I don't think it's circular. If you asked me what "physiology" describes, the answer is physiology.

"Physiology" isn't an adjective. "Physical" is an adjective, and physical physicalness is circular.

What does physiology apply to? The question doesn't make sense. Physiology is just its own thing. Similarly, if dualism is correct then consciousness is just its own thing.

Physiology applies to an organism and the way it functions. Consciousness applies to what?

There's certainly something peculiar about consciousness given that a "hard" problem of consciousness is even considered. We don't consider a "hard" problem of electricity or water after all. Of course, that might just be because consciousness is significantly more complicated than every other natural phenomenon in the universe. Or it might be because consciousness really is non-natural and that there really is a "hard" problem.

There is no hard problem if the term "conscious" describes the concrete. It brings us back to the easy problems. But lifting the term from the concrete and applying it to the abstract leads the dualist directly into hard problems, probably because there is nothing to examine under under its own premise.

First, lets clarify what 'the hard problem is'. Is it that we're conscious? No. Is it that the brain causes consciousness? No. The idea that consciousness is caused by our physical brains is the easy problem. The hard problem is, "Will we ever know what it is like to BE a conscious individual that isn't ourselves". — Philosophim

That is your particular intepretation of the problem. David Chalmer’s original paper doesn’t say that. He says that understanding the specific functional aspects of consciousness and their correlation with neural processes are comparatively easy:

The easy problems of consciousness include those of explaining the following phenomena:

* the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;
* the integration of information by a cognitive system;
* the reportability of mental states;
* the ability of a system to access its own internal states;
* the focus of attention;
* the deliberate control of behavior;
* the difference between wakefulness and sleep. ...

There is no real issue about whether these phenomena can be explained scientifically.... If these phenomena were all there was to consciousness, then consciousness would not be much of a problem. — Chalmers

Compare with:

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.

He surveys a number of proposed causal links between brain and conscious experience and finds them wanting. Further on he says:

I suggest that a theory of consciousness should take experience as fundamental. We know that a theory of consciousness requires the addition of something fundamental to our ontology, as everything in physical theory is compatible with the absence of consciousness. We might add some entirely new nonphysical feature, from which experience can be derived, but it is hard to see what such a feature would be like. More likely, we will take experience itself as a fundamental feature of the world, alongside mass, charge, and space-time. If we take experience as fundamental, then we can go about the business of constructing a theory of experience.

Where there is a fundamental property, there are fundamental laws. A nonreductive theory of experience will add new principles to the furniture of the basic laws of nature. These basic principles will ultimately carry the explanatory burden in a theory of consciousness. Just as we explain familiar high-level phenomena involving mass in terms of more basic principles involving mass and other entities, we might explain familiar phenomena involving experience in terms of more basic principles involving experience and other entities.

In particular, a nonreductive theory of experience will specify basic principles telling us how experience depends on physical features of the world. These psychophysical principles will not interfere with physical laws, as it seems that physical laws already form a closed system. Rather, they will be a supplement to a physical theory. A physical theory gives a theory of physical processes, and a psychophysical theory tells us how those processes give rise to experience. We know that experience depends on physical processes, but we also know that this dependence cannot be derived from physical laws alone. The new basic principles postulated by a nonreductive theory give us the extra ingredient that we need to build an explanatory bridge. — Chalmers

Which he proposes as a 'naturalistic dualism'. He never states that the problem is what it is like to be a conscious individual that isn’t ourselves. His key point is the emphasis on 'experience' which is by nature first-person. That could be intepreted as saying that 'we can't directly know the experience of another person', but he doesn't directly state it.

The stumbling block for the objective sciences - the actual problem that has to be faced up to - is that experience is not objective, as the OP kind of says. Consciousness is the property of the subject to whom the experience occurs, so the exclusive emphasis on objective, third-party measurement which is the backbone of modern scientific method can't accomodate it. Which is why elminativism wants to eliminate it.

The idea that consciousness is caused by our physical brains is the easy problem. — Philosophim

But the nature of that causal relationship is the very heart of the issue. Physicalism assumes that it possess an in-principle explanation, but that is what is being called into question.

It is quite common to believe that intentional realities, as found in conscious thought, are fundamentally material -- able to be explained in terms of neurophysiological data processing. This belief has presented metaphysical naturalists with what David Chalmers has called "the Hard Problem." It seems to me that the Hard Problem is a chimera induced by a provably irrational belief. — Dfpolis

So I'm expecting that you are going to show how the Hard Problem goes away. Ill read on.

By way of background, I take consciousness to be awareness of present, typically neurophysiologically encoded, intelligibility. I see qualia as of minor interest, being merely the contingent forms of awareness. — Dfpolis

I think you are missing an important aspect of Consciousness by dismissing the experience of Qualia as you do. What is that Redness that you experience when you look at a Red object or when you Dream about a Red Object?

I am not a dualist. I hold that human beings are fully natural unities, but that we can, via abstraction, separate various notes of intelligibility found in unified substances. Such separation is mental, not based on ontological separation. As a result, we can maintain a two-subsystem theory of mind without resort to ontological dualism. — Dfpolis

Sounds like you are saying that there are two separate subsystems of the Material Mind (the Neurons). One is the Computational Machine sub system that is not Conscious and the other sub system is the Conscious aspect where Intentional Reality exists. Another way of saying this is that it is all in the Neurons. But this is still perpetuating the Belief that you criticized above. But then you say:

Here are the reasons I see intentional reality as irreducible to material reality. — Dfpolis

This sounds like you are saying that you are going to show that Intentional Reality cannot be found in the Neurons. So then where is it? What is it? Sound like Ontological Dualism to me.

1. Neurophysiological data processing cannot be the explanatory invariant of our awareness of contents. If A => B, then every case of A entails a case of B. So, if there is any case of neurophysiological data processing which does not result in awareness of the processed data (consciousness) then neurophysiological data processing alone cannot explain awareness. Clearly, we are not aware of all the data we process. — Dfpolis

You are just assuming that Neural Activity must imply Conscious Activity in all cases. This does not have to be true even if the Conscious Activity really is all in the Neurons. We don't know enough about Conscious Activity to make sweeping conclusions like this about anything.

2. All knowledge is a subject-object relation. There is always a knowing subject and a known object. At the beginning of natural science, we abstract the object from the subject -- we choose to attend to physical objects to the exclusion of the mental acts by which the subject knows those objects. In natural science care what Ptolemy, Brahe, Galileo, and Hubble saw, not the act by which the intelligibility of what they saw became actually known. Thus, natural science is, by design, bereft of data and concepts relating to the knowing subject and her acts of awareness. Lacking these data and concepts, it has no way of connecting what it does know of the physical world, including neurophysiology, to the act of awareness. Thus it is logically impossible for natural science, as limited by its Fundamental Abstraction, to explain the act of awareness. Forgetting this is a prime example of Whitehead's Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness (thinking what exists only in abstraction is the concrete reality in its fullness). — Dfpolis

Yes but this seems to imply that the Conscious Activity of Intention can not be found in the Neurons by Science yet. This implies that Conscious Activity must be some other kind of thing that is not in the Neurons. Sounds like Ontological Dualism to me.

3. The material and intentional aspects of reality are logically orthogonal. That is to say, that, though they co-occur and interact, they do not share essential, defining notes. Matter is essentially extended and changeable. It is what it is because of intrinsic characteristics. As extended, matter has parts outside of parts, and so is measurable. As changeable, the same matter can take on different forms. As defined by intrinsic characteristics, we need not look beyond a sample to understand its nature. — Dfpolis

I like the Orthogonal Mathematics metaphor. In mathematics when Vectors are Orthogonal you cannot project one onto the other. You cannot project the Intentional Vector onto the Material Vector.

