Metaphysician Undercover — Metaphysician Undercover

Thank you for taking the time to read and comment upon my article.

So I think your basic premise, that dualism can be rejected through an appeal to Aristotle's hylomorphic dichotomy, is fundamentally misguided. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is not my premise. I agree with your observations in one way, and disagree in another, more relevant, way. I agree that any distinction of one thing into two aspects may be called "dualistic." I disagree if you are denying that the Aristotelian approach disposes of Cartesian dualism, which was my actual claim. Identifying Cartesian dualism with dualism in the first sense equivocates on "dualism." Aristotle does not see the psyche as necessarily thinking (res cogitans), or even as a thing (res). Thus, he is not a Cartesian dualist.

Therefore he proposed a duality of matter/form for physics, which would accommodate the duality of potential/actual derived from subjective introspection. — Metaphysician Undercover

While it is peripheral to my article, I think you are looking in the wrong direction for the source of the concept of potency (dynamis). As I note in my hyle article, (https://philpapers.org/go.pl?id=POLANR&u=https%3A%2F%2Fphilpapers.org%2Farchive%2FPOLANR.DOC), the source of the concept is medical, referring to the hidden healing power of medicinals. A. then applied it to the argument against the reality of change in order to go between the horns of being and non-being. Thus, the origin and original application of the concept are physical, not mental.

we cannot realistically exclude the Fundamental Abstraction — Metaphysician Undercover

We can, as shown by the fact that Aristotle does in De Anima, as I and others have noted.

The "Fundamental Abstraction" can be apprehended as the a priori, and since the a priori is very real, and supported by real introspective analysis, we cannot simply reject it just because we desire to absolve ourselves from dualism. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am not sure what you are saying here. We are able to know from experience, and so a posteriori, that all knowing involves a known object and a knowing subject. Whether we focus on one (as the FA does) or attend to both, is a matter of methodological choice. If attend to both, we are not employing the FA.

Further, I see no reason to think we know anything in a truly a priori way.

you refer to a type/token distinction, which is an ontological distinction, then you draw the invalid conclusion: " Thus, the consciousness impasse is a representational, not an ontological, issue". Only one side of the distinction is representational, the type side. — Metaphysician Undercover

So, we do not represent token observations?

The context of these remarks is methodological, not ontological. I am saying that the objection that introspective data is inadmissible because it is private is misguided. It misunderstands the methodological requirements of science. There is no requirement that observations be public, only that they be type-repeatable.

The conclusion you cite is not based on the type-token distinction. That is only used to justify the use of introspection. The conclusion is based on the Hard Problem being an artifact of a dualistic (in the Cartesian sense) representation or conceptual space.

And your claim that the type/token distinction is representational rather than ontological — Metaphysician Undercover

I did not discuss the basis of the type-token distinction in this article. So, it makes no such claim. If you want to see what I think about the relation between universals and instances, see my "Metaphysics and Evolution: Response to Critics," Studia Gilsoniana 10, no. 4 (October–December 2021): 847–891 (http://gilsonsociety.com/files/847-891-Polis.pdf). There, I discuss the relation of the species concept (a type) to individual members of that species (tokens) (pp. 849-63).

The difficulty that the Scholastics, like Aquinas had, was to explain the reality of the passive intellect. — Metaphysician Undercover

I address that in the article I am currently working on. I have fundamental problems with Aquinas's rational psychology. I think his notion the agent intellect does is flawed. I see the passive intellect as neural representations (the phantasm) being understood.

he agent intellect, as the creative source of imagination and conception, — Metaphysician Undercover

The agent intellect does not create content. It actualizes (makes known) prior intelligibility, which is the source of known content.

And under Aristotle's conceptual structure, passivity, and potential, are the defining features of matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is the standard Scholastic view. My view is more complex, and is given in my hyle article. Briefly, hyle plays a passive role in cases where there is an intelligent agent informing a result, but not in natural substantial change, where it is a "source of power."

