I don't think neuroscience is going to solve the hard problem. The idea that you can mix non-conscious stuff around in a certain way and add some electricity to it and get consciousness from it is magical thinking. Since we know consciousness exists, we should doubt the non-conscious stuff exists. We have no evidence that it does anyway. Why assume it exists? — RogueAI

If you accept that the brain produces consciousness, and you know from introspection that you have absolutely no awareness of the neural processes going on in the brain, then why would you not conclude that non-conscious processes produce consciousness?

"You are the one that have asserted that neurology cannot produce consciousness."

This doesn't make sense. I have asserted that it's highly improbable that science will produce an EXPLANATION of how non-conscious matter produces consciousness. I base this on the complete lack of progress so far on the Hard Problem.

I don't think the brain produces consciousness because I think materialism is highly improbable (due to its ongoing failure to make progress on the Hard Problem) and dualism is incoherent. That only leaves idealism, and that entails brains don't exist (at least as physical things).

All conscious experience is meaningful to the creature having the experience. Consciousness is the ability to attribute meaning. The 'hard problem' of consciousness is simply that there has yet to have been an acceptable theory of meaning or mind that is capable of taking proper account how meaning is first attributed and continues to grow and evolve thereafter. "Proper" here indicating amenability to an evolutionary timeline and scientific peer reviewed study.

The frameworks themselves are incapable of taking account of that which consists of both external and internal things, and the correlations drawn between such things... and that is how consciousness emerges and evolves. The subject/object and physical/mental dichotomies are both used by folk guilty of taking a whole, arbitrarily dissecting it and then pondering over the dissection, without ever realizing that consciousness consists of both, and more

Ce la vie.

Chalmers isn't assuming anything more than just the first person subjective element of experience. Unless you disagree with the existence of such a thing (quite possible if you're an eliminativist), then that shouldn't be objectionable. It certainly isn't trying to sneak dualism into the mix (it doesn't even mention the terms "mental" or "physical"). — Mr Bee

Wouldn't be too sure about that. In his original Facing Up to the Hard Problem, he says:

by taking experience as fundamental, there is a sense in which this approach does not tell us why there is experience in the first place. But this is the same for any fundamental theory. Nothing in physics tells us why there is matter in the first place, but we do not count this against theories of matter. Certain features of the world need to be taken as fundamental by any scientific theory. A theory of matter can still explain all sorts of facts about matter, by showing how they are consequences of the basic laws. The same goes for a theory of experience.

This position qualifies as a variety of dualism, as it postulates basic properties over and above the properties invoked by physics. But it is an innocent version of dualism, entirely compatible with the scientific view of the world. — David Chalmers

Also

I resisted mind-body dualism for a long time, but I have now come to the point where I accept it, not just as the only tenable view but as a satisfying view in its own right. It is always possible that I am confused, or that there is a new and radical possibility that I have overlooked; but I can comfortably say that I think dualism is very likely true. I have also raised the possibility of a kind of panpsychism. Like mind-body dualism, this is initially counterintuitive, but the counterintuitiveness disappears with time. I am unsure whether the view is true or false, but it is at least intellectually appealing, and on reflection it is not too crazy to be acceptable.

(David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind (1996), p.357)

I'm not sure I quite understand the distinction between first person and third person perspectives as neither would lead to a view on dualism or materialism. I take the first person view to mean the unique properties of consciousness (qualia) which cannot (yet) be described i.e. an individual cannot know what it is like to experience colour before they have experienced it themselves etc. Whether this experience can be described in physical terms seems like a separate question. A third person perspective would be removed from that experience. The dualist would however need to explain why qualia warrants departing from physicalism, which is my understanding of the 'leap' involved in answering the hard problem.

Materialism (which can now be used interchangeably with "physicalism") used to mean roughly mechanistic materialism. It was thought that if an artisan or engineer could replicate an object in nature, say, the digestion of a duck, via some mechanical process, based on direct contact mechanics, then it was said to be understood and thus a physical phenomena. We apparently have a "built in physics" that understands the world in such a manner, where objects interact with other objects directly.

That quote from Newton a few posts back simply shows that he could not believe that the materialism of his time, based on contact mechanics, wasn't true of the world. That's why he was surprised. Now that view of materialism if false. If we are to use the term "material" or better yet, "physical" to attempt to refer to anything that is going on in the world, then the physical must mean "whatever there is". But I wouldn't at all say that this means that everything physical can, even in most cases be solved by the sciences, or even be hoped to be understood by said methods. In that respect I am very much a "mysterian".