Intentions do not have these characteristics. They are unextended, having no parts outside of parts. Instead they are indivisible unities. Further, there is no objective means of measuring them. They are not changeable. If you change your intent, you no longer have the same intention, but a different intention. As Franz Brentano noted, an essential characteristic of intentionality is its aboutness, which is to to say that they involve some target that they are about. We do not just know, will or hope, we know, will and hope something. Thus, to fully understand/specify an intention we have to go beyond its intrinsic nature, and say what it is about. (To specify a desire, we have to say what is desired.) This is clearly different from what is needed to specify a sample of matter. — Dfpolis

I'll continue to think about this one.

4. Intentional realities are information based. What we know, will, desire, etc. is specified by actual, not potential, information. By definition, information is the reduction of (logical) possibility. If a message is transmitted, but not yet fully received, then it is not physical possibility that is reduced in the course of its reception, but logical possibility. As each bit is received, the logical possibility that it could be other than it is, is reduced.

The explanatory invariant of information is not physical. The same information can be encoded in a panoply of physical forms that have only increased in number with the advance of technology. Thus, information is not physically invariant. So, we have to look beyond physicality to understand information, and so the intentional realities that are essentially dependent on information — Dfpolis

This is all well and good if Intention actually is Information. Maybe. I'll continue to think about this too.

I did not see any solution to the Hard Problem in all this. If Intentional Realities are not reducible to the Material Neurons then what are Intentional Realities? Where are Intentional Realities? How can this be Explained? There is a big Explanatory Gap here. This Explanatory Gap is the Chalmers Hard Problem.

In the original paper on Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness, Chalmers first describes the 'easy problems', which he says include

• the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;
• the integration of information by a cognitive system;
• the reportability of mental states;
• the ability of a system to access its own internal states;
• the focus of attention;
• the deliberate control of behavior;
• the difference between wakefulness and sleep.

He says

All of these phenomena are associated with the notion of consciousness. For example, one sometimes says that a mental state is conscious when it is verbally reportable, or when it is internally accessible. Sometimes a system is said to be conscious of some information when it has the ability to react on the basis of that information, or, more strongly, when it attends to that information, or when it can integrate that information and exploit it in the sophisticated control of behavior. We sometimes say that an action is conscious precisely when it is deliberate. Often, we say that an organism is conscious as another way of saying that it is awake.

There is no real issue about whether these phenomena can be explained scientifically. All of them are straightforwardly vulnerable to explanation in terms of computational or neural mechanisms.

But, he says

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel ('What is it Like to be a Bat, 1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.

----

"Because evolution has created it!" when asked, "Why is it we have sensations, thoughts, feelings associated with physical processes?".

How does one actually get the point across why this is not an acceptable answer as far as the hard problem is concerned? Can this be seen as answering it, or is it just inadvertently answering an easier problem? If so, how to explain how it isn't quite getting at the hard problem? — schopenhauer1

That passage from Chalmers mentions Nagel. And indeed, Nagel addresses the problem in more detail in his 2012 book Mind and Cosmos, where he says:

We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe [i.e. the one so successfully described by science], composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.

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.

So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory. — Thomas Nagel

But, all that said, many will basically shrug it off. At which point, one smiles and walks away. :-)

How does one actually get the point across why this ["evolution"] is not an acceptable answer as far as the hard problem is concerned? — schopenhauer1

"The hard problem" is a pseudo-problem due to assuming an unwarranted confusion / conflation of an ontological duality with semantic duality compounded subsequently by observing that polar opposite terms "subjectivity" and "objectivity" cannot be described in terms of one another, which amounts to framing the "problem" based on a category mistake. There isn't an "hard problem" to begin with, schop.

Can this ["evolution"] be seen as answering it, or is it just inadvertently answering an easier problem? If so, how to explain how it isn't quite getting at the hard problem?

Saying "evolution" (empirical model) doesn't even address the alleged philosophical issue at hand (conceptual incoherence).

The Hard "Problem" does exist, but only in the sense of a semantic issue.

The Hard problem should not be regarded as a deficiency or bug of the natural sciences, but as a positive feature of the natural sciences; the semantics of the natural sciences should be understood as being deliberately restricted to the a-perspectival Lockean primary qualities of objects and events (for example, as demonstrated by the naturalised concept of optical redness) so as to leave the correlated experiential or 'private' concepts undefined (e.g phenomenal redness). This semantic incompleteness of the natural sciences means that the definitions of natural kinds can be used and communicated in an observer-independent and situation-independent fashion, analogously to how computer source-code is distributed and used in a machine independent fashion.

If instead the semantics of scientific concepts were perspectival and grounded in the phenomenology and cognition of first-person experience, for example in the way in which each of us informally uses our common natural language, then inter-communication of the structure of scientific discoveries would be impossible, because everyone's concepts would refer only to the Lockean secondary qualities constituting their personal private experiences, which would lead to the appearance of inconsistent communication and the serious problem of inter-translation. In which case, we would have substituted the "hard problem" of consciousness" that is associated with the semantics of realism , for a hard problem of inter-personal communication that can be associated with solipsism and idealism.

Basically, because (2) is at least possible, there's no 'hard problem' of consciousness because neuroscience's failure to account for it in terms of one-to-one correspondence with physically instantiated objects may be simply because there is no such correspondence to be found. — Isaac

After what, 100 posts on this topic? You demonstrate you have no clue what the hard problem is.

At least read this: https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/#:~:text=The%20hard%20problem%20of%20consciousness%20is%20the%20problem%20of%20explaining,directly%20appear%20to%20the%20subject.

In more detail, the challenge arises because it does not seem that the qualitative and subjective aspects of conscious experience—how consciousness “feels” and the fact that it is directly “for me”—fit into a physicalist ontology, one consisting of just the basic elements of physics plus structural, dynamical, and functional combinations of those basic elements. It appears that even a complete specification of a creature in physical terms leaves unanswered the question of whether or not the creature is conscious. And it seems that we can easily conceive of creatures just like us physically and functionally that nonetheless lack consciousness. This indicates that a physical explanation of consciousness is fundamentally incomplete: it leaves out what it is like to be the subject, for the subject. There seems to be an unbridgeable explanatory gap between the physical world and consciousness. All these factors make the hard problem hard.

Cool. End of philosophy — schopenhauer1

Well the end of Philosophy came with that "why" question. There is nowhere to go from there. If we embrace the right "how/what" question there is plenty of philosophy to be done on available scientific data.
Philosophy's goal is to produce wise claims on available facts and expand our understanding of the world. Fallacious questions don't really serve that purpose.

Rather, how is it that experience is at all, along with biochemical processes. — schopenhauer1

Again a disguised "why" question that doesn't really ask anything meaningful. Why Weak and Strong forces exist?......they just do. Why electricity exists....etc.
Now experience DOESN'T exist as an entity or a force or a substance. Experience is a process enabled by biochemical systems /structures(brain).
We need to be careful not to assume entities when using abstract concepts and to accept observable mechanism that are verified through Strong Correlations.

Just the piling on of more biochemical (or any physical) processes is not going to get you closer to that answer. — schopenhauer1

Even if that was true...How can you ever make claim that? BUt it isn't . For 35 years we have managed to get closer and closer to a descriptive framework about the Necessary and Sufficient role of a biological mechanism in our ability to experience ourself and surroundings.
Denying it is just scientifically wrong. The data are overwhelming.
As Laplace replied to Napoleon's question "where God fits in your model" we can say with certainty " We have no need for that hypothesis, the model works without it".(not only Describes accurate, it Predicts and it offer us Technical Applications)
Necessity and Sufficiency are met...and Chalmer's "why" questions aren't enough to justify any unnecessary entity/process/substance/force (unparsimonious).

