Sorry, I just don't think you've grasped the distinction between definition and theory. You're not the only one, there's lots of people here who struggle with this. I grant that it's not always possible to clearly separate the two. But if your opening gambit in someone else's thread is to insist they change their central definition to something else, you've not engaged in dialogue, you've changed the subject of discussion.

"awareness of intelligiblity" — Dfpolis

That's interesting. Sorry I still haven't read your article in detail yet, but I'm curious on where you think this definition likes on the spectrum of theory to definition. How theory laden is this? Is this what people in general mean, when talking about the hard problem? Is this what Chalmers means, for example?

I'm curious on where you think this definition likes on the spectrum of theory to definition. How theory laden is this? Is this what people in general mean, when talking about the hard problem? Is this what Chalmers means, for example? — bert1

I think it is a distillation of experience. There are things that we could know, but do not (so they are intelligible), and when we come to know them when we turn our awareness to them.

This is theory in the sense of a reflective conclusion, but not in the sense of a hypothetical posit. There is nothing hypothetical about coming to know. We do it all the time. And, there is nothing hypothetical about intelligibility, as the things we come to know were capable of being known before we knew them.

What we know by abstracting from experience does not fit the "scientific" (hypothetico-deductive model). Instead of adding a hypothesis to a limited range of experience to generalize it, abstraction removes irrelevant elements. For example, we count apples and oranges and then realize that numbers only depend on the counting operation, not on what is counted.

I'm pretty sure that this is not what Chalmers would say.

Here is some Academic material for those who are interested in updating their philosophy on the topic.
Our epistemology on Consciousness is a huge mosaic of data offering answers to all kind of "how the brain..." questions.
Aristotle systematized Logic,Philosophy and highlighted Epistemology as the first and hugely import step for all Philosophical inquiries !

publications
Giving Up on Consciousness as the Ghost in the Machine
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8121175/

HOW AND WHY BRAINS CREATE MEANING FROM SENSORY INFORMATION
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S0218127404009405

https://neurosciencenews.com/?s=how+the+brain+meaning+semantics

https://neurosciencenews.com/?s=how+the+brain+consciousness

Thalamus Modulates Consciousness via Layer-Specific Control of Cortex
https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(20)30005-2

Moocs
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/what-is-a-mind
https://www.coursera.org/learn/neurobiology

Lectures - talks
Alok Jha: Consciousness, the hard problem? - Presentations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=313yn0RY9QI

Anil Seth on the Neuroscience of Consciousness, Free Will, The Self, and Perception
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hUEqXhDbVs

mark solms theory of consciousness
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mark+solms+theory+of+consciousness

BS 160 Neuroscience of Consciousness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGwOfSKmo_I&t=

Brain Science Podcast with Ginger Campbell
https://www.youtube.com/@BrainSciencePodcast/videos

But his beliefs as to "why" the experience happened is like a blind man feeling around in the dark compared to the lights we have today. — Philosophim

I really don’t accept that. You’re talking about him as if he lived in Medieval Europe. He had a career spanning 50 years, which wasn’t even 100 years ago.

I don't ascribe to "materialism", or "physicalism" — Philosophim

I had thought so based on such statements as

One way to look at life is it is an internally self-sustaining chemical reaction. In a non-living reaction, the matter required to create the reaction eventually runs out on its own. Life seeks to sustain and extend its own balance of chemical reactions. — Philosophim

However on second reading, you’re differentiating life from chemistry, by saying that ‘life seeks to sustain and extend….’ So you’ve introduced the element of intentionality which I agree is necessary and which I don’t believe has any analogy in materialism.

I mean, at its basic Wayfarer, why is your consciousness stuck in your head? — Philosophim

Don’t accept that it is. Conscious thought is an activity of the brain, but consciousness does indeed extend throughout your body and permeates all living things to one degree or another.

That's an argument from false authority fallacy — Nickolasgaspar

It wasn’t so much an appeal to authority, but the observation that a lot of people say that Chalmer’s work is pseudo-philosophy, without, I think, demonstrating an understanding of the rationale behind his ‘hard problem’ argument. And indeed, that single paper launched Chalmers into a career as an internationally-renowned and tenured philosopher, which says something.

That points away from reductionism and suggests something emergent is necessary in understanding consciousness. — Mark Nyquist

This is where biosemiosis enters the picture. I’ve learned a lot about that from this forum.

