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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think that this is an odd tactic.

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

Consciousness is the capacity to feel. — bert1

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

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

What is the hard problem, in your own words?

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

I think that this is an odd tactic. — Moliere

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

I think? I'm fine with being quizzed, but I don't have a firm answer to your first question. — Moliere

So if you aren't sure what the hard problem is, why would you vouch for someone else's understanding? I don't understand.

So it's not that the neuroscientist has a "blindspot" as you stated here
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/771468
and actually that it is only a "hard problem" for idealist (or subjectivist) philosophers '. I agree.

The hard problem of consciousness is nothing more than self-imposed bewitchment. — creativesoul

:smirk: :up:

There's no need for one to explain the other — Isaac

There is absolutely a need for one to explain the other, if there was no need there would be no hard problem.

Right, and that is a far cry from saying "science needn't bother answering this". — hypericin

Yes, but Chalmers hasn't opined on what science should do, has he? Just on what it would have to do to address the hard problem.

The hard problem is not about consciousness in the abstract, it specifically asks how the biological reality of nervous systems relates to the first person reality of experiences.

I think you don’t have any evidence and are holding out for some odd reason — NOS4A2

I don't play dirty. I'm telling it straight. If you follow Chalmers' and Dennett's works, you'll find that both are pretty heavily preoccupied with who has the burden of proof.

The point of the p-zombie and other thought experiments is not about proving a difference between experience and biological function. They only prove that we can't assume they're the same. It's a subtle, but ultimately slam dunk point regarding the hard problem.

You have to face the fact that we don't know what causes phenomenal consciousness. You can insist that it's equivalent to biological function, but you'll need to provide evidence, ideally of a type that would be published in Nature. You can't just assume it. Do you see why?

This radical separation of cognitive processes from consciousness created a peculiar "explanatory gap" in scientific theorizing about the mind. — Joshs

This suggests that the origin of the explanatory gap is theoretical, if only the wrong theory wasn't chosen there wouldn't be one.. I can't see how this is so. One of these two propositions must be shown to be false to resolve the hard problem:

1. The existence of mental events is conditional on the right kinds of physical events taking place. (note that this does not imply epiphenomenalism).

2. We can't conceive how physical events can engender mental events, as an exhaustive inventory of physical events does not seem to imply mental events.

Does the choice of theory as described here impact either?

Its role is not as an internal agent or ho-munculus that issues commands, but as an order parameter that or-ganizes and regulates dynamic activity. Freeman and Varela thus agree that consciousness is neurally embodied as a global dynamic activity pattern that organizes activity throughout the brain.” — Joshs

Does this mean something?

In human terms you might say reinforcement learning is about learning how you should make decisions so as to maximise the amount of pleasure you experience in the long-term. (Could you choose to make decisions on some other basis?) — GrahamJ

Do you mean, that hedonism is the only basis you see for an ethical philosophy? That there are no ends beyond pleasure?

In stating the hard problem this way, have I unwittingly signed up for transcendental or metaphysical realism? — GrahamJ

Based on what you've said, I think 'metaphysical realism' with a strong side-order of Skinnerian behaviourism.

I've moved my reply to a thread on mathematical Platonism as it is a different question to 'the hard problem of consciousness'.

Pleasure isnt such a simple concept from an enactivist perspective. What constitutes a reinforcement is not determinable independently of the normative sense-making goals of the organism.
[...]
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.04535.pdf — Joshs

Thank you for the reference to the article. They manage to describe in a few pages what Thompson fails to decribe in many. The enactive approach still looks like a more or less incompetent attempt at RL, but of course the decision-making of biological organisms might be just that. We will not, however, find the solution to the hard problem in our inefficiencies.

I do not understand "normative sense-making goals", but I'm not very interested in what it might mean.

So, in short, I want to question the idea that anything "holds up, absent us". This would be to say that there is no-thing absent the conception of thing, but that what remains would not be nothing at all. — Janus

:clap: This is very much the point I've been labouring (subject of my Medium essays.)

I will also re-iterate that I think the 'hard problem of consciousness' is not about consciousness, per se, but about the nature of being. Recall that David Chalmer's example in the 1996 paper that launched this whole debate talked about 'what it is like to be' something. And I think he's rather awkwardly actually asking: what does it mean, 'to be'?