It simply answers the easier problems of what events we can observe correlating with subjectivity/experientialness. — schopenhauer1

-Again, a "why question" that doesn't have an answer is not harder....its irrelevant and without meaning.
Teleological fallacies do not qualify as serious questions or helpful to our quest for wisdom....
Again you are committing the same mistake by addressing the quality some personal experiences have, not the actual ability(process) of a thinking organism. You take us back in time when Philosophy and early science were hunting Plogiston, Miasma, Panacea, Orgone Energy and many other discredited substances.

Yeah now you are just making categorical errors all over the place. — schopenhauer1

No I am not, I am pointing to the descriptive framework of a mechanism proven to be Necessary and Sufficient for that specific property to manifest in reality.

You went from "mental state" (the thing in question), to its physical correlates, — schopenhauer1

-No I pointed to Strong Correlations that render specific physical processes Necessary and Sufficient for a mental state to emerge. Strong Correlations in Science are the closest we can get to a proof(philosophy of Science-Paul Hoyningen). Of course Science is not a tool of Logic/mathematics(the other way around) so we can not prove 100% anything. What we can do is to try and falsify our working Hypothesis. For 35-40 years we are constantly failing to falsify and render thes biological mechanisms Unnecessary and Insufficient.
We can not disprove a universal negative (a source of the phenomenon beyond physical mechanisms) so we are forced to reject that claim(Null Hypothesis) and stay within our limits of observations and work with the current scientific paradigm and model. This is Logic 101

but no closer to how the correlates ARE the mental state (ontologically). — schopenhauer1

-For that question you will need to visit Neurosciencenews.org , put the search key phrase "How the brain does" and you will learn the "hows" and "whats" for many mental functions.

Homunculus here and there and everywhere. You do not seem to be getting the hard problem or are obstinately ignoring it. — schopenhauer1

-Again the "hard problem" is a made problem without an answer. We don't have a way to judge the truth value of an answer in favor of a teleological question. In addition to that, Intention and Purpose need to be demonstrated before they are asserted.

So now it really does show you do not know the difference between easy and hard problem and are repeating this error over and over. — schopenhauer1

-No I'm just pointing out that "why" questions (like why there is something rather than nothing) are pseudo philosophical questions. Just because we can not answer them it doesn't mean they are hard. They are nonsensical, fallacious and they are far from the real hard questions of the field.
Try reading Anil Seth's essay on AEON.

I can try to explain it better if you want, but I feel that I have in my last post so not sure what else to say but you are not getting it. — schopenhauer1

-Please do, but I think the problem here is that you ignore the latest science what fallacies are.

That's not scientific at all. The very thing that is most well known to us (our own subjective experience) you are just saying "It is". N — schopenhauer1

Of course it is. In science we are honest enough to say we don't know what gravity is, it behaves the way it does, but we won't make claims about a supernatural source for its properties. We just identity the necessary and sufficient mechanism for the emergence of the phenomenon, do our measurements and math and describe/ predict the phenomenon.
We use the exact same approach for the biological phenomenon of the mind. Its the most honest thing to do.
There is no need to commit an Argument from ignorance fallacy (just because we don't know why neurons have this ability and can't prove a universal negative..we can assume a supernatural source for the mind).

Not very scientific. — schopenhauer1

-Science is based on the Principles of Methodological Naturalism.That means our methods and description can only be within the realm we can observe and investigate and we are forced to keep supernatural explanations outside our frameworks until we are able to verify/falsify them.
So asking a "begging the question" fallacious question is unscientific and irrational.

The other stuff you mentioned, ironically can go straight into the realist versus idealist debate for if those phenomena (scientific or otherwise) are anything beyond our empirical observation of it. — schopenhauer1

-You shouldn't go to that debate. Idealism is a pseudo philosophical worldview that hasn't assisted our Epistemology or Philosophy. Philosophy's first stem is the evaluation of our Epistemology(what we know and how we know it). Unfortunately for idealists, we don't have any knowledge based on Idealistic principles.

I'm suggesting such knowledge is not out of reach. To show that it is out of reach would require ignoring all the people who claim to have such knowledge, or proving they do not. . . — FrancisRay

Who actually has a suggestion though? I don't think a fundamental ontology can be characterized because all explanations are functional and rely on our stream of experience. What does anything actually mean independently of the dynamics of experiences? What is the utility of any factual statement except in how that statement predicts further experiences? We might then want to characterize experience as the fundamental ontology but I resist that because I don't think there is a coherent account of what experience is or means and it seems impossible to characterize publicly or in scientific paradigms due to the nature of the hard problem.

Ah. I didn't say this and would argue against it. You're conflating consciousness and experience, but I;m suggesting that the former is prior to the latter. — FrancisRay

Well this is confusing; you seemed to say it since you replied to the quote that you agreed. I have only been referring to experience the whole time. I am not sure what you mean by consciousness here. When I say experience is primitive, I just mean in a kind of epistemic sense - experiences are immediately apparent and intuitive to us and they don't have an explicit characterization... I just see blue, I cannot tell you what it is.

My whole experience (tentatively I would say consciousness) is just a stream of these things. They cannot be reduced further... they are the bottom and foundation for everything I know and perceive. That is to say nothing about reality but just that experiences are the primitive, irreducible foundation of what I know and perceive.

Bear in mind that experience-experiencer is a duality that must be reduced in order to overcome dualism. . . — FrancisRay

Not sure what you mean by experience-experiencer duality beyond conventional dualism. I am not sure what "experiencer" means.

There are no primitive concepts or experiences. This was shown by Kant. — FrancisRay

Again, my notion of primitiveness just relates to the immediate, irreducible apprehension of experiences after which there is nothing more basic epistemically.

For a solution one would have to assume a state or level of consciousness free of all concepts and prior to information. — FrancisRay

I don't think you can have consciousness free of information nor do I understand wht you think this is required for a solution.

and information theory requires an information space, and the space comes before the information. . — FrancisRay

I don't think there is priority here. If there is information, it exists on an information space; n information space is defined by the information in it. One doesnt come before the other.

If you believe this you will never have a fundamental theory and will will have to live with the 'hard' problem. forever. I wonder what leads you to believe this when it is just a speculation. If you believe this then much of what I'm saying will make no sense to you. I would advise against making such assumptions, or indeed any assumptions at all. , . — FrancisRay

I don't see what your alternative suggestion could possibly be if you don't believe dualism is true. Regardless of what you think the fundamental reality is, the evidence is overwhelming about how consciousness relates to or can be characterized in terms of brains in a functional sense (I hope you understand what I mean when I say functionally). What is your alternative characterization?

I am starting to think you haven't understood anything I have said at all. Its hard to believe now that you could have said my previous post was perceptive and a good summary if you really understood it. Neither have I been trying to think about some fundamental theory that resolves the hard problem. My initial post said that I didn't think the so called hard problem could be solved at all.

Physics could dissolve any particular "hard problem" of consciousness, by simply expanding the rules of it's language to accommodate any perception, in a bespoke, albeit practically unworkable fashion.

For example, take the colour scientist Mary from the knowledge argument, who "learns" about redness for the first time when leaving her black and white room. Suppose that upon leaving her black-and-white room and seeing red for the first time, the language of physics is augmented with a new term that specifically denotes Mary's red perceptual judgements. Call this new term maryred. There is one simple rule for this new term ; whenever Mary perceives an object to be "red" then by definition the object is said to be maryred. So if another scientist is performing an optical experiment, say on a distant planet, and wants to know whether the result is maryred or not, then according to the definition of maryredness, there is nothing he can do other than to ask Mary after she has inspected the result for herself.