So one could interpret Aristotle as demonstrating that the human intellect depends on the material brain for its capacity to receive sense impressions. — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly! He also insists that the phantasm, a sensory, and so a material representation, is necessary to thought.

Thank you for your informed and intelligent comments.

This thread demonstrates how useless philosophical conversations can become without a credible epistemic foundation. Made up pseudo philosophical problems like the "hard problem of consciousness" are as good as begging the question fallacious arguments.

If this were true there would be as many hard problems as there are nominalizations.

Brother you need to practice some intellectual humility. — TheMadMan

But I am not the one declaring the existence of "hard problems" in specific field of study that I know nothing about (from a scientific aspect that is)....you are displaying a type of intellectual arrogance by ignoring that epistemology.(and avoiding to answer any of my objections).

Your are just making statement authoritatively not allowing space. — TheMadMan

I am only pointing the obvious, you are free to challenge my statements.

You talk about doing philosophy properly and yet your statements are monologic. — TheMadMan

Logic is hard and it forces rules. Its not my fault though. But again, you are the one who attempts to create an echo chamber by saying " I'm not trying to argue with physicalists here.
As I said this is directed to those who consider the fundamental reality as non-material."
So why accusing me for something that you are literally trying to do.

True philosophy is dialogic. — TheMadMan

I exposed my position to you...now its on you to turn this interaction in to a dialogue.
You can start by addressing my Objections..or you can keep accusing me for things I didn't do...which isn't productive at all.

The hard problem, of course, is how to reconcile subjective experience with an objective world of causal
processes. Do we reduce the former to the latter, as Dennett attempts? Or study the richness of inner experience as a new and separate empirical category alongside natural phenomena, much like gravity and other physical forces have been effectively researched without as yet fully integrating them in a grand synthesis?

Here's a third option. Take a look at the development of theories of affect/emotion in relation to cognition and you will find that the progress in understanding the subject-object relation is intimately tied to that of the thought-feeling binary.

There has been in recent years a new interest in affect in the social sciences and philosophy. Areas like embodied, enactive and extended cognition reject the older cognitive psychology model, derived from Descartes, of affect as peripheral to, and offers disruptive of. cognition, to one in which affective processes are fundamental to and inextricable from the core of what it means to think, perceive and conceptualize.

In reaching this new understanding, these approaches have had to reject the logical and epistemological formalisms, so prevalent on this forum, that undergirded first generation cognitivism ( brain in a vat) and are still to be found in Nagel. Searle and a host of analytic theorists.

The most radical implication of the new affective turn is that what has been considered unique to conscious subjects, the feeling of what it is like to be, the qualatiatice experience e of the world, is implied in all of what we call physical processes, not as one thing added on, but intrinsic to them. This is because in creating the abstractions that are so useful in the physical sciences, we don't recognize that qualitative transformation is intrinsic to, implied by all existents.

Affect is something not just in living beings, it is built into the movement of living and non-living process as the fundamentally self-transformative basis of objective reality.

It's not that physics hasn't made progress in this regard.

The billiard ball universe is long gone. replaced by one of radical interdependencies between physical 'objects'.

But these mathematically described relations still rest on fundamentally static presuppositions, such that physicists like Lee Smolen are trying to stir up a small revolution.

He recognizes time, evolution, transformation as fundamental to understanding physical and cosmological processes , and sees thes as having been left of out physical theories till now leading to a current stagnation on the metatheoretical level. This is the beginning of a move, if it is continued , of physics away from its dualistic origin and toward a reconciliation with evolutionary biology and cultural-psychological development via the overarching framework of self-organizing systems.

The physicalists have the hard problem of consciousness where consciousness is emergent from matter.

So this question is more towards those who don't find physicalism convincing anymore: How does matter arise from consciousness?

And in this case consciousness is the ontological primitive, I don't mean wakening consciousness.

There are many other questions that arise from that question so feel free to put the forward.

