and concepts relating to the knowing subject and her acts of awareness....

I don't think the first sentence ... leads to the conclusion in the second sentence.

Empiricism starts with defining a phenomenon -any phenomenon. Phemonema can be mental or physical or can even be some interaction between mental and physical ... — aporiap

I have no problem with empiricism. I see the role of philosophy as providing a consistent framework for understanding of all human experience. My observation is directed specifically at natural science, which I think is rightly described as focused on physical objects, or if you prefer, physical phenomena.

Aristotle, who I think has made as much progress as anyone on understanding the nature of consciousness, based his work on experience, but treated our experience as subjects on an equally footing with our experience of physical objects.

So connections are in fact being attempted between what's traditionally been considered a 'mental field' e.g. psychology and 'physical' fields e.g. biophysics. — aporiap

Yes, they have. I am not disputing this, nor do I have a problem with holistic explanation. I am merely pointing out that physicalist approaches, and those naturalistic approaches founded on physicalism or materialism, are logically incapable of explaining consciousness, and that, as a consequence, the "Hard Problem" is a chimera.

To be orthogonal is to be completely independent of the other [for one to not be able to directly influence the other]. — aporiap

That is not what I explained that I mean by concepts being orthogonal. I explicitly said, "... logically orthogonal. That is to say, that,though they co-occur and interact, they do not share essential, defining notes." Having non-overlapping sets of defining notes makes concepts orthogonal -- not the consideration of interactions in their instances, which is a contingent matter to be resolved by reflecting on experience.

Concepts are abstractions and do not "interact." All that concepts do (their whole being) is refer to their actual and potential instances. Still, it is clear to all but the most obdurate ideologues, that intentionality can inform material states. Whenever we voice a concept, when we speak of our intentions, our speech acts are informed by intentional states. Conversely, in our awareness of sensory contents, material states inform the resulting intentional states. So, the fact that intentional and material abstractions are orthogonal does not prevnt material and intentional states from interacting.

What reflecting on the orthogonality of materiality and intentionality does, is force us to look for bridging dynamics. Whatever dynamics allows intentions to inform material states, in describing it, we must employ both material and intentional concepts. Whatever dynamics allows material states to inform our consciousness, in describing it, we also must employ both material and intentional concepts. If we did not, then there would be no "middle terms," no connections, leading us from one kind of state to another.

... the fact that this is a unidirectional interaction [i.e. that only physical objects can result in changes to mental states and not the other way around without some sort of physical mediator] gives serious reason to doubt an fundamentality to the mental field - at least to me it's clear its an emergent phenomenon out of fundamental material interactions. — aporiap

This misses the fact that intentional states do inform material states. That we are writing about and discussing intentionality shows that intentional states can modify physical objects (texts, pressure waves, etc.)

Think of the intention to go to the store. The resulting process is unlike a ballistic trajectory, which is fully determined by the initial physical state and the laws of nature. I go to the garage, and find my car will not start. This was unknown at decision time, and so can't be part of my initial state, but, if I am commited, I will find other means. I planned on a certain route, encoded in my initial state, but as I turn the corner, I find my way blocked by construction. I find an alternate route to effect my intended end. In all of this, the explanatory invariant (which can revealed by controlled experiments) is not my initial physical state, but my intended final state. Clearly, intentional states can produce physical events.

I'm unsure why intentions [my understanding of what you mean by intention is: the object of a mental act - judgement, perception, etc] are always considered without parts. I think, for example, a 'hope' is deconstruct-able, and [at least partly] composed of a valence component, an cognitive attitude of anticipation, a 'desire' or 'wanting' for a certain end to come about, the 'state of affairs' that defines the 'end'. and sometimes a feeling of 'confidence'. I can also imagine how this is biophysically instantiated [i.e. this intentional state is defined by a circuit interaction between certain parts of the reward system, cognitive system, and memory system]. So what you have is some emergent state [the mental state] composed of interacting elements. — aporiap

To say that intentions have "no parts outside of parts" does not mean that they are simple (unanalyzable). It means that they do not have one part here and another part there (outside of "here"). My intention to to go to the store is analyzable, say, into a commitment and a target of commitment (what if is about, viz. arriving at the store.) But, my commitment and the specification of my commitment are not in different places and so are not parts outside of other parts.

Of course my intention to go to the store has biophysical support. My claim is that its biophysical support alone is inadequate to fully explain it.