I find it useful to say that I'm a "real physicalist" as a reply to those who believe in Dennett an co.'s line of reasoning, which denies the existence of consciousness as mere reaction or epiphenomenon or bad folk psychology or whatever else they say, and I also think that it's a useful exercise to grab an object, any object a book, a laptop, whatever, and say, this is physical, and then you see how much the physical encapsulates everything, and how little one may know about it, but this is a preference.

I agree with your assessment of Strawson concerning Dennett, but I wouldn't say he is one of those science types at all. His writings of the nature of the self, narrativity, identity metaphysics should dispel beliefs in that view. I don't know what you make of panpsychism, but as articulated by him and in fact by anybody that I know of so far, I don't believe it to be true, though it is a hard problem.

At the end of the day speaking of "physical", "non-physical" or whatever else is more terminological than anything else, although not only that. So I can't really quibble with you choice of word "nous", it's a good word.

Yes, the "hard problem" presupposes epiphenomenalism, which took hold when brain science got in the habit of referring to the "neural correlates of consciousness". Thus placing the ball squarely in front of the goal it should probably have been guarding, and instead stepping graciously aside.

A. Does materialism have a particular handicap compared to other types of metaphysics that do not consider fundamental consciousness, and if so, what is this handicap?


Yes. Materialism doesn't address the content of matter.

B. Are there rational arguments to circumvent the hard problem in other types of metaphysics, or does neutral monism / panprotopsychism

No.

I was about to submit a discussion post called "Can consciousness be simulated" but I saw that a post with the same exact name and pretty much the same content was made 2 years ago.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6539/can-consciousness-be-simulated/p4 — Flaw

Consciousness and what they call the hard problem gets discussed here a lot. No reason not to do it again. As for the earlier post with the same name, at two years, the statute of limitations has definitely run out.

I have found the subject frustrating enough that I usually don't participate in consciousness discussions. One suggestion - define the terms you mean to use well. Good luck.

Welcome to the forum.

The point of David Chalmer's essay, Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness, is that first-person experience is not within the scope of objective, third-person descriptive analysis. — Wayfarer

But a connection between the two is obviously there. If I experience whatever conscious quality, then there is a material counterpart in the brain. The person looking at my brain, however he thinks that to do, can describe it materialistically. But there must be a non-materialisic ingredient of matter by means of which I have the conscious experience. I can hear music inside my head, or outside my head, in which case the materialistic outside has to be considered too. The materialistic view is a subjective image though, existing in the mind of who looks at me materialistically. So there must be more to matter than matter only.

Why is that?

What do you all think about the following thought experiment:
Imagine a physical universe of space and time exactly like ours in which all of the same laws of physics apply and all of the same events occur but in this universe there is no conscious "experience". Meaning that there are plenty of books and discussions between philosophers and scientists about consciousness and experiences but no real "observer" in any of these scenarios. — Flaw

Because all explanations have the consciousness as subject matter. They don't have access to the consciousness itself. There is no knowledge of the consciousness itself. You have to feel it on the inside, experience it. So no explanation can be given. You can construct theorize endlessly about its context though. Say the matter it's in (the neural structures in the case of things like vision, thoughts, memories, sound, itch, spacetime awareness) or its function, or it's origins, but the stuff itself is not explained. That's why it's called the hard problem. Outside of it you can see the difference (matter(, inside you can feel it (consciousness, even when you see things outside of your body).

Oh, you can imagine a world like you do, but it is just a soul depleted world, you have extracted the matter of the universe only, without its content, and placed it in an Imaginary world.

How will you ever explain the colors you see, the sounds that you hear, or the feeling of music that makes you cry? Apart from their function and reasons of having them? How do you explain blue? In a sense I litterally explained it here in the sense that you know what blue is. Can a blind man ever experience it? It is said so. A blind man can even be afraid in the dark, or see motion when he sees black only. But I doubt if he can experience blue. Maybe an abstract concept of it. If he has no neural correlate for it, it's questionable, if not impossible. Blue is no concept.

Right, no comprehensive explanations. — jorndoe

I,m not sure what you mean by a comprehensive explanation, but that's not the one I'm looking for. You can't comprehend color just as I can. You can give it a contextual meaning just as I can. Maybe color is a necessity to see the difference between different materials, as is usefull in a Dawkinsian approach to evolution. Maybe it corresponds to different wavelengths of a small range of the solar electromagnetic field. Maybe it is a huge collective parallell traveling of electric spike potentials on a least resistant path on the forrest of the intricate and madly complex and orderly chaotic neuronal structure in the visual cortex. Operating on its own or stimulated by the retina, formally, dynamically (temporally), non-linearly, and holistically structured in the larger context of that same neuronal structure. I comprehend color, and so do you. We both know what blue is. No question about it. But do you understand what it is? No. It's a hard problem

This might prove interesting:

As per idealism, everything is mental, everything exists only in the mind. If so, an apple on a plate on a table, which all of us can see qualifies as observing the mind, objectively, from a third-person point of view (@Wayfarer). There is no hard problem of consciousness.