Yet nowhere in your paper do you mention this important point. — Fooloso4

I am not writing a commentary on De Anima. I am discussing the Hard Problem.

But if consciousness (active intellect) is deathless and everlasting then it does not emerge in an interaction, it is employed. — Fooloso4

In one sense (its genesis) it does not emerge in interaction. In another sense (its actual operation) it does -- just like electron repulsion.

You say the active intellect is a "personal capacity", as if the ongoing controversies have been settled. — Fooloso4

I said it was controversial and offered my argument to resolve the controversy.

Your appeal is to a notion of logic that abstracts from physical reality, as if it is perfectly logical to think that rocks can become hummingbirds. — Fooloso4

You make my case. If we abstract away physical reality, anything can happen, so the reason many things cannot happen is an aspect of physical reality.

Of course you are free to use Aristotle when doing so supports your argument and abandoning him when he doesn't — Fooloso4

I am never using Aristotle as an authority. I am crediting him as a source.

Your a priori metaphysical abstraction — Fooloso4

By definition, an abstraction focuses on some aspects of experience while prescinding from others. As it is based on experience, it is necessarily a posteriori.

I am not writing a commentary on De Anima. I am discussing the Hard Problem. — Dfpolis

'Active or agent intellect' is a term of art for Aristotle. An adequate discussion of it does not require a commentary on De Anima, but if you claiming that consciousness is the operation of the agent intellect, then it requires a discussion of what Aristotle actually said about it rather than skip over an essential point. If what you mean by agent intellect is what Aristotle said about it then your claim that consciousness is the operation of the agent intellect is the claim that consciousness is deathless and everlasting. Seems like an important point to skip over.

I said it was controversial and offered my argument to resolve the controversy. — Dfpolis

You didn't offer an argument. You simply chose one side.

If we abstract away physical reality, anything can happen — Dfpolis

When talking about physical reality it makes no sense to abstract away physical reality. To abstract away from physical reality and claim that it is logically possible for rocks to become hummingbirds is sophistry.

I am never using Aristotle as an authority. I am crediting him as a source. — Dfpolis

You are doing more than that. You do not simply cite him as a source, your argument is based on his. You refer to him 36 times in the article.

You say in the discussion:

I am an Aristotelian. — Dfpolis

and response to someone

this is not the Aristotelian view. — Dfpolis

By definition, an abstraction focuses on some aspects of experience while prescinding from others. As it is based on experience, it is necessarily a posteriori. — Dfpolis

When you "abstract away physical reality" you are not focusing on some aspect of experience. It is an escape to never never land. There can be no experience of such a world where everything that is not a logical contradiction can and does happen. The claim is not a posteriori.

Lectures - talks
Alok Jha: Consciousness, the hard problem? - Presentations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=313yn0RY9QI

Anil Seth on the Neuroscience of Consciousness, Free Will, The Self, and Perception
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hUEqXhDbVs — Nickolasgaspar

These talks don't seem to support what you're saying. For example, Anil Seth defines 'consciousness' just in terms of subjective experience, at least to start with.

↪Joshs
I see/hear your challenge to the thesis of the OP. I agree with an element of it but also am trying to challenge your statements — Paine

What I wrote addressing the OP was just me swinging wildly trying to make sense of an at-first alien language. Now that I put it in the context of Enlightenment rationalism it starts to make sense, and its irrelevance to the post-Darwinian, post-Hegelian delineation of the Hard Problem Dennett and Chalmers are grappling with also becomes clear.

Seriously? You yourself accepted Chalmers's conclusion (Hard problem of consciousness) and played favorites with a specific philosophical conclusion (non materialists).
Is something you want to change in your statement?
Why are you avoiding my challenge? I can analyze all my objections, provide resources for all my statements if you are willing to test your beliefs.

Yeah but I too have a lot of opposition about your beliefs but I didn't make any judgement of it precisely because I didn't want too deal with them in this discussion whereas you insisted that I would engage with them.

If you like basketball don't go to a football stadium just to say that you like basketball better than football. — TheMadMan

Judgement...? Sir, do you understand what Public forums are FOR??
We are here to present and challenge our opinions, expose the weaknesses in our arguments and find holes in our supportive epistemology.
Please let this this "hurt puppy" card go and man up. You attempted to base a public philosophical discussion on a highly problematic unfounded assumption (hard problem of consciousness) and I called it out.
I even exposed myself by communicating my objections making them vulnerable to your critique.
Instead you chose to attack the messenger without even considering the red flag in the middle of the room.