Update: I'm not trying to argue with physicalists here.
As I said this is directed to those who consider the fundamental reality as non-material.
I want to inquire how do you think matter comes to be out of consciousness/mind-at-large/sunyata/the-one/unmoved-mover/etc.

I think you are saying that there is only an Explanatory Gap if the Intentional Reality is found to be in the Neurons. But if it is found to be in the Neurons then that means that Science has an Explanation for How and Why it is in the Neurons. There would be no Explanatory Gap here and the Hard Problem would be solved. If Intentional Reality is not found in the Neurons then there would exist a Huge Explanatory Gap as to what it could be. How does this non-Material Intention ultimately interact with the Neurons, as it must, to produce Intentional or Volitional effects? It seems to me the Explanatory Gap is in the opposite situation from what you have stated. Am I correct in saying that Volition is the same as Intention in your analysis?

I think it's explained as well as anything is explained. The resistance to that stems from inconsistent, incomplete and/or unanalyzed views of just what it is that explanations are (and are not), just what explanations do/don't do, just how they do it, etc.

It's not a discussion I'd get into in any depth until my fellow discussants are ready to set forth their explanation criteria in a plausible manner (so that the criteria work for many different things re what that person intuitively considers explained versus unexplained). — Terrapin Station

Since Consciousness is such a completely unexplained Phenomenon, I would say that all attempts at an Explanation are on the table. When an Explanation is presented that solves the Hard Problem, it will be obvious and will resonate around the World as one of the greatest intellectual achievements of all time. That would be my criteria for a good Explanation.

If a girl spends her whole life in a black and white room, and then experiences colour she is overjoyed. Why is this?

Her body remembers colour from her ancestors past lives. The body has many lessons it’s been ready to teach the conscious mind about colour. Like: Red is scary. — Yadoula

Question: under what circumstance could one imagine, that she would not be able to understand the color red?

Bonus questions: have you solved the hard problem of consciousness and subconscious working together? Or how about the phenomena of Love? For example, when someone looks at someone (or some thing) else and they feel love, what is that? How do we quantify or describe that?

Just food for thought....I like your thoughts about sentient beings though... .

Not only have you not solved the hard problem, you have not understood it.

This is slightly longer than your typical post, but I think you guys will find it interesting. Proposed solution to the hard problem!


Scientists have identified entanglement in photosynthetic reaction centers, within which light-activated electrons of multiple chlorophyll pigments are actually more like a single perturbing quanta field than a particle transport chain, with energization transmitted to centrally located reaction center molecules responsible for initiating biochemical pathways that drive much of cellular metabolism in plants, stimulation that can take place from any direction and while diffuse electron wavicle structure is in any orientation. We can liken this type of quanta phenomenon to a subatomic body of water, where translation of light into kinetic energy at any point in the electron field generates a holistic ripple effect that never fails to evince statistical signs of reaction center activation in nearly identical proportion to UV exposure, total energy yield from any quantity or orientation of ultraviolet photons.

The key functional role of ‘entanglement systems’ or hybrid electron waves spanning multiple molecules to a biological process as basic as photosynthesis makes it seem probable that this type of phenomenon is one of the core components of physiology, a pillar of life’s chemistry.

Photons of different wavelengths have additive properties when combined: any two primary colors synthesize to produce a secondary color, all visible wavelengths together produce white light, and so on. Like photons, electrons also have a wavelike nature and no doubt additive properties within single atoms or small collections of molecules, which are probably minute enough to evade detection by the naked eye, and most likely decompose quickly in an inorganic environment due to decoherence from thermodynamic “noise” of kinetic entropy characterizing large aggregates of agitated mass.