Science makes giant leaps in our understanding consciousness. "We've finally discovered how the brain produces consciousness!", the news media exclaim. Credit is given to all the scientists who've made breakthroughs in the study of consciousness. It's all a big party. :party:

Meanwhile: David Chalmers since home with a bottle of wine lamenting the fact that they never mention "the hard problem". :yikes:

That's what they say. But it's swapped with the hard problem of idealism... — Tom Storm

Whaddaya mean?

The hard problem of consciousness

There's a purely subjective aspect to consciousness (qualia as a catch-all) which science, being objective, is incapable of handling.

Can I show that this "purely subjective aspect to consciousness" can be observed objectively?

An interesting side to idealism is that all things exist because God is continually and simultaneously, 24×7, thinking (perceiving) about all things. In a sense then, as Stephen Hawking once said, we're reading "God's mind." We have now a third-person point of view of God's mind.

Coming to our own minds, wouldn't we gain the same third-person perspective into each other's minds; after all, we got into God's head, quite literally I might add.

Bearing in mind that Hawking was a life-long and extremely vocal atheist. — Wayfarer

Yeah, Hawking's comment is like how atheists (still) use "OMG!" as an expression of surprise/shock.

Nevertheless, idealism, if true, seems to make the hard problem of consciousness a cinch to solve - the world out there (objective) is simply the world in here (subjective). We do get a third-person perspective on other minds.

It seems there's no reason to suppose that packing more and more information-processing functions into a program would ever yield the sort of "subjective character" of experience that's said to generate the hard problem of consciousness.

John Searle has provided influential arguments along these lines dating back to 1980. ...

...But the simulation of mental states is no more a mental state than the simulation of an explosion is itself an explosion. — John Searle — Cabbage Farmer

I believe there is reason to suppose that a program can yield experience. We understand that our brains are information-processing system comprised of neurons that have functional properties. This is sort of the foundation of neural networks in machine learning. I think it's reasonable to suppose that one day a very advanced / trained artificial neural network will be accustomed to self-reflection and discussing their own "experiences" and how things "look" to them. I don't think we should distinguish the physical process of the neurons in our brains to that of transistors.

Also, John Searle's argument seem to say nothing about the simulation of the mental state or of an explosion. A simulation of an explosion may or may not be an explosion.

David Chalmers: 'First-person experience is such that it cannot be fully described in third-person terms. Experience is inherently subjective, it has a quality of "something it is like to be...", and that quality is inherently irreducible to an objective description.'

Daniel Dennett: 'No, it isn't. A properly elaborated third-person description will leave nothing out. So there is no "hard problem" at all.'

That's the debate in a nutshell. I agree with Chalmers. I think Dennett is a classical illustration of what has been called elsewhere 'the blind spot of science' (1, 2, 3.)

The phenomenological perspective seems like the most constructive way to look at consciousness imo as it does away with dualism (or rather 'brackets' it out) rather than get sidetracked with this extrinsic question. — I like sushi

:up: That is exactly what Husserl set out to do, as I understand it. But I also think phenomenology is much better accepted in European philosophy than in Anglo-American philosophy.

But that is an assertion, not an argument. — Wayfarer

What about the so-called "hard" problem proves that nonphysicalism is true.

It seems there's no reason to suppose that packing more and more information-processing functions into a program would ever yield the sort of "subjective character" of experience that's said to generate the hard problem of consciousness. — Cabbage Farmer

Yes, and I think a plausible explanation of that is we have evolved over billions of years from single-celled organisms who have had to struggle against environmental forces and other organisms in order to survive; so things primordially matter to organisms and have come to matter to us in ever more complex ways, ways in which things could never matter to a computer; in fact nothing at all matters to a computer. It seems reasonable to think it is the mattering or significance of things that is at the heart of subjectivity.

David Chalmers: 'First-person experience is such that it cannot be fully described in third-person terms. Experience is inherently subjective, it has a quality of "something it is like to be...", and that quality is inherently irreducible to an objective description.'