Listen I can not force you to participate in this discussion or convince you to question all your auxiliary assumptions before laying them as foundations for your thoughts.
But I have to demarcate real Philosophy from pseudo philosophy.....the type of ''philosophy'' that doesn't account knowledge and is unable to produce wisdom. I did it and I guess I am done.
Enjoy yourself.

Okay so I'll try to approach this with another analogy: imagine the mind or conscious awareness as some sort of "non-Newtonian fluid" that can be in both a crystalline phase (structured form) as well as a liquid/fluid one. — Benj96

I never thought of my EnFormAction principle as a "non-Newtonian fluid" (like Oobleck or Flubber), but it is defined as the ability to transform from one "phase" to another. Here's a glimpse of that information-based concept, which is one step toward understanding the Hard Problem. :smile:

Phase Transformation :
As a supplement to the mainstream materialistic (scientific) theory of Causation, EnFormAction is intended to be an evocative label for a well-known, but somewhat mysterious, feature of physics : the Emergent process of Phase Change (or state transitions) from one kind (stable form) of matter to another. These sequential emanations take the structural pattern of a logical hierarchy : from solids, to liquids, to gases, and thence to plasma, or vice-versa. But they don't follow the usual rules of direct contact causation.
https://bothandblog3.enformationism.info/page23.html

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? — TheMadMan

Be careful how you speak openly of Consciousness & Matter in the same breath. Some people may think you are Mad. :joke:

Personally, I don't think Matter arises from Consciousness (Idealism), but I do have a theory of how Consciousness could evolve from the same origin as Matter. It's based on the 20th century discovery in Physics that Generic Information is the fundamental element of the universe*1. Just as Einstein concluded that Matter is merely a form of Energy (E=MC^2), I postulate that Energy is a form of Generic Information (my term). That's not the passive stuff that Claude Shannon made famous, but the same Awareness & Aboutness that is processed & stored in human minds. Here's a link to one of my blog posts on this topic*2. :smile:

*1. Is ‘Information’ Fundamental for a Scientific Theory of Consciousness?
Arguably, information could even be the fundamental brick with which physical reality is built (Wheeler’s ‘It from Bit thesis’)
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-10-5777-9_21

*2. Foundation of Reality : Matter or Consciousness? :
Several physicists and Neuroscientists of the 21st century have revived the ancient term Panpsychism to represent the evidence that metaphysical Consciousness (in the generic form of Information) is the primary element from which all physical and mental forms of the current world emerged
https://bothandblog.enformationism.info/page29.html
Note -- Although this post refers to a "First Cause", or "Creator", or "generic G*D", it is not intended to be a Religious concept, or a Scientific theory, but merely a Philosophical conjecture.

I would use the term "conceptualizing" rather than "reason" for a number of reasons — schopenhauer1

I agree that the ability to conceptualize -- to form abstract representations of real phenomena -- is a major factor in human consciousness. But I'd say "in concert with" rather than "rather than Reason". Logical abstraction is the reason we represent (conceptualize) ideal Consciousness, as-if it is a real thing. Accurate maps can be confused with the actual terrain.

Reasoning is the process of converting concrete sensory Percepts into abstract mental Concepts or Ideas. So both are necessary to producing consciousness (including self-awareness) of the human kind. We typically assume that "higher" animals, such as primates, are conscious. But since they lack language to express their ideas, we can't take their word for it. Some researchers have concluded that they are mimicking instead of conceptualizing*1.

So, the jury is out on that question *2. But the early notion of Reason as the uniquely human trait was expressed in Plato's use of the word for "Word" : Logos. Reason is the producer of esoteric (hidden) concepts, and exoteric (manifest) Words are the useful product for communication of subjective imagery to other minds. It's that complete system that allows humans to fly, and to walk on the moon.