However, in a physiological context, mass is much less subjected to entropic effects of kinetic motion, being stabilized as emergent structurality in biochemical pathways and additional types of molecular systems, so that these additive properties of electron wavelength may possibly be sustained for a prolonged period. Not only this, but electrons can hypothetically be entangled in multiple ways at once, creating a superposition in which additive properties of numerous entanglement structures are simultaneously congregated into larger entanglement structures, systems within systems that we might want to distinguish from the relatively simplistic situation inhering in photosynthesis, a categorically different phenomenon of hybridized ‘coherence field’. If coherence fields are found to be supported by the molecular assemblages of cellular biochemistry in the nervous system, especially likely to be discovered in the brain, their extremely complex additive properties may be what we know as ‘qualia’. In this scenario, qualia are not merely an immateriality supervenient on atoms, but instead a kind of exceedingly complex “color” or electromagnetically quantum resonance, material states intrinsic to tangible structure of the physical world.

The question then is how what we know as our conscious self-awareness can emerge from this basic qualia phenomenon. How do qualia give rise to the qualitative “experience” of a perceiver? A possible explanation is that biochemical and physiological structures exist, particularly in the brain, for synchronizing these sustained coherence fields, analogous to the clock mechanism of a CPU, so that qualia are metaorganized into a large array of experiential modules, parts of which compose the self-aware mind. Activity of these compound modules may manifest as the standing brain waves detected by EEG (electroencephalogram).


In exactly what way consciousness emerged via evolution is a mystery, but we can be fairly certain about what eventually had to obtain in order for it to be possible. Initially, electrical properties in aggregates of tissue such as the brain needed to be robust enough that a stable supervenience of electromagnetic field (EMF) was created by systematic electron fluxing. Quantum effects in molecules of the body are sensitive to trace EMF energy sources, creating a structural complex of relatively thermodynamic mass containing pockets of relatively quantum biochemistry integrated by sustained radiation. EMF/quantum hybridization is likely responsible for our synthetic experience of qualia, how we perceive unfathomably minute and diverse fluctuating of environments as a perpetualized substrate, perturbed by its surroundings but never vanishing while we are awake and lucid, the essence of perceptual “stream of consciousness”.

Nonlocal phenomena are ever underlying the macroscopic substance of qualitative consciousness, its EMF properties as well as bulked three dimensional matter in which nonlocality is partially dampened, and quantum processes in cells interface perception instantiated in bodies with the more or less nonlocal natural world mostly still enigmatic to scientific knowledge.

Quantum features of biochemistry have likely been refined evolutionarily so that mechanisms by which relative nonlocality affects organisms, mechanisms of EMF/matter interfacing, mechanisms targeting particular environmental stimuli via functionally tailored pigments along with further classes of molecules and cellular tissues, and mechanisms for translation of stimulus into representational memory all became increasingly coordinated until an arrangement involving what we call ‘intentionality’ emerged, a mind with executive functions of deliberative interpretation and behavioral strategizing, beyond mere reflex-centric memory conjoined to stimulus/response. Qualitative consciousness precedes the degree of unification we experience as humanlike awareness, for qualia can exist and perform a functional role in consort with quantum effects and additional gradations of nonlocal reality while an organism is almost entirely lacking executive, centralized control in the form of intentions.


It can be tested experimentally and explains how qualia and matter coexist.

Does that specific entity have an internal state or How do I know other people have internal states? — schopenhauer1

I guess solipsism and the gap are related, proving one impacts the other. I wonder if, say, Searle's "Chinese room" and Jackson's "Mary's room" are impacted as well.

The hard problem of consciousness is the bedrock for all arguments for dualism for it addresses the issue of qualia directly, without resorting to imagined scenarios. Refute it and you undermine the significance of qualia and do that and all qualia-based arguments fall. — TheMadFool

Substance dualism simply declares "mind stuff" (irreducibly) fundamental or without any explanation in other terms, even in principle. An easy answer.

• say, some sort of physicalism (or maybe speculative realism) and qualia do not contradict, rather neither entails the other, hence the gap
• placing qualia (or whatever aspects of mind) as basic/fundamental/irreducible does not explain mind, but rather avoids explanation by said placement, thereby disregarding some things we already do know about mind

Maybe we can at least account for the gap rather than bridge it.