(I've finally started reading some of Heidegger, and whilst I have not yet acquired a lot of knowledge about him, I do now know that his over-arching theme throughout his writings was 'the investigation of the meaning of being', and that he thinks this is something that we, as a culture, have generally forgotten, even though every person-in-the-street thinks it obvious. )

Anyway, Chalmer's selection of title is perhaps unfortunate, because it is quite possible to study consciousness scientifically, through the perspectives of cognitive science, experimental psychology, biology, neurology and other disciplines. But we can't study the nature of being that way, because it's never something we're apart from or outside of (another insight from existentialism.) In the case of the actual 'experience of consciousness', we are at once the subject and the object of investigation, and so, not tractable to the powerful methods of the objective sciences that have been developed since the 17th century.

The hard problem seems inescapable. Even if you claim, "phenomenal consciousness is an illusion", the question remains, "why do some systems experience this illusion, and others do not?". People are experiencing something, and this must be explained.

The hard problem seems inescapable. Even if you claim, "phenomenal consciousness is an illusion", the question remains, "why do some systems experience this illusion, and others do not?". — hypericin

And how do we know they are not, those that we deem not having them?

Precisely because we have no answer to the hard problem, we don't know definitely, we can only make educated guesses.

I suppose that I should also mention that this so called "hard problem" was already well-known to John Locke, and I think his answers or musings, if you prefer to call them that, are quite on point:

"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...

Whether Matter may not be made by God to think is more than man can know. For I see no contradiction in it, that the first Eternal thinking Being, or Omnipotent Spirit, should, if he pleased, give to certain systems of created senseless matter, put together as he thinks fit, some degrees of sense, perception, and thought..."

Today we would of course change "God" for "nature", and the argument still stands remarkably well.

The consciousness impasse, the root of The Hard Problem, is a conflation of type replicability with token replicability, the latter being an impossibility. — ucarr

The argument about token replicability is intended to meet the objection that first person observations (aka introspection) is not properly scientific because it is private. I am saying that it does not matter if an observation is public or private. It is scientific if it is replicable -- if other observations of the same type produce the same results.

Then, given that 1st person observations are not methodologically problematic, we can add data from them to data previously allowed by the Fundamental Abstraction (3rd person observations). This allows us to come at consciousness from both ends: using 3rd person data to investigate neurophysical mechanisms and the content they encode and process, and the 1st person experience of awareness of content to see how that (merely intelligible) content becomes actually known.

The above claim posits conceptualize and intend within an equation. — ucarr

I am not trying to equate conceptualizing with intending (in the sense of committing to) a course of action. I am saying that conceiving courses of action is a causal step in voluntary behavior.

The rest of the paragraph grasps my point. Rational behavior seamlessly integrates intentionality and physicality.

The agent intellect is the self who does introspection: pattern recognition in response to present intelligibility; logical manipulation of information: deduction; inference; interpolation; extrapolation; inferential expansion; information combinatorics, etc. — ucarr

The primary function of the agent intellect is to make what was merely intelligible actually understood. I think the brain does a lot of the processing of data -- holograpically encoding similar stimuli, activating associated contents and so on. Still, as I explained in the article, judgements require awareness of contents, and so involve the agent intellect. So, while association does not require the AI, judgement does.

"Self" is a problematic term. I would say that the AI is the self in the sense of being the center of our subjectivity, but not in the sense of being who we are, because we are psychophysical wholes.

Key Questions -- Aristotelian awareness contains a physical component: Does agent intellect = self? Does agent intellect as self possess form? Does awareness possess boundaries? — ucarr

The physical component of awareness is the neurophysiological encoding of the contents we are aware of. The intentional component is the agent intellect by which we become aware of those contents.

I think the agent intellect has a form/actuality, since it is a determinate power. It actualizes intelligibility, not some other potential.

Boundaries? That is a hard question. Normally the AI is directed to contents encoded in our brain, but in mystical experience it seems to have some awareness of God, at least in His agency. (This is a very complex subject. A good start, but only a start, is the phenomenology discussed by Bucke, James and especially W. T. Stace.)

