Isn't the hard problem just synonymous with a lack of imagination? Why create a sign post at the point of the hard problem by labeling it as too-unexpected, and demanding of special explanation? I think people that question the hard problem are subconsciously trying to make the human brain magically-special among other things in the natural world. There are ulterior motives behind it.

Instead of marching forward with our understanding of the human brain, some people refuse to go further. So why did they stop and have a philosophical debate if they merely wanted to keep learning more?

Why create a sign post at the point of the hard problem by labeling it as too-unexpected, and demanding of special explanation? — Bird-Up

Can you explain this sentence a bit more? — Jackson

The logic behind questioning the hard problem is something to the effect of:
"This has no reason to be here (experiencing consciousness). And yet, it is here anyway. How can this be?"

The crux of the whole issue is the assumption that "this has no reason to be here". If you can imagine a good explanation as to why the brain benefits from the experience of consciousness itself, then it is no longer mysterious and in need of explanation. The hard problem only exists as long as you declare the experience of consciousness to be unnecessary.

The idea of the "hard problem" just makes a fetish out of consciousness. — Jackson

Wrong. The hard problem exposes the fetish of physicalists with their naive realism and dualists with their inability to explain how two opposing substances can interact.

The hard problem is resolved by a monistic view that information or process is fundamental - not matter and/or mind.

I'm not saying it doesn't. I'm saying that simply correlating X neural activity with Y subjective experience isn't the hard problem anymore. That is part of the easy problems. Rather, how is it that neural activity is one and the same as subjective experience is what is to be explained. — schopenhauer1

What a shame. Your own existence demanding explanation. Neural activity can be one and the same without your blessing. What made you ban your subjective experience from the realm of reality? When did it become something less? Something that needs an excuse in order to exist?

You haven't illustrated much about human existence. But you have have illustrated the endless tunnel of human guilt. Or maybe a lack of imagination? Which sin has your reality committed? Why has your existence incurred a debt so quickly? Rest assured, you can see whatever you need to for as long as you want. If nothing else, you are confident that your sensation of reality is untrustworthy.

The hard problem no longer exists without guilt. Who told you that the physical brain alone was not enough? How does the hard problem help you sleep at night? What more do you want to be?

But you are only able to say this from the perspective you have chosen. For many philosophers there remains a Kantian distinction between appearance and reality as it is in itself. Can we just make this go away simply by using different words or concepts? How is this different to saying that we can solve the problem of the origin of life just by saying God created it? It's only solved if God is 1) real and 2) God created life.

If I say from now on I am a monist, that very act does not do away with the hard question even if it satisfies me, right?

But maybe I've missed something in your response? — Tom Storm

I can put something out there, but you won't like it. One has to understand that there is a whole other philosophical world that continues in Germany and France that is not popular in Anglo-American philosophy. I read this, often enough with genuine understanding I would say, but it is an acquired ability. Joshs seems pretty solid on this.

It is not a matter of just rearranging words. One has to argue. What is that Kantian distinction really about? Always one must go to the things that are given to see what there is that can provide justification. Kant had to talk about noumena; why? Either it is nonsense, or there is something in the witnessable, phenomenological (empirical) world that insists. This is where we have to look: what is it in the world we know that intimates noumena? What is there in the presence of things that is the threshold for metaphysics? How does one talk about such a threshold? One cannot say it, for it is an absence, and yet it is an absence that is in the presence of the world.

Of course, this sounds confusing, but metaphysics is not just nothing at all, like an empty set. This absence is intimated in the world, so it is part of the structure of our existence, and so, it is not outside of our identifiable existence as Kant would have it, but in it, saturating it, if you will, and it is staring you right in the face in everything you encounter. In the analysis of what it is to experience the world, it is clear that the language used to "say" what the world is is radically distinct from the existence that is being talked about. The cup is smooth to the touch, and warm, and resists being lifted, and so on, but all this language I use to describe the cup takes the actual givenness of sensation up IN a language setting. I call it a cup, but the calling does not, if you will, totalize what is there in the language possibilities because there is something that is not language in the "there" of it. It is an impossible other-than-language, and because language and propositional knowledge is what knowing is about, the understanding encounters in the familiar day to dayness of our lives something utterly transcendental. The cup is both clearly defined as long as I can keep it contained within familiar language, and, utterly impossible, because it is there, radically unknowable, for to know is to be able to say. Wittgenstein put it simply: It is not how things are that is mystical; but THAT is exists.