Plenty evidence pointing in one direction ...

• Brain makes decisions before you even know it (Kerri Smith; Nature; Apr 2008)
• Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them (Brandon Keim; WIRED; Apr 2008)
• Mind-reading program translates brain activity into words (Ian Sample; The Guardian; Jan 2012)
• Scientists Use Brain Waves To Eavesdrop On What We Hear (Peter Murray; Singularity Hub; from the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Biology; Feb 2012)
• Neural Decoding of Visual Imagery During Sleep (Horikawa, Tamaki, Miyawaki, Kamitani; Science AAAS; Apr 2013)
• Researcher controls colleague’s motions in 1st human brain-to-brain interface (Rajesh Rao, Andrea Stocco; University of Washington; Aug 2013)
• Brain decoding: Reading minds (Kerri Smith; Nature; Oct 2013)
• Mind-Reading Computer Instantly Decodes People’s Thoughts (Tia Ghose; LiveScience; Jan 2016)
• Device that can literally read your mind invented by scientists (Ian Johnston; The Independent; Apr 2017)
• After 15 years in a vegetative state, nerve stimulation restores consciousness (Cell Press via AAAS; Sep 2017)
• Computer system transcribes words users “speak silently” (Larry Hardesty; MIT News Office; Apr 2018)
• Amazing New Brain Map of Every Synapse Points to the Roots of Thinking (Shelly Fan; Neuron via Singularity Hub; Aug 2018)
• Our brains reveal our choices before we're even aware of them, study finds (Lachlan Gilbert; University of New South Wales; Mar 2019)

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

I never completely understood Nagel's point. His argument rests entirely on the subjective-objective distinction and it appears to be that he's implying that science being objective and consciousness being subjective make it impossible for science to study consciousness.

Look at the following excerpts on subjectivty/objective that I picked up from wikipedia:

1. Philosophical objectivity: Objectivity is a philosophical concept of being true independently from individual subjectivity caused by perception, emotions, or imagination.

2. Scientific Objectivity: Objectivity in science is an attempt to uncover truths about the natural world by eliminating personal biases, emotions, and false beliefs. It is often linked to observation as part of the scientific method.

3. Subjectivity: A subject's personal perspective, feelings, beliefs, desires or discovery, as opposed to those made from an independent, objective, point of view

As you can see, 2 (scientific objectivity) doesn't contradict 3 (subjectivity); after all where's the contradiction in being scientifically objective about a subjective experience unless Nagel's implying that before we can be objective about anything an observation needs to be made and in the case of consciousness this isn't possible because consciousness is subjective and inaccessible for observation. This interpretation matches two other definitions of subjective/objective I found; they're listed below:

4. Subjective = private

5. Objective = public

:chin: :chin:

Saying that the brain is all one needs does not solve the hard problem. — Coben

Where does one look for an explanation for something aside from the sufficient and necessary conditions for it?

Substance dualism simply declares "mind stuff" (irreducibly) fundamental or without any explanation in other terms, even in principle. An easy answer.
say, some sort of physicalism (or maybe speculative realism) and qualia do not contradict, rather neither entails the other, hence the gap
placing qualia (or whatever aspects of mind) as basic/fundamental/irreducible does not explain mind, but rather avoids explanation by said placement, thereby disregarding some things we already do know about mind
Maybe we can at least account for the gap rather than bridge it. — jorndoe

:up: Thanks.

To say "consciousness is an illusion" is to not explain the illusion itself — schopenhauer1

It might be. I'll have a go.

I'm looking at the back of my front door, conscious of my consciousness of the colours and patterns: edges, curves, corners, textures, gradients. My dog (if I had one) is looking at roughly the same thing, and I know (haha, might need correcting) from psychology class that neurons in my visual system that are sensitive to certain kinds of edges, gradients etc. have rough counterparts in hers.