Mary cannot explain the relation between optical redness and maryredness, and the augmented physical language doesn't specify theoretical rules for inter-translating the two, not even when additional context is provided. But why should this absence of translation rules be considered a problem for physics? Isn't it in fact a blessing that we might call "The Hard Feature of Physics"?

For suppose that maryredness was theoretically correlated to optical redness (plus context). Then doesn't this imply that Mary needs to be present at every optical experiment performed anywhere in the world, including the ordinary optical experiments that aren't measuring maryredness? For how can it be argued that maryredness is theoretically reducible to optical redness + context, but not vice-versa? Theoretical translation must surely work in both directions. So wouldn't the meaning of optical redness become contingent upon the meaning of maryredness such that Mary's perceptual judgements became part of the theoretical foundation of optics? Clearly this isn't desirable, because we want physics to be a universally applicable language with a semantics that is independent of the perceptual judgements of particular observers. So it makes good sense for physics to decree optical redness and maryredness to be incommensurable by fiat.

Hence in my opinion, those who believe in a "Hard Problem of Consciousness" misunderstand the purpose of science, and that this hard problem is better understood as being a "Hard Feature of applicable Physics"

I still see that as the easy problem, as its a very clear approach. Eventually after research, we find that X leads to Y. Its a problem, and I'm not saying its 'easy', its easy in contrast to the hard problem. Its called a hard problem because there's no discernable path or approach towards finding the answer. If you shape a question about consciousness that has a clear path forward to attempt to solve the problem, that is an easy problem. — Philosophim

I'll get back to you about your "easy" solution to the Consciousness problem. In my blog, I compare the emergence of Sentience to the emergence of Phase Transitions in physics. Due to complexity, the before & after are easy ("X leads to Y"), but tracking the steps in between is hard, in both cases. So, although we are making progress, both emergences remain somewhat mysterious, and emergence itself is scientifically controversial.

BTW, I had to post the opinions you are responding to without editing --- ran out of time. I have now added to and revised the post, in hopes of making more sense, and conveying clearer ideas. :smile:

I see here that you started a whole new thread so I'm going to answer you in here.

As I understand it, the hard problem of consciosuness claims that there exist subjective mental experiences (qualia) that can't be explained in physical terms, herein meant the brain. In other words, (physical) brain activity is not sufficient to explain subjective mind experiences. — TheMadFool

This is not necessarily a true characterization of the hard question of consciousness. The hard question recognizes that brain states correlate and are necessary for mental states, and one may even be a complete materialist (there is nothing more than physical processes). However, the hard question is pointing to the fact that there is an unexplainable phenomena (i.e. the "explanatory gap") for how or why it is that brain states are correlated with mental states. It is the difference between causing an event and being an event. We know that biological/chemical/physical activity causes mental states, but what is not explained is why this particular set of bio/chemical/physical events are mental states.

When a person sleeps, brain activity ceases in relevant respects and this person stops having any and all subjective mind experiences. This implies that brain activity is necessary for subjective mind experiences.

As a person awakens, brain activity resumes, and all subjective mind experiences are restored. What this means is that brain activity is sufficient for subjective mind experiences. — TheMadFool

This is irrelevant based on what I said above between the difference between "causing" and "being" a mental state. No one positing the hard question is denying brain states cause mental states.

1. Brain activity is necessary for subjective mind experiences — TheMadFool

This the hard questioners agree with.

2. Brain activity is sufficient for subjective mind experiences — TheMadFool

Most materialist hard questioners may agree with this. That isn't necessarily the issue either.

3. Brain activity is both sufficient and necessary for subjective mind experiences (1 & 2) — TheMadFool

Same thing repeated yep.

Ergo,

4. There is no hard problem of consciousness. — TheMadFool

This is not necessarily true. Hard questioners are asking why/how it is that mental states are (metaphysically speaking one and the same) as this particular set of physical events. Just saying brain states are necessary and sufficient does not explain this.

You might think that is a hard problem, but it is not the so-called "Hard Problem". I don't think it is a hard problem at all; it seems obvious to me that you intimately know you are aware because you are yourself, and do not know others are aware in the same way, because you are not them. — Janus

Then I think that we are talking about different hard problems. Is it not the type of evidence that we have for recognizing our own self-awareness vs recognizing other's self-awareness, and how to reconcile the differences, what the so-called "Hard Problem" refers to?

If you recognize your own self-awareness using some evidence, but you can't use the same evidence to recognize other's self-awareness, then is the evidence you have for either really evidence at all for self-awareness?

So it's not that the neuroscientist has a "blindspot" as you stated here
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/771468
and actually that it is only a "hard problem" for idealist (or subjectivist) philosophers '. I agree. — 180 Proof

You seem to misunderstand. Neuroscience has a blind spot, I think that's obvious, as described by the analogy of @Olivier5. Having a blind spot, what I described as having a weakness, is not necessarily a problem though. So long as we all recognize our own weaknesses and we work around them, the weakness is not a problem.

When someone does not recognize one's own weakness, that will be a problem because the weakness will manifest in a mistake when unexpected. This is not "the hard problem" explicitly. The hard problem is something more like the difficulty of recognizing the weakness, seeing the blind spot.

In other words, the hard problem seems to depend for its very formulation on the philosophical position known as transcendental or metaphysical realism. — Joshs

Then I recommend The Embodied Mind by Varela, Thompson and Rosch and Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology and the Sciences of Mind, by Evan Thompson. — Joshs

I am a mathematician, and have worked in machine learning and (the maths of) evolutionary biology. From a distance, an enactivist approach seems attractive to me and has a lot in common with the branch of machine learning known as reinforcement learning. But I have looked at the first 3 chapters of Mind in Life available on Amazon, and close up, I do not like it. Also, I don't think it helps with the hard problem.

It is disappointing that Evan Thompson does not mention reinforcement learning. Surely he would have mentioned it alongside connectionism if he knew about it, so I guess he didn't know about it. Yikes.

It seem to me that humans are fundamentally similar to reinforcement learning systems in what they are trying to achieve. In human terms you might say reinforcement learning is about learning how you should make decisions so as to maximise the amount of pleasure you experience in the long-term. (Could you choose to make decisions on some other basis?)

I found nothing to suggest that Thompson's model separates the reward (=negative or positive reinforcement) that an agent receives from the environment, from other sensations which provide information about the state of the environment. I consider this separation vital. In order to make good decisions, the agent must learn the map from states to rewards, and learn to predict the environment, that is, learn the map from (states and actions) to new states. Instead Thompson has (figure 3.2) a set of vague concepts - 'perturbations' from the environment go to a 'sensorimotor coupling' which 'modulate the dynamics of' the nervous system. This looks like an incompetent stab at reinforcement learning.

The hard problem for me is that negative and positive reinforcement perform the function of pain and pleasure, but negative and positive reinforcement are just numbers, and we have no clue about how a number can become a feeling. In stating the hard problem this way, have I unwittingly signed up for transcendental or metaphysical realism?

I'm still on this information-consciousness relation.
Our brain specific information has complete access to our consciousness and vice versa.
So if you don't understand this of course understanding consciousness is going to be hard.

How can you propose information is everywhere when it's just a projection of your mind. Of course it's going to be a hard problem because you have set up the problem wrong. — Mark Nyquist

In the Enformationism thesis, Consciousness is viewed as an emergent form of basic mathematical Information. If you don't understand, or agree with, that essential relationship, the Hard Problem will remain an apples & oranges conundrum.

I'm not sure how to interpret the assertion that "information has complete access to consciousness". But if bits of Information and holistic Consciousness are interrelated, like bricks and houses, then they are not just "accessible", but also intertwined, perhaps inseparable. And it's the part/whole relationship that will soften the "hard" problem, which is due to the assumption of fundamental difference.