This is a hard idea to simply throw out there and expect to be well received. Nor do phenomenologists all agree with this. Heidegger held that language and existence were of a piece, and our existence is language, and I think this is right; but I argue (have read it argued, too) that IN this matrix of language-in-the-world, a transcendental affirmation is possible, and this affirmation occurs in-the-midst-of everyday affairs.

But the effort is worth it, reading phenomenology, that is. In this issue, the hard problem of consciousness, phenomenology is not just an alternative view; it is necessary and inevitable.

God is another issue, a metaethical issue. I hold that the impossible, the mystical Wittgenstein mentioned, is, as Witt agrees, is really about value, or meta-value.

The "hard problem" refers to explaining the experiences that accompany function. Why is there an experience that accompanies sight? Why aren't we like computers that see, process visual data, and respond per protocols, but without any accompanying experience? — frank

Right, I've read Chalmers (although years ago when at University) and I understand the basic distinction between functional and experiential consciousness, but that's not what I'm asking.

I'm asking what proponents of the "hard problem' think an explanation of why, for example, "there (is) an experience that accompanies sight", could possibly look like.

The problem as I see it, is that consciousness is (primordially) non-dual, and it is only our models and explanations of it that are inevitably dualistic, given as they are in language which is necessarily dualistic (i.e. couched in terms of subject and object).

So, I am yet to be convinced there is a coherent question there.

If consciousness were something in addition to that activity then anaesthetics would not work since they only act on chemical activity, not 'the realm of consciousness'. — Isaac

Just because you aren't a dualist about consciousness doesn't mean the question just disappears.

Consider a DVD. Is the movie "on" the DVD something in addition to the physical layout of the DVD platter? No, the movie is that layout. Nonetheless, one has to ask, how is it that, when some DVDs are inserted into the proper device, video plays. Whereas if other DVDs, blanks say, are inserted, there is no video.

Imagine a technologically naive culture, cut off from the rest of the world, or maybe part of a multi-generational dystopian experiment, where DVDs and DVD players are a given. There would eventually arise a hard problem of DVDs. You can't answer that problem by saying "movies are just a name we give to certain DVD microstructures". You have to explain how it is that the material DVD "contains" audio and video.

We are in a culture where consciousness are a given, and the hard problem of consciousness has arisen. We have to explain how it is that neural activity "contains", "instantiates", "embodies", "is", whatever you prefer, the features of consciousness.

Your statement implies the belief commonplace subjective experiences should be easily accessible to the objectivist methodologies of science. It also implies the subjective/objective distinction is a trivial matter and should therefore be no problem for science. — ucarr

Neither of these statements is true.

Scientists examining "the hard problem" indicate how, regarding this question, the division between subjective/objective is deep and treacherous. Why do you disagree with them? — ucarr

You haven't provided any evidence that "Scientists examining "the hard problem" indicate how, regarding this question, the division between subjective/objective is deep and treacherous."

You're claiming the objectivism of science does not handicap its examination of subjective mind?
— ucarr

Your above observations do not answer my question. Are you unwilling to answer it? — ucarr

You're kind of a dick.

I don't know if Kant nor the Tao Te Ching have specific any bearing on the question.

The argument I was making was specifically about the assumptions behind modern scientific method, and how it tends to construe the world in certain terms - namely as something mind-independent and inherently existent (sorry for the jargon). The hard problem then arises because despite the astonishing reach of modern science, it can't really find, or account for, the nature of mind. And then, that 'eliminativism', typified by Daniel Dennett and his colleagues, tries to explain this away by positing the mind as an illusion (regardless that illusions themselves can only occur in minds.)