Therefore, it seems obvious that the human ability to convert Real into Ideal is unique in the world. And the "hard problem" is to explain how that process of abstraction from Real to Ideal is possible, in terms of classical physics. That's why some thinkers are looking to Quantum physics for clues to the mystery of Mind in a material world. :smile:

*1. The apes taught sign language didn't understand what they were doing. They were merely "aping" their caretakers.
https://bigthink.com/life/ape-sign-language/

*2. Do Animals Have Concepts? :
In philosophy, concepts have also been seen in purely abstract terms. That’s in the sense that concepts are seen to have no direct relation to mentality or to biological brains — except for the fact that brains (or minds) can gain access to them.
https://medium.com/paul-austin-murphys-essays-on-philosophy/do-animals-have-concepts-3830c2f8d472

*3. Quantum mind :
The quantum mind or quantum consciousness is a group of hypotheses proposing that classical mechanics alone cannot explain consciousness, positing instead that quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as entanglement and superposition, may play an important part in the brain's function and could explain critical aspects of consciousness. These scientific hypotheses are as yet untested, and can overlap with quantum mysticism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind
Note -- See the thread on the New Mysterians among scientists : https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14203/on-chomskys-annoying-mysterianism

And this "matters ... to a subject" doesn't matter. — 180 Proof

It matters to the subject.

Obviously I think it does. Consciousness =/= adaptive intelligence, especially in the context in which I've used these terms. — 180 Proof

Doesn’t explain how or why that answers the hard problem or explains it away etc.

It's a hard problem in that we know that there are things that don't sense the sky as "blue" or sense at all and we know there are things that sense — schopenhauer1

I don't think we know this, but most of us feel/think it in some sense. We nurture our young. Our doings are deeper than our rationalizations.

You do understand that Conscious States are a biological phenomenon? — Nickolasgaspar

According to what? It's an assumption. And yet we have a hard problem of consciousness that we haven't yet reconciled using biology alone.

So, I understand that conscious states "might" be a biological phenomenon. But I'm inclined to believe consciousness is not restricted only to biological things.

I think the single most useless thing one can do is to convince themselves they're not allowed to reformulate or change how they use concepts from "other disciplines" which refer to the "same subject of study" - reality jist for the sake of someone saying "but thats physics you can't do that!". — Benj96

I understand your annoyance. But jgill's objection makes sense. Without some numbers behind your hypothesis, it remains a metaphorical device. And Physics is useless as a metaphor. Really we shouldn't even reduce consciousness to a metaphor -- as contentious as it is already.

For example, this:

So a change in speed/rate is the difference between thought and memory for such a conscious entity. This means distance must be able to expand/contract and time must be able to dilate/contract from net zero (0)when energy is just energy, to some positive integers when energy converts to mass (ie the emergence of the space-time dimension).

Sound familiar? For me it sounds like relativity.

Thought and memory can then be rectified with one another relativistically. And so the hard problem dissolves.
But it means space and time relationships must change for this to happen. — Benj96

Why aren't we talking about the behavior of neurotransmitters and dopamine? Why is hippocampus not mentioned here? I'm at a loss for how to argue about this because we have gone so far away from the true source. We criticize and shun neuroscience, yet we're willing to turn to physics to make our point. Did we sign an exclusive contract with physics? Or do we think that we're taken more seriously if we use physics instead of neuroscience?

Actually, there is one substance in the world with the consistent property of causing change. That universal Substance (Aristotle's essence)*1 functions like an enzyme in the world : it causes Change, but does not itself change. That substance is what we call "Energy". It is invisible & intangible & immaterial, but it's what makes the world go 'round. — Gnomon

Agreed.

Which is why physicists refer to the opposite of negative Entropy as positive Negentropy. — Gnomon

Bit confused here. Negative entropy is what life does. From What I understand Positive negentropy is "moreness" of negentropy. Negative negentropy (double negative) is entropy (disorder).

So for me your "what physicists refer to the opposite of negative entropy as positive negentropy" are one and the same.

So, if you can accept that shape-shifting Information is also the essence of Consciousness, then the so-called "Hard Problem" becomes simpler. You do the math. :smile: — Gnomon

Information shape shifts in the general universe. Energy transforms from one form to another at a very basic level. So if this is consciousness it is at its lowest state of awareness in the general universe. I believe complexity leads to greater awareness. As complexity is an acknowledgement of more control, and control requires awareness/imbedded knowledge.

All in all I like your "enformy" description. I actually think we are singing from similar hymn books. We are merely describing the same thing from different backgrounds/povs.

But bravo. I like your consolidation of information, entropy and energy.

However I'm inclined to believe that space and time are perceptions of the matter-energy dynamic. Perceptions meaning that the conversion of energy to matter (e=mc2) is consciousness. That consciousness is born from relativity.