Again, I'm not sure what you mean by "information . . . is just a projection of your mind". But, the thesis is based on the assumption that Information is much more than just an imaginary something. Just as Einstein equated Energy with Matter (E=MC^2), the thesis equates Information with Energy, Matter & Mind (I=EMM). If so, it is everywhere and everything.

Enformationism is a philosophical worldview or belief system grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance*1 of everything in the universe. I know that sounds absurd from the perspective of Materialism, but quite a few scientists are beginning to find evidence of that equivalence*2. :smile:

PS___ Your assertion that Information has "complete access" to consciousness is coincidental, because I just read an article on The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Which postulates that, due to the divided brain, humans had to learn how to communicate between the verbal/rational brain and the intuitive/emotional brain. Julian Jaynes proposed that until the "EGO" (self) gained conscious control over the "ID" (non-self), people thought their subconscious urges were messages from gods. I don't know if it's literally true that before 3000BC humans were all schizophrenic, but metaphorically it makes sense. The rational linguistic part of the Mind is what we usually think of as Consciousness (Dr. Jekyll). But the emotional non-verbal half is what we call Sub-Conscious (Mr. Hyde). And, due to incomplete access, that inner beast is what we are always struggling to control.


*1. What did Aristotle mean by substance? ;
substance, in the history of Western philosophy, a thing whose existence is independent of that of all other things, or a thing from which or out of which other things are made or in which other things inhere.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/substance-philosophy

*2. Is information the fifth state of matter? :
In 2019, physicist Melvin Vopson of the University of Portsmouth proposed that information is equivalent to mass and energy, existing as a separate state of matter, a conjecture known as the mass-energy-information equivalence principle.
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/information-energy-mass-equivalence/
Note --- Vopson's "conjecture" is a physical hypothesis, while my thesis is meta-physical. Hence, my Information is not just a "state of matter", but also a "state of mind".

Hence in my opinion, those who believe in a "Hard Problem of Consciousness" misunderstand the purpose of science, and that this hard problem is better understood as being a "Hard Feature of applicable Physics" — sime

I doubt that Chalmers was talking about Physics when he coined the phrase "hard problem". Consciousness is not "hard" in a physical sense, but in the holistic philosophical sense of : not subject to simplistic reductionism. :smile:

Are you sure? That's a VERY important part of the hard problem. — Philosophim

Quite right, and we’re miles (and decades) away from being sure about any of this. While I can’t know what the subjective experience of a given something is, it seems probable that most things don’t have any. I assume you agree with this. So we’re just trying to draw the most likely line as to consciousness. You say with some assurance that AI programs already have limited consciousness. Is there any evidence for this beyond their behaviors? A purely functionalist argument can’t resolve this, since it begs the question.

Not quite sure why the hard problem rules out denying consciousness to computers at some future date, or why you describe the hard problem as “true.” It’s certainly true that it’s a problem, and that it’s hard, but I don’t think Chalmers or anyone else (except maybe McGinn and company) means to say that it’s by definition irresolvable.

Do I think that any non-living thing can be conscious? No, I’m strongly inclined, on the evidence, to believe that consciousness is exclusively a biological property. How surprised would I be if this turned out to be wrong? Fairly surprised (and fascinated), but again, we have almost literally no idea what we’re talking about. Let’s check back in 2123!

You may have misunderstood that point within the full context of what I was communicating, or I was unclear. It is not that we cannot communicate our subjective experience. Its that we cannot experience another's subjective experience. Meaning that there is no objective way to measure another's subjective experience. — Philosophim

I understand. But that is not what the Hard Problem is. The Hard Problem is explaining how subjective experience exists at all.

What you are talking about helps demonstrate why the Problem is Hard. Why can't we experience another's subjective experience? Using our senses, and all the scientific methods and devices we've discovered and invented, we can perceive, detect, and study matter and energy. We can measure things with incredible precision, and all get exactly the same measurements. And not only physical objects, we can do this with physical processes. We can measure aspects of flight, like altitude, speed, and direction. We can also see how things necessary for flight, like lift and aerodynamics, ultimately come from the micro-properties of particles.

None of that can be said about consciousness. We can't even detect it to the slightest degree in any way, much less measure any aspect of it. We can now detect brain activity, but that's physical processes. Understanding all of that to any degree doesn't touch on any subjective experiences taking place. We know certain conscious experiences are associated with certain brain activity. But having total knowledge of every aspect of that brain activity, if such was possible - which neurons are involved; which fire in which order; where all the signals each receives comes from, and where each signal each sends goes; etc. - tells us nothing about the subjective experience taking place. Total knowledge of all that doesn't even tell us subjective experience is taking place. How the physical activity produces consciousness is a mystery. As I said a post or two ago, a couple of the world's leading experts in relevant fields, Koch in brains and consciousness, and Greene in the properties of matter and laws of physics, do not know how it happens. It's a Hard Problem.

I understand. But that is not what the Hard Problem is. The Hard Problem is explaining how subjective experience exists at all. — Patterner

Lets break it down carefully. When you say, "How subjective experience exists at all", its important to clarify what this means. The "at all" seems to imply its more of a "Why?" then "How?" Because how subjective experience exists in a broad sense is through our physical brains. This is without question. All we're worried about is the details in how the brain generates it.

If you mean, "Why?", no one knows. Just like no one knows why anything exists. Its an unanswerable question.

I can see the why part being part of the hard problem, but not the how part. Its just like answering how water and hydrogen combine to create water. The how isn't hard. Why does water exist at all? That's hard.

That is the Hard Problem. "Through our physical brain" is a where, not a how. "In the sky" does not tell us how flight is accomplished. "In our legs" does not tell us how walking is accomplished. "In our brain" does not tell us how consciousness is accomplished. The details are not insignificant. They are remarkably important. And they are unknown. — Patterner

Sure, but its not the hard problem. Its just a problem. We learn more every day how the brain works in both medicine and science. All of this was done going with the knowledge that consciousness comes from the brain, and waiting to be proven wrong. So far, its not wrong. Its a problem to map our behaviors of consciousness to the brain for sure. But that's easy and we set out with confidence that it will be solved one day. The hard problem, the problem that in all likelihood will never be solved, is an objective science that can determine the subjective experience of a consciousness.

But I think we're repeating at this point. I've noted my stance, and you've noted yours. If we disagree still at this point, I think we can both agree that's just going to be the way it is.

Again, that is not the point of David Chalmer's essay, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness. I'm taking issue with your paraphrase of his argument. If you want to argue that this is what he should say, feel free. But it's not what he does say. — Wayfarer

As I've noted before, I'm not quoting Chalmers. I appreciate the point out to Chalmer's words, but I'm simply noting the underlying support and reason for the hard problem. Think of it this way. Lets say that we could examine a brain, and objectively know exactly what it feels like when that brain functions in a particular way. The hard problem would disappear. But as long as we can never objectively know what its like to have the subjective experience of another being, the hard problem stays.

Again, it's not what he says. He says that there is no satisfactory theoretical account of ANY conscious experience, not just of other people's or of animals. — Wayfarer

Again, I'm not quoting Chalmers. As to what he's talking about, its not behavior. Its the fact that we cannot experience the subjective experience of another being. We are not in disagreement on this.

Drugs can alter mood and behavior, and brain damage can lead to significant changes in consciousness and personality. But this doesn't demonstrate that consciousness is entirely a product of brain activity. — Wayfarer

True, but do we have evidence of something independent of the brain in regards to consciousness?

Neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections—shows that consciously undertaken actions and thoughts can have real, measurable effects on the brain’s structure and function. — Wayfarer

The fallacy here is the assumption that consciousness is independent of the brain. If it is not, and simply a result of the brains functions, it is the brain affecting the brain. While an interesting avenue to look into something independent of the brain, we need evidence of that something for this to be a viable point.

This is an example of top-down causation, where mental processes, such as attention, intention, and practice, influence neurophysiological changes, distinct from the bottom-up causation that is implied by physicalism. Your proposed schema is all 'bottom-up'. — Wayfarer

My proposal doesn't use top or bottom. I simply believe that physical matter and energy can have subjective experiences. It is a property of matter like, dry, wet, sandy, etc. It is what it is 'to be'. To what point? I don't know. That's the hard problem. We can't know what its like for a skin cell to be that skin cell. At what point does a clump of brain cells have a subjective experience? Is the subjective experience of being drunk the same across every individual? We can't objectively know.

Furthermore, the analogy of the brain as a receiver rather than just the generator of consciousness provides a different way to look at this issue. Just as a radio receives and tunes into waves without generating them, the brain may play a focusing or filtering role, modulating and organizing conscious experience but not wholly creating it — Wayfarer

Sure. I have no problem with this idea. But do we have evidence that the brain is only a receiver? We do have evidence in regards to how the senses are processed. So in that regard, it is. But as for consciousness, where does the brain receive this? How? Is there some type of measurement we can find that shows there is something independent of the brain affecting the brain? For that, we don't. So while its a nice idea to explore, the lack of evidence leads this to a dead end.

We have no scientific theories that explain how brain activity—or computer activity, or any other kind of physical activity—could cause, or be, or somehow give rise to, conscious experience. We don’t have even one idea that’s remotely plausible — Donald Hoffman, The Case Against Reality, Pp 18-19

Correct, and I am not disagreeing with this. What he is not saying is, "Consciousness is not physical." What he's really asking implicitly is, "Why is consciousness physical?" Why can something physical have a subjective experience? To me, its like asking why water is wet. Why does a rock exist at all? Why is there something instead of nothing? It is the mystery of being.

What do we want in a scientific theory of consciousness? Consider the case of tasting basil versus hearing a siren. For a theory that proposes that brain activity causes conscious experiences, we want mathematical laws or principles that state precisely which brain activities cause the conscious experience of tasting basil, precisely why this activity does not cause the experience of, say, hearing a siren, and precisely how this activity must change to transform the experience from tasting basil to, say, tasting rosemary. These laws or principles must apply across species, or else explain precisely why different species require different laws. No such laws, indeed no plausible ideas, have ever been proposed. — Donald Hoffman, The Case Against Reality, Pp 18-19

Again, nothing that I've said contradicts this. At the crux of it all, why is this? Because we cannot objectively determine what its like to have the subjective experience of tasting basil. I can know what its like for me, and you can know what its like for you. But we can't objectively know what its like for the other person.

Information doesn't exist in the same way that matter and energy do—it isn't a physical substance or force. Instead, information exists in the relationships between entities, and its significance depends on interpretation. — Wayfarer

And yet wasn't there a relationship between the radio waves, the radio, and then the sound played? Isn't an interpretation a physical response to stimulus or an event?

The book itself is not one thing and its meaning another; rather, the meaning emerges through the interaction between the symbols on the page and a mind capable of understanding them. — Wayfarer

Your book example is spot on. And I can agree that we can have an interpretation of information as both a medium which exists, and the interplay between that medium and an interpreter. What hasn't been shown is the noun or the interpretation of information that isn't through some physical medium. Can you think of one?

Information, in this sense, is relational. It depends on the patterns or structures that carry meaning and on the existence of an interpreter. This makes information fundamentally different from matter and energy—it’s not a physical object but something that manifests through relationships and interpretation. — Wayfarer

What are thing things in relationship, and what is doing the interpreting? What is easier to state with what we know, is that matter and energy can hold particular states (information as noun) and can have reactions when that state collides with another state which we call an interpreter (information as relation). What is wrong with saying that this is an aspect of the physical world, when we have evidence of a radio interpreting waves?

What I'm noting is that the standard model of science posits that the brain is the source of human consciousness, at least in terms of behavior.
— Philosophim

I think, actually, that you will find that a very difficult claim to support. You assume that this is what science posits, but there's some important background you're missing here.

At the beginning of modern science, proper, 'consciousness' in the first person sense was excluded from the objects of consideration. — Wayfarer

I want to be clear again, I am noting that science can measure consciousness as behavior, and agree 100% with you that it cannot currently objectively know the first person sense of it. As for behavior, the entirety of neuroscience, pharmacology, and psychiatry operates and functions as if consciousness as a behavior is an objective result of the mind. Without this, the entirety of modern medicine would not work.

Now, when you say 'the standard model of science', this is what you mean (whether you're aware of it or not.) And within that model the only 'real objects' are, well, objects. If 'mind' or 'consciousness' can be said to exist, then it can only be as a product of those objects. That's why you're incredulous at the denial of a causal relationship between brain and mind - to you, it's just 'the way things are'. But I'm afraid it doesn't hold up to philosophical scrutiny. — Wayfarer

I don't believe its a product of these objects. I believe it is the experience of being these objects. If it was a product, we could see it. We can't see it, because we aren't 'what it is like to be that'. The radio exists. What is it like to be it? The cells in your feet exist. What is it like to be those living cells? Its not a product, its an aspect of being that matter and energy has. The only way to know, is to be it.

Does this sound far fetched? Go with me for a second and take the idea that you're a physical being. Then you are 'something'. You are the existence of that. Not a chair over there, or the light bouncing around. You are a physical human being, and that is what it is like for you to exist. If you were 'something else' then you would be what it is like to be 'that something else'. Why keep introducing 'something else' when we have no evidence for it? Why introduce unnecessary complexity when we have the simple answer in front of us that works in accordance near perfectly with the behavior aspect of consciousness as well?

Regardless Wayfarer, thank you for tackling those points again. You're an intelligent and well spoken person, and I do enjoy reading your perspective even if I don't always agree on it. We also may be going around and around at this point, and if you feel we're rehashing old ground, you have my respect if you feel there is nothing more to add.

It's great you're digging into this, but you will need to understand that you can't both agree with Chalmer's argument, and also hold that consciousness is physical. — Wayfarer

Oh, I don't agree with it. I just don't have a problem with it. When he defined what it was that was separate from 'physical', I understood what he meant. Chalmers is not asserting that subjective consciousness is necessarily separate from the brain. What he's saying is we can't at this moment measure it as a physical entity, and that I have agreed with the entire time. Just like we can't measure space as a physical entity, nor can we measure time as a physical entity. And in this, subjective consciousness is not 'physical'. But it doesn't mean its apart from the physical, or that its even its own entity.

He's using physical in the sense of 'the physical and mental'. It doesn't mean the mental is existent in some reality, just like being mentally unconscious doesn't mean your physical brain is in a state of unconsciousness. He's not claiming mental as 'some other thing existence'. Its a classification of a state of being. And we know as beings, that we are physical. As long as none of his claims outright deny the idea that consciousness does not have a physical origin, I'm fine with it.