First, as explained in the scenario above, the invariance of the intended end in the face of physical obstacles shows that this is not a case covered by the usual paradigm of physical explanation -- one in which an initial state evolves deterministically under the laws of nature. Unlike a cannon ball, I do not stop when I encounter an obstacle. I find, or at least search for, other means. What remains constant is not the sum of my potential and kine

Second, you are assuming, without making a case, that many of the factors you mention are purely biophysical. How is the "valance component," as subjective value, grounded in biophysics? Especially when biophysics is solely concerned with objective phenomena? Again to have a "cognitive attitude" (as opposed to a neural data representation) requires that we actualize the intelligibility latent in the representation. What biophysical process is capable of making what was merely intelligible actually known -- especially given that knowledge is a subject-object relation and biophysics has no <subject> concept in its conceptual space?

Third, how is a circuit interaction, which is fully specified by the circuit's configuration and dynamics, "about" anything? Since it is not, it cannot be the explanation of an intentional state.

I'm still forming my thoughts on this and this part of your post but I'll give you a response when I think of one. — aporiap

I await your reflections.

foundational to his dualist outlook which implies that the hard problem of consciousness entails dualism — TheMadFool

I don't think the problem entails dualism.

My reply to the above is not to deny that there's no explantory gap - there is. However, and this is my claim, this explantory gap doesn't entail dualism as Chamlers seems to believe. The fact that when the brain shuts off, qualia disappear and when the brain is reactivated, qualia return, clearly demonstrates both the necessity and sufficiency of brain states for qualia. If brain states are both sufficient and necessary for qualia, which entails that qualia have a physical basis, why entertain dualism? It's unnecessary and therefore unwarranted. — TheMadFool

I believe Chalmers is a kind of panpsychist, so more like a neutral monist, but he could have various positions at different times. Anyways, the main point here is that the explanatory gap needs to be explained. How is it that brain activity is mental activity? You say all is brain activity. That's fine.That's great. Now tell me how brain activity is mental activity.

Think of it like a mystery that needs solving. Someone has given qualia to conscious people. We know, with certainty, that Materialism did it for Materialism (brain states) is both sufficient and necessary for qualia. Why then should the investigators of this mystery about who gave qualia to conscious people have another suspect, Dualism? — TheMadFool

Because it is one way around the problem. It may not be the right way, but it is one way to solve it. Panpsychism is more subtle I think in that it the material aspect has an internal mental aspect as well on some level. Anyways, that is just one way to try to close the gap. There could be others perhaps. Many materialist arguments have a "hidden dualism" embedded in it, where the homunculus is posited by some "magic" integration of physical events, or as I stated in a previous thread, is illegally put in the equation without explanation as simply "illusion". Of course, no explanation is offered as to exactly what illusion is, other than the concretion of physical events over the course of time.

Everyone recognizes that characters in books are fictional. Trying to convince us that other people are fictional is a different matter. Yes, people can get creative with themselves, but that doesn't mean they're a character that some foreign event is responsible for.

To try and split the identity from one's own brain is nonsense. It isn't some foreign author creating a story. It is literally a part of us.

What people have a problem with is that it isn't the whole story. Our physical form, our surface, plays a role, too. And that isn't internal. It belongs to the external world.

The idea that none of this is happening defies all of the evidence that it actually is happening. If we can't trust that it's even something, surely we can't say the brain creates the illusion of something, as our experience of the brain would be illusory, too. That's not just a hard problem; it's an impossible problem. You can't just grant the brain the magical ability of being infallible, no matter how much you want to understand.

Have we invented the hard problem of consciousness? — Beautiful Mind

The problem didn’t need inventing; it occurs immediately from the invention of consciousness itself. Not much doubt the problem has been made difficult, merely from disagreement with respect to the conditions under which a purely metaphysical construct can serve as a necessary human quality.

What do you think the assumptions are that lead to the hard problem? Is not the primary idea that experience could not emerge from "brute matter"? Why would that be any more of a problem than the idea that self-organizing life could not emerge from brute matter? In either case, why not? Perhaps it is our conceptions of what experience, life and brute matter are that is the problem. The fact that we cannot exhaustively explain how it happens should not be surprising; we cannot really exhaustively explain much of anything.

consciousness is different, because our sensations are not the properties of structure and function. It's like saying that color just emerges from neuronal activity. Okay, but how and what does that mean? Is it spooky emergence? — Marchesk

This is nothing more than the usual -of-the-gaps argument: If science were capable of explaining consciousness, it would have already (impossibility of future scientific discovery); Science has not already explained consciousness; Therefore science cannot explain consciousness (and therefore consciousness is magic).