Of course, I don't know from class whether she is conscious too, but my crude theory of consciousness would say not. To put it another way, she isn't subject to the illusion, because she, not having linguistic or other symbolic skills, isn't skilled in reading a scene as a picture, and in reading a picture as an array of features, identifiable as kinds (of pattern or object) in a linguistic scheme - verbal or pictorial or both. So she isn't likely to make a habit of confusing, say, the door handle, still less her internal response to the door handle, with pictures of door handles. I don't mean confusing in the obviously pathological way of being likely to mistake any of these for each other, but in the sense of readying a plethora of appropriate responses to, say, movement of the handle, that depend on skill in differentiating and interpreting symbols as representing door handles, as much as they depend on manipulating actual ones. When the physical skill is so soaked through with symbolic and intellectual correlations, we might well - and harmlessly - think of our internal processes in readying to deal with the handle as being composed of pictorial components, like parts of an actual picture.

Whenever you think you have a "mental picture" of something presently or previously perceived, or imagined, and the sense that this creates a hard problem, consider an alternative interpretation to the effect that you have just determined a relatively narrow preference among appropriate actual pictures. How might a zombie assess its own thought process, supposing that the process was one of narrowing its preference (as to the appropriate selection in some symbolic context) among a range of pictures? It would need to associate the process with the narrowed range of actual pictures, of course. And if it were indeed able to so shiver its neurons as to repeat the determination of readiness to select the range of appropriate pictures, it might form the habit of associating, even confusing, the thoughts with the pictures.

In that scenario the creature has reason to recognise its own experience in our descriptions of consciousness. Especially if those descriptions acknowledge, as I think they should, the habitual confusion or at least correlation of thoughts (brain-shivers) with actual pictures.

Disclaimer: these ruminations are inspired by Nelson Goodman's far more careful analyses here and here. However, not only does Goodman expressly warn against reading them as dealing with consciousness (rather than merely "thought"), but I should mention he was also an ardent dog lover, and sponsor of animal welfare.

It seems to me consciousness is an accident of time, place, and circumstance. What does that, or any account of it, have to do with larger issues of cosmology? — tim wood

1. And how can we prove it is an accident? It is just an assumption.
2. Even if it is an accident, the hard problem remains and as long as it remains, it is going to be problematic for materialism.

not surprising, given the poster's other contributions, that the OP has almost nothing whatsoever to do with the Susskind video the OP themselves have offered as a purported example. Susskind is concerned with fine-tuning and the anthropic principle; so life, not consciousness, and certainly not consciousness in the sense of the so-called "hard problem". Something about hammers and nails, I guess, but still.. c'mon.

In summary, we (well, some) think that human experience includes an extra phenomenal experience that is beyond the computational mechanics. — Malcolm Lett

I suggest that this element is what is designated by the term 'being' in the compound word 'human being'.

But it's a mistake to say that it's 'phenomenal'. 'Phenomenal' means 'what appears', whereas 'being' is what appearances appear to. 'Beings' appear to us as 'other beings', however both their being and ours is not 'what appears', as such. Likewise, being is not 'an experience' but 'the capacity for experience'; 'beings' are 'subjects of experience' but they're not themselves only experience, as they also comprise the elements that order and interpret experience (per Kant).

There's a gap - something that we aren't measuring in our computational analysis. — Malcolm Lett

This is referred to as the 'explanatory gap'.

Ask yourself what 'an explanation' provided by computational analysis would comprise. With scientific hypotheses, generally, and at a high level, there is the left-hand side - which is the equation or prediction - and the right-hand side - which is the observation or result. Scientific method demands that the prediction or equation be validated against the result or observation.

However, in this case, the object of analysis is also the subject doing the examining. It's precisely because you can't stand outside or, or 'objectify', the object of analysis that is the cause of both the 'hard problem' and 'the explanatory gap'. This is why it is in principle outside the scope of empirical analysis, and why, for example, accounts such as Dennett's must insist that it be eliminated altogether.