Form and matter are two modes of organization, viz., matter = extension/extendability; form = context/configurability. — ucarr

That is why "matter" is a terrible translation of hyle. Hyle is defined as "that out of which." It is a potential for new form. So, it could be something extended like bronze or clay, but it can also be axioms that can be formed into theorems, the tendency for a seed to become a mature plant, or the potential of a tree to be a piece of furniture.

Herein activity = physical-intentional complex, viz., present intelligibility ⇔ sentience. — ucarr

Intelligibility is what allows objects to be known. It is an object's capacity to inform a mind. The activity here is thinking of apples. When we stop thinking about apples, the concept no longer exists, but the brain encodes the content of the <apple> concept in our memory. So we "know" it in the sense of being able to think <apple> again without sensing an apple.

Representation = present intelligibility. — ucarr

Yes.

here’s no self who comprehends the present intelligibility of the data. — ucarr

Exactly.

Abstraction is the reductive actualization of intelligibility. — ucarr edit

That depends on what you mean by "reductive." If you mean that we reduce the amount of information, we do. I said "selective" because I wanted to make the point that we "shape" our understanding of reality by actively choosing what to look at, and what to ignore.

An idea can never hold identity with a thing-in-itself. — ucarr

In a way and in a way not. We can never have exhaustive knowledge on a divine paradigm. We can and do identify with the aspect of the object that is informing us, because the object informing me is identically me being informed by the object. These are two ways of describing the same event -- a case of shared existence.

Key question – Is abstraction, a subtractive process, necessarily a reductive process? — ucarr

I am not sure what you mean by "reductive."

Key question – Can agent intellect generate anything other than abstractions? — ucarr

Its prime function is knowing. It is because it does not know exhaustively that it produces abstactions. In mystical experience it knows something undefinable, and so not limited by a de-finition.

The physical-conceptual complex of Aristotelian animism is a corrective reversionist paradigm. However, this reversionism is not retrograde because it meshes cleanly and closely with much of scientific understanding evolving henceforth from antiquity. — ucarr

this reversionism is not retrograde ... — ucarr

I am suggesting that we add to, rather than replace, the contemporary view.

In fact it's much easier to see the hard problem when you try to derive the physical from the non-physical. — bert1

Agree.

but intuitively it's hard to conceive of space emerging from non-space: — bert1

Interesting because for me that space-time "comes from" the spaceless-timeless makes more sense.
Also saying "emerge" and "come from" (like I did) misses the point because its implies succession in time/space. I think their relationship has to be timeless thus simultaneous.

adding millions of 0inch lengths doesn't get you a length. — bert1

I think that the spaceless is not millions of 0 inch. It is not inch at all. It is different in its nature from space.

The difference maybe can be expressed in this way: Space-time is transitory by nature whereas the spaceless/timeless is eternal. Thus making them the same but at the same time different in their manifestation.

There seems to be no intermediate step in-between non-spatiality and spatiality. — bert1

I don't think there is a step in between because there is no in-between. I would say there is a continuation of the spaceless into space and around it goes from space to the spaceless.
Separate only in difference.

This may seem paradoxical but since language is created for duality, paradoxes on this topic are unavoidable.

This "thesis" is about formulating a paradigm that unifies scientific explanations with panpsychist/spiritual or theistic ones. Something that both describes the content or workings of conscious awareness and the physical observable world - the fundamental interactions of the physical world paralleled with a theory of mind explanation, and where the dichotomy between them arises naturally from the same unifying dynamic. — Benj96

A prescient thought! About 15 years ago, I had a similar idea --- based, not on philosophical or religious treatises, but on Quantum & Information theories --- and eventually wrote a non-academic thesis to expand on the basic premise : that "mind stuff" is the essence of reality. In the late 20th century, quantum scientists began to equate Energy with Information*1. That is the reverse of Shannon's equation of meaningful Information with the dissipation of energy (Entropy). Just as the invisible intangible power behind all change (Energy) was equated by Einstein with tangible Matter (E=MC^2), I proposed to equate Energy with Information*2, and hence with Mind (the knower of information)*3.