Janus' previous post already deals with your response to it:

What do you think the assumptions are that lead to the hard problem? Is not the primary idea that experience could not emerge from "brute matter"? Why would that be any more of a problem than the idea that self-organizing life could not emerge from brute matter? In either case, why not? Perhaps it is our conceptions of what experience, life and brute matter are that is the problem. The fact that we cannot exhaustively explain how it happens should not be surprising; we cannot really exhaustively explain much of anything. — Janus

:100:

What do you think the assumptions are that lead to the hard problem? — Janus

If everything is physical (physicalism), then how do we account for (i.e. categorise) the mental/experiential?

Is not the primary idea that experience could not emerge from "brute matter"? — Janus

Experience could emerge from brute matter, but then it is not identical with brute matter, and is therefore not itself physical (matter).

Why would that be any more of a problem than the idea that self-organizing life could not emerge from brute matter? — Janus

I take it you are using "emerge from" here to mean "evolve from", whereas the putative emergence of experience from matter occurs as a process of a (current) functioning body. Experience itself may have emerged/evolved as life evolved, but that's not the same use of the term associated with the "emergence" of experience/consciousness from the matter of a functioning body, which occurs concurrently.

Perhaps it is our conceptions of what experience, life and brute matter are that is the problem. The fact that we cannot exhaustively explain how it happens should not be surprising; we cannot really exhaustively explain much of anything. — Janus

Should we just give up on these philosophical questions? Perhaps they are conceptual problems - if so, why not try and resolve them?

↪Daemon
If we're making astonishing progress, shouldn't somebody have seen something that points the way to a mechanism by now? What's your timeframe on how long we should tolerate the lack of progress on the mind/body problem before we start questioning fundamental assumptions? — RogueAI

We've been questioning fundamental assumptions throughout and will continue to do so. In my view Searle has solved the mind/body problem, it's Chalmers' Hard Problem that we are currently making progress with.

I found this a very interesting read:

https://www.academia.edu/42985813/The_Idea_of_the_Brain_A_History_By_Matthew_Cobb

Our latest theories allow us to create artificial memories in the mind of a mouse. Very recently the theories about memory were highly speculative and all over the map, and now we understand the mechanism (for one kind of memory). I think new knowledge like this will lead to the discovery of the mechanisms underlying conscious experience.

I have a family member working in this field and I'm hoping that he will be the one to make the breakthrough. I reckon people his age can expect to live to at least 120 and to be active at least into their 80s. So I'm confident that within another 40 or so years I can give you an answer.

Solving the memory problem is an "easy" problem, because the answer is simply some brain mechanism. Solving the question: why does a working brain produce the sensation of stubbing a toe, but when I put it in the blender and add some electricity, I don't get anything? So there are three questions that need to be answered: what is it about a particular configuration of atoms and forces that gives rise to conscious experience? How does a particular configuration of atoms and forces give rise to conscious experience? Why are we conscious, what purpose does it serve?

Solving the memory problem won't get you anywhere closer to the answer to those three questions. And if you think there will be an answer in 40 years, you would expect there to be some progress in the short term. I see progress on solving mechanical issues, but I don't see any progress in solving any Hard Problems.

You can regard a brain as a lump of grayish, convoluted tissue. This is the third person perspective of the brain.
Or, you can experience it as a rich internal universe. This is the first person perspective. — hypericin

Are you saying that the rich internal universe IS the brain, just from a different vantage point? Where is this (first-person) vantage point relative to the other vantage point (third-person)? Are you a realist or solipsist? Is there a "rich external universe" that corresponds to this "rich internal universe"? Using these terms, "internal" vs "external", presupposes dualism.

The hard problem is to reconcile these two perspectives. In particular, it seems that no matter how much you elaborate the working of the brain scientifically, from the third person, there is no conceivable way to make the leap to explaining the first person experience.

The answer may somehow involve substance dualism. But posing the problem certainly does not presuppose it. — hypericin

The problem is in thinking that the way the brain/mind appears in the third person is how the brain/mind really is.