I'm wondering what theories there are that specifically address the question of measuring this gap. — Malcolm Lett

It's only 'a gap' by way of analogy; in actual fact, it's more an incommensurability between the methods of scientific naturalism and the subject of the analysis.

(See It is never known, but it is the knower, Michel Bitbol.)

There's a gap - something that we aren't measuring in our computational analysis.

I'm wondering what theories there are that specifically address the question of measuring this gap. — Malcolm Lett

How to measure what remains of the hard problem. Maybe by using the upper left side of a measuring stick that is fit for the task but has yet to be discovered?

The framing, after all, presupposes that consciousness is something measurable and therefore quantifiable. For if it isn’t quantifiable than it can’t be measured. And if it can’t be measured than it can’t be properly termed scientific – most vexing for those who equate that which is real strictly to that which is physical and thereby amiable to quantification by the sciences.

As to the magnitude (as in lesser or greater) of, for example, a particular conscious desire - wherein the difference between slightly wanting and desperately wanting some given X ought to be measurable to the minds of many - there of course is the option of decrying “desire” to be a false concept upheld by the stupidity of folk-psychology (often interpreted by the masses as plain commonsense) that must thereby be fully eliminated from the equation of what is real (equations being quantitatively computable, as is any materialist reality) or, alternatively, there’s always the search for that elusive, magical measuring device, previously alluded to, by whose use all aspects of consciousness can at last be scientifically quantified through and through.

Intensities of happiness and suffering, of beauty and the grotesque, of our sense of justice or injustice, even of our awareness of good and bad, these are all mathematically computable states of conscious being after all, right? No more and no less. We just need to find the correct means of measuring their quantitative, and therefore computational, nature, that’s all. But when we do, the gap will at long last be resolved.

And all this would be upheld by principles other than that of a blind metaphysical faith in what is – one that is on par to that maintained by any opposing party, even that of (heavens forbid) anything one can deride as mysticism.

For one can in practice prove that everything, including consciousness, is quantitative.

----

If anyone’s reading, don’t mind me too much in all this. Tis a post intended for no one in particular. And if I’ve unintentionally made a strawman of anyone’s position, please feel free to elaborate on how. Was just passing through as someone who’s a stickler for the notion that not all aspects of what is real are measurable in principle, much less in practice. And yes, to me consciousness, as in "that which is conscious of", serves as one example of something immeasurable - despite admitting to different magnitudes.

As I suggested, there is an intrinsic difficulty with attempting to treat the subject - the thinker, the agent who is writing and speaking - as an object of scientific analysis. — Wayfarer

However, in this case, the object of analysis is also the subject doing the examining. It's precisely because you can't stand outside or, or 'objectify', the object of analysis that is the cause of both the 'hard problem' and 'the explanatory gap'. This is why it is in principle outside the scope of empirical analysis — Wayfarer

There is indeed some difficulty associated with the subject trying to objectively analyse themselves, or a researcher attempting to analyse the subjective experience of another. There are definitely sizable barriers there - otherwise we would have known a long time ago what kind of conscious experience animals have.

But it isn't insurmountable, and it can be done, so long as one is aware of the limitations. This is obvious due to the amount we have learned about the brain and our subjective from fRMI and the like.

There's an important but not so obvious other path of investigation. I'm quite sure that the content of our conscious experience is a representational model. A 'summary', if you like, of a certain subset of data flowing through the brain. One can argue that this means we cannot introspect anything about the mechanisms behind our subjective experience, because we are confined to this representational model, and we must inherently distrust the accuracy of this model.

But software development uses models too, usually referred to as an abstraction. And every software engineer knows that abstractions leak details of the underlying implementation.

The representational model leaks too. For example, what we are /are not conscious of is very informative. The fact that, on close inspection, we don't actually experience our senses directly, but that they are always preprocessed with meaning attached. Eg: the parsing of words heard in audible speech.