That was the beginning of my attempt to solve the "Hard Problem" of how actively-seeking Sentient Minds could emerge from an insentient world of passive Matter pummeled by formless energy. Thesis postulate : the big C is merely a highly evolved form of Energy. In essence, the Big Bang Singularity (the Acorn) functioned like a computer. It processed pre-existing Causal Power into the creative & destructive activity we now call Energy & Entropy. And from that ongoing information-processing, great oaks and great minds would grow. Thenceforth, the program of Evolution was a "unifying dynamic", integrating raw data (bits of information) into complex assemblies with novel properties beyond those of the subordinate parts of whole systems.

The "dichotomy" between parts & wholes is bridged by the "unifying dynamic" of EnFormAction*4 : the act of creating novel forms of fundamental Information/Energy. The Form of a thing is its logical structure, that rational minds recognize as unique entities (things). So, that's my "theory of explanation" for how Minds emerged from Matter. I won't go further in this post, but the online thesis and blog expand on this foundation to explain other related scientific & philosophical mysteries. However, since you asked, I will mention that this thesis implies the pre-Big Bang existence of an Energy/Information Source, similar to what Plato called "Logos" and Aristotle called "First Cause" or "Prime Mover"*5.

Since the fundamental element of this theory is Information, I call my Programmer, the Enformer. The notion that mental information is the universal Cause is similar to Panpsychism. But, to avoid confusion with ancient "spiritual" notions of a Tyrant in heaven, I coined a variety of alternative labels for the axiomatic creator of our gradually maturing world. And to avoid implications with the ancient belief system of Atomism/Materialism, I gave the thesis a signifying name*6. :smile:


*1. The mass-energy-information equivalence principle :
information is not just physical, as already demonstrated, but it has a finite and quantifiable mass while it stores information.
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5123794

*2. Information is mental :
the communication or reception of knowledge or intelligence
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/information
Note -- Knowledge & intelligence would be useless & meaningless without consciousness.

*3. Knower :
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguists, and scientists. Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied or even considered consciousness. ___Wikipedia

*4. EnFormAction :
*** Metaphorically, it's the Will-power of G*D, which is the First Cause of everything in creation. Aquinas called the Omnipotence of God the "Primary Cause", so EFA is the general cause of everything in the world. Energy, Matter, Gravity, Life, Mind are secondary creative causes, each with limited application.
*** All are also forms of Information, the "difference that makes a difference". It works by directing causation from negative to positive, cold to hot, ignorance to knowledge. That's the basis of mathematical ratios (Greek "Logos", Latin "Ratio" = reason). A : B :: C : D. By interpreting those ratios we get meaning and reasons.
*** The concept of a river of causation running through the world in various streams has been interpreted in materialistic terms as Momentum, Impetus, Force, Energy, etc, and in spiritualistic idioms as Will, Love, Conatus, and so forth. EnFormAction is all of those.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

*5. The Enformer :
AKA, the Creator. The presumed eternal source of all information, as encoded in the Big Bang Sing-ularity. That ability to convert conceptual Forms into actual Things, to transform infinite possibilities into finite actualities, and to create space & time, matter & energy from essentially no-thing is called the power of EnFormAction. Due to our ignorance of anything beyond space-time though, the postulated enforming agent remains undefined. I simply label it "G*D".
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

*6. Enformationism :
*** As a scientific paradigm, the thesis of Enformationism is intended to be an update to the obsolete 19th century paradigm of Materialism. Since the recent advent of Quantum Physics, the materiality of reality has been watered down. Now we know that matter is a form of energy, and that energy is a form of Information.
*** As a religious philosophy, the creative power of Enformationism is envisioned as a more realistic version of the antiquated religious notions of Spiritualism. Since our world had a beginning, it's hard to deny the concept of creation. So, an infinite deity is proposed to serve as both the energetic Enformer and the malleable substance of the enformed world.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

Thank you for the kind words ! Especially from you they are valued.

As I discern things, there is no "hard problem" for scientists, just another hard confusion that semantically bewitches philosophers. — 180 Proof

I agree. But what do you make of 'wondering at a tautology' ? Do you see/feel why this confusion is tempting ? I love music. Feeling is first in some sense, but feeling is also senseless or aconceptual, but that too is nonsense. See what I mean ? Have you wrestled with this eel ?