David Chalmers: "It's not physical"

Yes, this is his opinion to the solution of the hard problem, but not the hard problem itself. I still believe what I have said does not contradict what the underlying issue of the hard problem is. I disagree with his solution to the problem, because he also currently has no evidence to deny that subjective consciousness could be an aspect of matter and energy. The only thing he can truly conclude is that we cannot be other matter that has the subjective experience, therefore we cannot measure it. If you listened to the rest of the video, he notes that scientists right now are working to correlate their own subjective experiences with their brain states, something I've noted before. His, "Not physical" at best is using a category that does not require us to know whether it is physical or not. Which here, I have no disagreement again.

he says it might be an additional property that is associated with matter (a position which is called 'panpsychism'). But it's crucial to recognize that he doesn't say it can be explained in terms of known physical properties. He says that science has to admit consciousness as a fundamental property. By that he means it is irreducible, it can't be explained in terms of something else. — Wayfarer

No, he does not mean that it can't be explained in terms of something else if he is intending it to be like space or time. Space is a concept we use in relation to matter. We measure it with matter, yet space itself is not matter, but the absence of it. Time is not an existent 'material' concept, but it is is determined by watching and recording the differences in materials. Subjective consciousness as well, if it can only be known by being a material, is still known and defined in terms of the material that it is. Chalmers cannot deny this by his own reasoning. Just that we can't directly measure what it is like to be some other thing.

So if he wants to claim subjective consciousness as an existence that cannot be directly measured like space or time, I'm fine with this. He's not claiming that space and time exist apart from matter and energy, and he has no legs to claim with any evidence that consciousness is not in the same boat. This fits fine into the behavior version of consciousness, and simply gives another linguistic approach to the discussion. I certainly don't see it as a paradigm shift. It gives no argument that the brain does not or cannot cause consciousness, or that consciousness could exist without matter and energy. At most, its an option we can explore, of which I have always been open to.

Right. There's your 'thinking stuff' again. — Wayfarer

Just like Chalmers came up with his ideas using 'thinking stuff' too. He's just a man like you or me. Its fine if you don't agree with my conclusions, but don't discount thinking and questioning ideas, because you will subtly be against it in yourself as well. People move forward and discover by using the proposals, thoughts, and ideas of others as a springboard for new and better ideas. The alternative is dogma, and the elevation of an idea to a pedestal where most do not belong. It is great that you like the idea of subjective consciousness as another category of thinking, but I think the idea that the existence of the hard problem leads to the necessary conclusion that it is some other form of existence unrelated to matter and energy, does not follow.

A lot of times when we have a problem we tend to go and search for a solution for our problem instead of understanding what caused the problem to exist in the first place.


Whenever I come across the hard problem of consciousness I always have a problem in even understanding it. I understand that the dilemma is trying to understand how the how the qualities of consciousness that are experienced by living things may arise from out of inanimate matter which possesses no inherent qualities in and of itself; outside of our subjective perceptions.


I read all of Bernardo Kastrup's books where he lays out his theory of ''Metaphysical Idealism'' and I'm familiar with the materialist worldview of how consciousness might have arised form complex neural processes of the brain. The problem with both is that both theories require a form of emergence for them to exist and then the question might be at what point would this emergence happen? What is the criteria that those mental/matter processes have to meet in order for it to happen? Where do you draw the line that now there is mind or now there is matter? not to mention if the concept of time even applies here since in the idealist worldview time and space are what allow representations (matter) to happen so when when you talk about Universal Consciousness you can't bring time into the equation because it's outside of the whole spacetime dimensionality.


I tend to think of Whitehead's Process-ontology as the best way to explain reality, because the nature of reality is not made of properties whether physical or mental at least you can never posit that it is, because if you did this isn't parsimonious and it'll always be a postulate that cannot be proved. It's like saying I'm experiencing the world without the concept of an experience, our reality is made of processes where by the past is inherited into the present and perishes into the future so that there's a temporalization of terms which in a substance ontology are static and self existent, rather than matter and mind being separate substances, mind and matter are different phases of the same process.


So eventually if we were to say that mind and matter are one of the same thing, two phases of the same process we won't only solve the hard problem but we diminish its existence in the first place.

What does everyone else think? Have we invented the hard problem of consciousness?

Daniel Dennett posted a link to this article on Twitter recently. The article proposes a solution to the hard problem of consciousness.

"The hard problem of consciousness asks why and how humans have qualia or phenomenal experiences." - Wikipedia

I won't try and summarise the already succinct Aeon article (which describes itself as being "only in bare outline"). However, what I found most fascinating is the idea that qualia constitute the self, rather than being something perceived by the self.

As the article notes in relation to blindsight patients who function as sighted despite lacking visual qualia, "they don’t take ownership of their capacity to see. Lacking visual qualia – the ‘somethingness’ of seeing – they believe that visual perception has nothing to do with them." Extend this lack of ownership via lack of qualia to all qualia and the self itself disappears.

In his article Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995), David Chalmers posed the (hard) question: "Why doesn't all this information-processing go on "in the dark", free of any inner feel?"

If its claims are true, I believe the article may be on the right path to dissolving this problem - especially the question of why we experience qualia at all.

So I'm expecting that you are going to show how the Hard Problem goes away. — SteveKlinko

No, my claim is that the Hard Problem is a chimera based on the fallacious assumption that intentional reality can be reduced to a material phenomenon. It's solution is to realize that there is no solution, because it is not a real problem.

I think you are missing an important aspect of Consciousness by dismissing the experience of Qualia as you do. What is that Redness that you experience when you look at a Red object or when you Dream about a Red Object? — SteveKlinko

I am not dismissing qualia. They are quite real. I am saying that they are not essential to being conscious as they only occur in some cases. For example, we know abstract intelligibility without being aware of qualia. For example, what quale is associated with knowing that the rational numbers are countably infinite or that the real numbers are uncountably infinite? So, I see qualia as real, but not essential to being conscious.

Sounds like you are saying that there are two separate subsystems of the Material Mind (the Neurons). — SteveKlinko

No, I am saying that there is a material data processing subsystem composed of neurons, glia, and neurotransmitters, but that it cannot account for the intentional aspects of mind, so we also need an additional, immaterial, subsystem to account for intentional operations.

This sounds like you are saying that you are going to show that Intentional Reality cannot be found in the Neurons. — SteveKlinko

As intentional realities are immaterial, it is a category error to think of them as having a location, as being "in" something. You can think of immaterial realities being where they act, but that does not confine them to a single location.

Sound like Ontological Dualism to me. — SteveKlinko

Saying that the material operations of mind are not the intentional operations of mind is no more dualistic than saying that the sphericity of a ball is not its material. There is one substance (ostensible unity) -- the ball or the person -- but we can mentally distinguish different aspects of that substance. As it is foolish to think that we can reduce the sphericity of the ball to its being rubber, so it it is foolish to think we can reduce the intentional operations of a person to being material. They are simply different ways of thinking of one and the same thing.

You are just assuming that Neural Activity must imply Conscious Activity in all cases. — SteveKlinko

No, I am not. I am saying that if A explains B, then every case of A implies a case of B. If we find a counterexample, then by the modus tollens, A does not A explain B. This leaves open the possibility that A plus something else might explain B. Still, it takes more than A to explain B. I am suggesting that the "something else" is an intentional subsystem.

Yes but this seems to imply that the Conscious Activity of Intention can not be found in the Neurons by Science yet. — SteveKlinko

No. It implies that that as long as it begins with the Fundamental Abstraction, natural science is unequipped to deal with intentional operations.

I did not see any solution to the Hard Problem in all this. If Intentional Realities are not reducible to the Material Neurons then what are Intentional Realities? Where are Intentional Realities? How can this be Explained? There is a big Explanatory Gap here. This Explanatory Gap is the Chalmers Hard Problem. — SteveKlinko

There is only a gap if you assume that intentional operations can be reduced to physical operations. If you do not make this assumption, there is no gap to bridge.

We know, from experience that humans can perform both physical and intentional operations. That is a datum, a given, in the same way that protons can engage in strong, electromagnetic, weak and gravitational interactions is a given. Knowing these things does not mean that we can or should be seeking ways of reducing one to the other. It does mean that we should seek to understand how these kinds of interactions relate to each other. To do that requires that we employ the best methods to investigate them separately and in combination.