Now, if scientists generally were more aware of Kant, then the whole situation might be different. But I think awareness of Kant's philosophy is pretty minimal amongst mainstream scientists. On the whole they tend to favour cognitive realism.

As for the Tao Te Ching, it is a statement from that particular source of the perennial philosophy - you could find comparable aphorisms in Christian mystical theology, but again, for those who understand the world that way, there is no hard problem (or any problem :-) )

Nobody can agree upon what Kant really meant, even when Kant was still alive and responding to criticism. That said,

If Kant is interpreted to be an identity phenomenalist, meaning that he considered the concept of noumena to ultimately be ontologically reducible to "appearances" when appearances are taken in the holistic sense of the entirety of one's experiences, then he would, like other empirically minded philosophers such as Berkeley , Hume and Wittgenstein, have regarded the metaphysical Hard problem as a misconceived pseudo-problem that results from mistakenly reifying the concept of "mental representations" as being a literal bridge between two qualitatively different worlds. But this would say nothing of Kant's views regarding the semantically 'hard problem' of translating noumena into appearances.

In Kantian terminology, the natural sciences do not make a distinction between noumena and appearances; for any physical entity describable in any SI units can be treated as either a hidden variable or as an observation term at the discretion of the scientist in relation to his experimental context. This doesn't imply that the sciences are committed to one world (whether phenomenal or physical) or both; it only implies the practical usefulness of ignoring the semantic relationship between theory and phenomena, which has been the case so far for the majority of scientific purposes that fall outside of epistemology.

If Kant was astute, he would in my opinion have regarded his phenomena/noumena distinction as being a practical distinction made for the purposes of epistemology, as opposed to a metaphysical distinction, for obvious reasons pertaining to the creation of philosophical pseudo-problems.

Isn't this just what the 'hard problem' is about? 15 pages of texts and it's back to square 1. — Wayfarer

Read somewhere:

Breaking news: Philosophers give up on hard problem of consciousness -- "it's just too hard!"

Chalmers has said that if there is a dissolution of the hard problem, the meta-problem of explaining why we think there's a hard problem has to first be addressed. — Marchesk

Yep.

I read The Conscious Mind over 10 years ago just to figure out what the hullabaloo was. For awhile I was persuaded by Chalmer's property-dualism.

These days I'm not as confident as I once was in such claims, but not because of the problem or how its stated but more general concerns.

I think I have a coherent notion of Chalmer's description of the hard problem. I'd say the inverted spectrum argument is probably my favorite because it demonstrates how while it's surely advantageous in a functional sense to be able to "feel" the world around you, it doesn't really matter that my red is your red -- the old "my red could be your blue" line of thought. As long as we are able to distinguish the world similarly enough to use language together that's all that's functionally needed. Yet I have a fairly clear idea about what it would mean for my red to be your blue. So, whatever that is -- why my red is my red -- that's what the hard problem of consciousness is about. It's the feeliness of the world. And the thought, so my memory of what I was lead to believe at least, is that there is as yet no scientific explanation for why my red is my red (or, perhaps another way to put it, there's no scientific way to tell what my red is -- whether it is your blue or not -- yet I certainly see red)

The hard problem can be paraphrased by the following Wittgensteinian semantic problem

"How are my perceptual and cognitive judgements that i express using my mother tongue, correlated with the public conventions that define my language"?

Once these two concepts are distinguished, the hard problem ought to evaporate, regardless of whether the two concepts can be put into correspondence. For there isn't a meaningful public answer as to whether or not Mary 'learns' new information about the concept of colour when leaving her black and white world; for none of Mary's perceptual judgements bear any analytic relation to public physical theories about colour .

Of course, Mary is likely to decide to associate her perceptual judgements with said physical theories as part of a private-dialect we might call "Mary's personal physical colour theory"

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

:up: The only issue I see with Chalmers proposal regarding a "new kind of science"; and that the subjective nature of consciousness might be understood and explained scientifically is that there doesn't seem to be the remotest idea of what such a science could look like.