As two objects cannot be relative to one another without an observer. Space and time is a product of physical memory.

Very interesting.

The idea that feedback loops are critical to understanding what goes on seems absolutely right to me. Certainly they make all the difference between a reflex and an action, and seem to explain the phenomenon of blind sight.

But any theory that requires positing a "mental representation" which implies an internal observer (visible in the diagrams of the brain after the paragraph beginning "The key to acquiring phenomenal properties..."} is postponing the hard problem and for that reason seems implausible to me.

I'll have to read this more carefully.

We have to accept it as fact, as Locke recognized long before Chalmers. — Manuel

Indeed. It's interesting also to me that despite indirectly launching a million easy mystical solutions to the hard problem, Chalmers himself is without spiritual beliefs. He agrees with you.

Now I have to say I'm a complete atheist. I have no religious views myself and no spiritual views, except very watered down humanistic spiritual views. And consciousness is just a fact of life. It's a natural fact of life.

He feels he’s solved the skepticism of the foundational self (rewording Descartes) by implying that there is something special about my sensations (which are a given). It’s the point of the whole article. — Antony Nickles

That’s not what he’s doing, or at least not how I read it.

The section you quoted does not support your claim that the author’s goal is to “prove” that we each have an undeniable, given self. The fact that we have phenomenal consciousness is simply a given. That’s the hard problem: why do we have phenomenal consciousness (or qualia or feelings) if the brain could function without it? The author is offering a theory of the evolution and purpose of phenomenal consciousness/qualia; a theory of why it evolved.

Towards the end of the article he says that if it evolved the way he suggests, then it might account for empathy, social living, etc., but this is not the main point of the article.

”I am claiming that there is a reason he is imagining a “subjective experience”, the evidence being that he says it. That he wants it to be “explained” by a “mechanism” is not me “reading intentions”, it is the implications of his getting to his reason from those means.
— Antony Nickles

…this is actually terrible writing. Writing should narrow in on a point so the reader has clarity. — Philosophim

I am narrowly focused on his point that knowledge of the self will make us matter, and I am trying to show how the desire to matter creates the need for the certainty. Maybe I can help with something you’re not clear on.

He is right to use the terms and points he is so that even a reader not well versed in philosophy can understand his point. — Philosophim

But he does bring up Descartes; he does imagine these findings have philosophical import. Just because he doesn’t get into the place his claims stake in the history of philosophy doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be subject to its critique.

His lack of exploring Locke is not an intention we can fairly make. — Philosophim

I’m not saying there is a fault in not discussing Locke. I thought you might understand my point better in reviewing my response to Manuel’s bringing up Locke.

Critique his main conclusions, the idea of solving the hard problem. If he chooses to sprinkle meaning behind it, why is that relevant to his main point at all? It sounds like you're more upset with where you think this can go than with his immediate idea. — Philosophim

I’m not worried “where… this can go”. I’m saying it got started from a hidden desire and a misconception. Sometimes philosophy can’t be done so close in; this is how someone objecting to skepticism gets stuck trying to prove it wrong.

I think something like that is true. Occasionally you'll get some scientists say that we don't really understand what gravity is, while many other say that we do know what it is, because it is what it does. The latter explanation is misleading, I think.

But yes, some new phenomena or discovery comes to light that sheds some light into what was already deemed extremely problematic centuries ago, like the hard problem, or machines thinking.

I’ll let it go after this because I agree my point is not a critique of the crux of the article (rather, I would say, of its premises). We are all aware (or unaware), sense the world (or are numb to it), feel anger and sadness (or repress it), but what I sense and feel is not unable to be possessed by others, for them to “have” them. We are interested, traumatized, exalted—me by one thing, you by something different, remembering different things, perhaps differently, but not always different.

But it is no mistake that the “sense of personhood” is a “sense”. We want the criteria for a self to be continuous, specific, knowable, so we take as evidence the one thing we feel we cannot not know, awareness of sensation—this self-evident pain I am pierced with, undeniably, unavoidably—and add to that our desire for uniqueness (and control) and you have the individual phenomenal self, backwards engineered from, coincidently, the criteria for truth that philosophy has desired from the beginning. — Antony Nickles

I don't see where you find that in the premises of the article, unless you are talking about the premises created within the history of philosophy that brought about the hard problem. The article itself seems to me to be suggesting the opposite view of that which you are attempting to impose upon it. The article does not mention anything about a "desire for uniqueness" of the individual phenomenal self. Instead, it suggests that the evolution of the phenomenal self may have been the genesis for social living and having empathy with others:

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

‘I feel, therefore I am.’ ‘You feel, therefore you are too.’