I think you are saying that there is only an Explanatory Gap if the Intentional Reality is found to be in the Neurons — SteveKlinko
I am not sure what, operationally, it would mean to find intentional reality "in the neurons." If intentions are to be effective, if I am actually able to go to the store because I intend to go to store, then clearly my intentions need to modify the behavior of neurons and are in them in the sense of being operative in them. Yet, for the hard problem to make sense requires more than this, for it assumes that the operation of our neurophysiology is the cause of intentionality. What kind of observation could possibly confirm this? — Dfpolis

I don't think there is any experimental test for this.

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 — SteveKlinko
Knowing what is, is not the same as knowing how or why it is. We know that electrons have a charge of -1 in natural units. We have no idea of how and why this is so. — Dfpolis

I'm missing your point here because I said that Science will need to have the Explanation for the How and Why, and not merely the fact that it is.

If Intentional Reality is not found in the Neurons then there would exist a Huge Explanatory Gap as to what it could be. — SteveKlinko
Not at all. We already know what intentionality is. We can define it, describe it, and give uncounted examples of it. What we do not know is what we cannot know, i.e. how something that cannot be its cause is its cause. That is no more a gap than not knowing how to trisect an arbitrary angle with a compass and straightedge is a gap in our knowledge of Euclidean geometry. There is no gap if there is no reality to understand. — Dfpolis

I disagree that we know anything about what Intentionality is. We know we have it, but what really is it? This is similar to how we Experience the Redness of Red. We certainly know that we have the Experience but we have no idea what it is.

. How does this non-Material Intention ultimately interact with the Neurons, as it must, to produce Intentional or Volitional effects? — SteveKlinko
I think the problem here is how you are conceiving the issue. You seem to be thinking of intentional reality as a a quasi-material reality that "interacts" with material reality. It is not a different thing, it is a way of thinking about one thing -- about humans and how humans act. It makes no sense to ask how one kind of human activity "interacts" with being human, for it is simply part of being human. — Dfpolis

If you have an intention to do something then that intention must ultimately be turned into a Volitional command to the Brain that will lead to the firing of Neurons that will activate the muscles of the Physical Body to do something. I believe you called that a Committed Intention.

I have argued elsewhere on this forum and in my paper (https://www.academia.edu/27797943/Mind_or_Randomness_in_Evolution), that the laws of nature are intentional. The laws of nature are not a thing separate from the material states they act to transform. Rather, both are aspects of nature that we are able to distinguish mentally and so discuss in abstraction from each other. That we discuss them independently does not mean that they exist, or can exist, separately.

Would it make any sense to ask how the laws of nature (which are intentional), "interact" with material states? No, that would be a category error, for the laws of nature are simply how material states act and it makes no sense to ask how a state acts "interacts" with the state acting. In the same way it makes no sense to ask how an effective intention, how my commitment to go to the store, interacts with my going to the store -- it is simply a mentally distinguishable aspect of my going to the store. — Dfpolis

When you say the Laws of Nature are Intentional, it sounds like you are talking about some kind of Intelligent Design. I'm not sure how this is even relevant to the discussion.

I know this does not sound very satisfactory. So, think of it this way. If I have not decided to go to the store, my neurophysiology obeys certain laws of nature. Once I commit to going, it can no longer be obeying laws that will not get me to the store, so it must be obeying slightly different laws -- laws that are modified by my intentions. So, my committed intentions must modify the laws controlling my neurophysiology. That is how they act to get me to the store.

Am I correct in saying that Volition is the same as Intention in your analysis? — SteveKlinko
Volition produces what I am calling "committed intentions." There are many other kinds of intentions like knowing, hoping, believing, etc. — Dfpolis

I had been thinking that you actually were using the word Intentions to mean Committed Intentions or in my way of thinking: Volition. I'm not sure what to do with an abstract concept like Intentions. When you hang your argument for eliminating the Hard Problem on an abstract Intentions concept being Material you are setting up a straw man.

This is why I like to frame the Hard Problem in terms of a sensory perception like the Experience of the Redness of Red. The Redness experience cannot be found in the Material Brain. We know that there are Neural Correlates of Consciousness for the Redness experience but we don't know what the Redness experience itself actually could be. It cannot be found in the Neurons in the Brain at this point in the Scientific understanding of the Brain. There is a Huge Explanatory Gap here as to what is that Redness experience. Even if your Intention argument is true, this Redness Experience Explanatory Gap must be solved. This is what the Hard Problem is really all about.

It depends on what you are trying to explain, iow not simply the specific thing you are trying to expain, but what kind of explanation. If we are trying explain why we believe brains are necessary for consciousness, we might use the examples of being knocked unconscious or brain death or chemical effects on the brain. If we want to know how the matter in the brain has interiority (an experiencer) we have to do some other kind of explaining. Since I have no idea what that is, I can't give an example.

Explain why water has surface tension....

The water molecules attract one another due to the water's polar property. The hydrogen ends, which are positive in comparison to the negative ends of the oxygen cause water to "stick" together. This is why there is surface tension and takes a certain amount of energy to break these intermolecular bonds.

The cohesive forces between liquid molecules are responsible for the phenomenon known as surface tension. The molecules at the surface of a glass of water do not have other water molecules on all sides of them and consequently they cohere more strongly to those directly associated with them (in this case, next to and below them, but not above). It is not really true that a "skin" forms on the water surface; the stronger cohesion between the water molecules as opposed to the attraction of the water molecules to the air makes it more difficult to move an object through the surface than to move it when it is completely submersed. (Source: GSU).

Other molecules in the water are being pulled all directions, whereas the ones on the surface are forming bonds, based on the positive and negative parts of the water molecules towards the sides, more than other directions. This means they cohere more. This means they resist being separated more that others and water has a high surface tension, compared to other liquids because its molecules are very dipolar.

That's getting into the how and why, which is what the hard problem is about. Why does and how does consciousness arise in brains - so even if it is a physicalist monism, how does it arise? You're not answering this. You are trying to rule out dualisms. I don't think your argument works, but it's not dealing with the hard problem. It can be viewed as a kind of explantion, sure. But it's not explaining the answer to the hard problem.

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explainingwhy and how sentient organisms have qualia or phenomenal experiences—how and why it is that some internal states are subjective, felt states, such as heat or pain, rather than merely nonsubjective, unfelt states, as in a thermostat or a toaster.

Must we insist that explaining consciousness at a mechanistic level any easier than explaining the subjective first-person experience aspects of consciousness? My hunch is that the so-called easy problem of consciousness at a mechanistic level is equally as difficult as the so-called hard problem at the subjective level. They might even be the same problem. — Wheatley

The "easy problem" is easy because it entails describing certain mental activity as mechanisic/algorithmic processes. It's true we can't map that into neurological activity (so it's still "hard" in that sense), but it's "easy" in the sense that mechanisic/algorithmic processes are consistent with physicalism.

The "hard problem" is hard because it entails mental activity that isn't describable mechanistically. Is that fatal? I don't think so, but it does mean we need to account for these mental functions in some novel way.

It looks like you have misunderstood most of the metaphors I threw out there. I was illustrating a different concept than the one you were thinking about. Probably my fault. It gets blocked up in my mouth. I don't say it no good.

How does one actually get the point across why this is not an acceptable answer as far as the hard problem is concerned? Can this be seen as answering it, or is it just inadvertently answering an easier problem? If so, how to explain how it isn't quite getting at the hard problem? — schopenhauer1

It does answer the question, by pointing out that the hard problem doesn't exist to begin with.

Do you believe that the hard problem does exist, and that it isn't being addressed properly?