Daniel Dennett: 'No, it isn't. A properly elaborated third-person description will leave nothing out. So there is no "hard problem" at all.' — Wayfarer

Is that an actual quote from Dennett: did he actually say that?

If he did say exactly that, then the obvious critique would be that a third person account is not a first person account; so by definition a third person account cannot include a first person account without being something more or other than just a third person account. So, I cannot see how Dennett could be claiming that a third person account could include a first person account; I doubt he would claim something so obviously absurd, so I conclude that he must mean something else, and we would need to see the context to find out what that is.

As far as I can tell the so-called hard problem of consciousness is just Chalmers, the magician's, sleight of hand. Let me walk you through how Chalmer tricks us into believing something that isn't true:

First, Chalmers informs us that a certain aspect of consciousness - the first-person subjective awareness - is inaccessible territory for science which has always been viewed as a third-person point of view.

Second, Chalmers, this is the part where he executes the invalid inference, goes on to say there's an explanatory gap between physical science and consciousness.

Would you, for example, agree with a person who claims that because a certain other individual (science) can't do something (can't explain consciousness physically) that that something can't be done at all (there's no physical explanation for consciousness)? There maybe a perfectly good workaround; we just haven't found out what that is.

The explanatory gap is itself an invalid preconception of what the answer must be, based on a prejudice against the notion that minds can be functions of lowly, base, physical stuff. — Kenosha Kid

It's not that.

It really doesn't matter what model of consciousness physics ends up with, consciousness is by definition "not that".

That may well be true. Separating definition from theory is really important. Functionlists, I allege, nearly always end up having to redefine 'consciousness' by fiat so that it is something that is amenable to functional explanation. I have no particular objection to functionalist theories of various functions! But as far as consciousness goes, I never hear an answer to the question "Why can't that function happen in the dark?" which does not involve a redefinition: "But that's just what I mean by consciousness". In which case I say "Well, OK, that's great for your definition, but that doesn't touch the hard problem then." Apo weirdly has tried to just reverse the burden of proof and to ask "why shouldn't it feel like something" without having first said why it must. And the video he linked to of course doesn't do that.

Theories of consciousness are, in principle, unverifiable. — RogueAI

Does science, in principle, verify or falsify its hypotheses?

And would neuroscience talk about the feelings of insects in terms of them being composed of similar matter to humans - some matching proportion of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous, other trace elements? Or would the arguments have to be made in terms of having significantly similar "neural structure"?

Sorry to be nit-picky. But folk so often use the Hard Problem as something to hide behind. They want to avoid the arduous work of actually being intimately familiar with what the science of mind has to say. It is so much easier to stand outside and agree not to even bother to try.

Tests don't make claims. — RogueAI

They embody claims. So they proclaim, if you like.

I'm strongly in favor of idealism. — RogueAI

Of course. And how does that square with what you also seem to believe about the mess of neurons in people’s heads and the inability of robots to have minds as they are somehow the wrong kind of stuff, or the wrong kind of material structure?

There's an idealist explanation for why poking a brain causes changes to mental states. If you poke a dream brain, the dreamer alters the dream. That's clunky, I admit, — RogueAI

No. It is a simple enough materialist account.

I'll keep pointing out that we keep running into the hard problem and science keeps not solving it. It's not even close to solving it. There's not even a coherent framework for what an explanation for consciousness will look like. — RogueAI

This is going nowhere. :mask:

The self-reflection, reflexive relation, the mind is capable of solves the hard problem of consciousness. A mind is capable of studying itself à la Barry Marshall (Nobel Prize winner), famous for self-experimentation. A blend of first-person & third-person perspective is doable!

Of course there are exceptions where we need to verify someone's account of things, but my point is, that there are many instance of knowing that don't involve the perspective of science. I'm saying that sometimes I have verification apart from science or experiment. — Sam26

That's true, but not applicable here. If I tell you I've solved the hard problem, you wouldn't just take my word for it.

I now think that asking why consciousness exists is like asking why does the number 2 exists. — Flaw

Totally different! Numbers are created by Man. Consciousness is not. Numbers are mathematical objects used to count, measure, etc. Consciousness is a state.

our conscious experience is like asking how when we put 1 + 1 in the calculator, it creates* the number 2. — Flaw

Totally different! We are asking how, calculate etc., using our mind. Conscious experience means that we are aware of that.

What is everyone's thought on this subject? — Flaw

I cannot be sure what the subject is after some point in your description of your topic. For one thing, I cannot see anything referring to "Solution to the hard problem of consciousness", which is the title of your topic. What kind of solution are you referring to or aiming at?