There's a lot more to that than fits in a comment, but my point is that the subject can learn a lot about their internal workings from their own subjective experience.

I have believed for some time that moving forward with the hard-problem involves understanding if and how consciousness/qualia effect the matter in the brain.

This is the way I understand the hard problem of consciousness:

Imagine an experiment in which a robot with a pressure sensor and yourself are seated next to each other. A person then proceeds to prick both the robot and you with a sharp needle. The robot's sensors pick up the needle-prick and your nerves do the same.

Is there a difference between the robot and you in this experiment?

There is an aspect of the needle-prick - what it feels like (qualia) - that is present in you but absent in the robot.

Another way to look at it is imagine you've built an exact replica of the human body, call it X, complete with biological organs, except that instead of a brain, you're at the controls. X comes with sensors in precisely the same configuration as a normal human nerves. Now if someone pricks X with a needle, a red light turns on in the control center where you're located. Someone does prick X with a needle, the red light turns on. At the same moment, a small accident occurs in the control center and a needle pricks you too. Is there a difference between the red light turning on when X was pricked by a needle and the pain you felt when the same thing happened to you? :chin:

If it does, it is because it was programmed to. — Outlander

Not necessarily.

Edited to add: How would one confirm that the programming had worked? If we could confirm this then we'd have cracked the hard problem.

so where are we supposed to draw the line? — Outlander

Welcome to the hard problem.

I wasn't casting doubt on your interpretation of the hard problem.

I'm simply saying that there is no way in practice or in principle to determine if any entity, other than oneself, animate or inanimate, actually experiences 'qualia'. Therefore the claim that a robot cannot/does not experience qualia is an unwarranted assumption.

I wasn't casting doubt on your interpretation of the hard problem.

I'm simply saying that there is no way in practice or in principle to determine if any entity, other than oneself, animate or inanimate, actually experiences 'qualia'. Therefore the claim that a robot cannot/does not experience qualia is an unwarranted assumption — ChrisH

Right! That's for certain, uncertain. I seem to have misinterpreted your point, a good one at that. Anyway...it looks like you're not denying the existence of qualia per se, you only wish to inform me that that robots lack qualia is an unfounded assumption.

:ok:

Since you don't deny that humans have qualia, my question is this: can it be explained with physicalism?

Yeah. It's a hard problem (of our own invention).

I do think many other animals have conscious experiences. I don't know whether our talk and introspection is what makes it seem like a hard problem. It's one possibility to explore. I'm a bit unclear as to the implications.

I don't think it's that simple. I have yet to see a satisfying explanation for the conscious sensations of color, sound, etc. Sure, one can change the philosophical assumptions which lead to the hard problem. Like by rejecting physicalism, embracing Kantianism, panpsychism, Wittgenstein or whatever. But those all have their own issues.

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). — Kenosha Kid

It's not a god-of-the-gaps argument if the difficulty is conceptual. It's more of either something is wrong with physicalism or something is wrong with consciousness. The reason for this could be epistemological, or it could be ontological.

How do the colors, sounds, feels, etc come from the color-less, soundless, feel-less matter? We know about the matter because we experience it with colors, sounds, feels, etc. but our scientific understanding is a necessary abstraction from the particulars of our human experience. So either our abstract understanding is leaving something out, or our particular experiences is not what we think it is. Or there is some way to derive the particulars from the abstract.

Or one can go off in a different metaphysical direction and avoid the hard problem in favor of other difficulties. Philosophy demands some bullet-biting sacrifice from all of us.

I've come to think that qualia are really too mysterious to be explained in physical terms. — Keith Frankish

So instead, he suggests that qualia are an illusion — Marchesk

So much of the discussion of the hard problem seems to be based on this flawed reasoning.
The fact that we cannot think of a physical model, is neither grounds to say qualia are non physical, nor that they are some kind of "illusion".