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

One small step for the brain, one giant leap for the mind.

I believe this misses the main crux of the article. It is not about “building” a sense of self, but about having one — Luke

What occurs to me, reading that article, is that what his model is describing is ego, the self's idea of itself. I don't think it addresses the aspect of the hard problem concerned with what it means to be.

No, by physicalism I mean everything in the world is physical stuff - of the nature of the physical - this means that experience is a wholly physical phenomenon. — Manuel

You could flip this perspective, you know. You're saying that, because we can't define the physical, due to the ambiguous wave-particle nature of matter and the other paradoxes of qm, that it could or must be the case that, if everything exists is physical then the physical must also include the mental. But what if we acknowledged that nothing is completely or only physical, on the grounds that what is physical can never be completely defined, and that what we experience as physical is instead the attribute of a class of cognitive experiences?

I don't see where you find that in the premises of the article, unless you are talking about the premises created within the history of philosophy that brought about the hard problem. — Luke

Yes, I am claiming that the article is working on (assuming) a certain framework that, yes, is trying to answer or overcome the conclusions of philosophical skepticism.

The article does not mention anything about a "desire for uniqueness" of the individual phenomenal self. — Luke

He does say: “With this marvelous new phenomenon at the core of your being, you’ll start to matter to yourself in a new and deeper way. You’ll come to believe, as never before, in your own singular significance”.

I wanted to say the same thing with “unique” as he is with “singular significance” though I take it as a fantasy created by our desire rather than a given state. I think I’ve made that as clear as I can.

You're not alone. Albert Einstein was walking with his friend Abraham Pais one afternoon, when he suddenly stopped and said 'Does the moon cease to exist when nobody's looking at it?' He was asking exactly the same question. I won't address it here though as it's a derailer. — Wayfarer

Well, one could say that the moon being mental is surely a very hard problem. :joke:

Seriously though, I hope I won't forget it but, if the issue arises in some thread, let's bring this up to see how this could be tackled, it's quite a provocative idea.

But it doesn't come to terms with the issue of what it means to be - the kind of concerns that animate phenomenology and existentialism. It's a different kind of 'why' - there's an instrumental 'why', and an existential 'why', if you like. I think Humphries addresses the first, but not the second. — Wayfarer

How is this related to the hard problem of consciousness?

As I said in my first comment, the question 'why are we subjects of experience?' is a strange question. It's tantamount to asking 'why do we exist?' The question is asked, 'why did consciousness evolve?' — Wayfarer

For some folks, perhaps, but it is a question which I believe was originally directed at physicalists. How and why we have phenomenal experiences might be considered a challenging question for those who assume that everything is physical, or that the mental and the physical, or the brain and the mind, are identical (and only physical).

So the statement is completely self contradictory - 'a conscious mind could do what it does, even without the attribute that makes it "a conscious mind" '. And I don't know that the phenomenon of blindsight is a persuasive argument for that. — Wayfarer

As the article puts it, blindsight is "visual perception in the absence of any felt visual sensations." For those that view the world in physical terms only, it should not be surprising for everything to function as it would whether or not phenomenal consciousness was associated with brain function; after all, phenomenal consciousness is (somehow) physical too. The condition of blindsight goes some way towards supporting this physicalist view, since it is visual perception without the qualia of seeing. As quoted in the OP, Chalmers' puts the question to physicalists: "Why doesn't all this information-processing go on "in the dark", free of any inner feel?" If it's all just physical information processing - as the physicalists insist - and there is no mental "stuff" that is categorically different from the physical "stuff", then the physicalists should find that people would behave the same way even if they were not phenomenally conscious. So, how and why are we phenomenally conscious, dear physicalists?

I hope this helps to shed some light on the hard problem (and that I haven't gotten it terribly wrong).

I don't think it's quite the same as asking why we exist. However, it's unsurprising that the "why" question would have some sort of evolutionary answer.

Have they agreed? Sorry if I missed a post here that agreed that the article proposes a solution. — L'éléphant

If you disagree that the article proposes a solution to the hard problem, then what would you say the article is about? What discussion title would you have used instead?