I like the addition of [ just ] to 'drifting spacerock.' Well played.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the question, but my impulse is to answer that we've seen physical brains by opening up skulls. That's why I suppose they exist. Do you suppose physical brains don't exist? — flannel jesus

I suppose that physical matter doesn't exist, let alone physical brains. It's all mental stuff. The hard problem vanishes.

If you assume it is primitive then you have solved the hard problem. — FrancisRay

If you assume anything is primitive, you can answer the same "how" question. How does consciousness arise? 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).

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. "I can't think of how it could come about via any physical or non physical processes, so it must be fundamental". That's exactly how Vital Force explained the processes of life, up until we had the means to explain it electro-chemically.

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.

Given our current and best information about the physical world, unless I am missing something, I don't see how consciousness as well as the subjective experience that forms from it, can't be safely explained as a purely computational phenomenon.

Take the simplest of computational networks - two states going through a logic gate, producing a new state. According to the research that I am aware of, examples of which I write in the next paragraphs, this simple network, by itself, can be regarded as a fundamental level of consciousness, or a single block of logic if you will. If, for example, you want it to contain memory, in order to process that memory and produce a new state, two NOR gates will suffice. Connect them with another gate and a binary sensor and you essentially have stored information processing which also depends on the environment.

There is already an amount of research around programming microorganism behavior with a combination of logic gates - which is the fundamental computational mechanism in electronics. Example nice reads:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030326472200003X
https://arstechnica.com/science/2010/12/building-logic-gates-with-bacterial-colonies/

Beyond that, we are just describing different complexity levels of "logic". From what I understand molecular neurotransmitter function (that mostly work as emotional regulators in humans), can be boiled down to logic gates as well. For one, they seem to work similarly to AI neural network learning algorithm techniques to encourage or discourage decisions by altering neuron firing frequency, and even if one could argue that neurotransmitter effect on neurons is not binary, unlike logic gates, their analog behavior can be replicated with binary behavior. Again, by looking at something we can actually map, neurotransmitters in earthworms for example, work in their nervous system as a decision regulator.

By taking a look at the animal kingdom to comprehend our "seemingly inexplicable phenomenon" of consciousness, we can see that the more complex this network of logic is, the more behaviors emerge from it. In vastly more complex social organisms like bees, research has shown that they share more "traditionally human" behaviors than was thought before. Some name that level of complexity "sentience" - but what does this sentience describe, if not something that just describes a greater level of similarity to our own "special" experience, and not something unique or a separate phenomenon.

In essence a decently complex lifeform, is self-powered, has sensors that constantly gather information from the environment, can store an amount of memory, and contains a mindbogglingly complex neural network regulated by neurotransmitters that makes decisions.

Moving on to more complex lifeforms, their similarities to our species increase. There are important differences, for example, like the capacity to store long-term memory, or the evolution of a dedicated neurotransmitter network (Amygdala) and many more, but at the end of the day, it boils down to the aggregation of complex computational systems.

As "the hard problem of the consciousness" in the sense of how "gives rise to subjective experience", I don't see how it's not just simply a subsequent symptom of the complexity of our systems and the randomization of information. Randomization of information exists in every aspect of our conscious being. From our imperfect sensory inputs, to the wiring of our neural networks and the unique set of experiences and DNA that helps it form.

Beyond information randomization, in theory, the quantum mind hypothesis could further explain and bridge the probabilistic nature of cognition that gives rise to subjectivity, but again, this is well within the realm of soon-to-be conventional computation. Anyhow, I think that speculating or even philosophizing around this kind of a black box is counter-productive to the discussion, so I won't touch it further.

If there is information that dispels this, please, go forth and explain.

I think your approach is promising, but I also think it's at least currently incomplete. "Consciousness is just computation", while I agree is actually a compelling possibility, still leaves us with the question, "so why do I experience seeing blue and green and yellow and red in the ways I see them?"

Chinese Room, right?

I wouldn't be surprised if the answer really was just computation of some sort in the end, but I don't think you're giving the Hard Problem enough credit in your post.