I mean since scientific observations are publicly available whereas consciousness is not publicly observable it's hard to see how it could work. And you seem to be making pretty much the same point. So, I see the whole notion of pursuing a scientific investigation of first person experience as being a fool's errand. I think it should be renamed "the impossible problem" because the idea that it is a problem is a category error. We shouldn't expect science to be able to investigate and understand everything about human life, so it's not a failing of science so much as a failure to understand the limitations of science.

Penfield interpreted that to mean that their own awareness was separate to the reactions he was able to elicit by manipulation. That is why he tended towards a dualist view late in his career. — Wayfarer

I understood. 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. In fact, we're still feeling around in the dark in many aspects, and we need to be careful that our opinions are not equated to anything more meaningful than our own personal satisfaction in holding them.

The 'placebo effect' and many other aspects of psychosomatic medicine show a 'downward causative' effect from states of mind and beliefs to actual physiology. According to the 'bottom-up' ontology of materialism, this ought never to happen. (Hence the hackneyed saying 'mind over matter'.) — Wayfarer

First, if you remember I don't ascribe to "materialism", or "physicalism" or really most "isms". They are often times isolated theories for a simple understanding of issues that break down when you really need to think about their subjects.

If you think about the statement, "States of mind and beliefs should never cause changes in physiology," its very quickly disproved. With concentration or distraction I can overcome hunger. Being happy and experiencing pleasant social interactions can improve your health. And if the mind is physical, then it can interact with the physical world. To say the state of one's mind couldn't impact the physical world, when it clearly is in the physical world, is the statement that is less believable.

Thank you for linking the article, but I could not read it as I do not have a subscription. I did note that article was from 2016, and found another study in 2019 that confirmed the original assessment. https://qz.com/1569158/neuroscientists-read-unconscious-brain-activity-to-predict-decisions

The problem that is always going to undermine physicalism or materialism is that being has a dimension that no physical process has. A first-person experience has a dimension of feeling that can never be replicated in a third-person or objective description. It's a very hard point to articulate, as it is more an implicit reality than an objective phenomenon. That is what the argument about 'the hard problem of consciousness' seeks to illuminate, and from your analysis of it, I'm not persuaded you see the point. — Wayfarer

I may not have been as clear as I liked then. I agree with this sentence entirely. "A first-person experience has a dimension of feeling that can never be replicated in a third-person or objective description". This is the hard problem essentially. That doesn't mean it doesn't have a physical process underlying it. It also doesn't mean that we can't affect consciousness physically, or understand that though we do not know the exact mechanism, it is fundamentally a physical process.

I mean, at its basic Wayfarer, why is your consciousness stuck in your head? Why can't it float out or even extend out to your feet? Try thinking locally within your foot. Try thinking outside of your physical self. Try getting drunk and have it not affect your consciousness. Even though we can't objectively know what its like to be someone else, that doesn't deny all the very obvious facts that demonstrate consciousness is a physical thing.

I have not misrepresented it. I said it was controversial and gave my understanding. — Dfpolis

By leaving out an essential feature you are misrepresenting it.

But, it is not relevant to my topic any more than the related discussion of the Unmoved Mover. — Dfpolis

If you use Aristotle's term but do not indicate that you mean by it something different than Aristotle did, then it is relevant. But it is not clear that you do mean something different. Why the obfuscation?

Sufficiently vague. Consciousness, the operation of the agent intellect, is the operation of our power of awareness.
— Fooloso4
The quoted text is relating the agent intellect to phenomenology, not explaining its dynamics. — Dfpolis

That is the question: what if anything are you actually explaining with regard to consciousness?

You go on to say:

Consequently, consciousness, the operation of the agent intellect, is not a niggling anomaly that
can be ignored until explained as a neurophysical side effect, but an experiential primitive
essential to understanding human rationality. Certain concepts, such as <electric charge>, are
an experiential primitive accepted, not because they are theoretically reducible, but because they are epistemologically primitive – reflecting contingent realities that cannot be, or at least are not, further explained.

It is as if you said: "Hard problem? What hard problem? There is no hard problem. Consciousness just is. No further explanation is needed or possible."

Merged from https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14163/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-seems-like-religious-mumbo-jumbo-with-fancier-words

When you look at things from an evolutionary perspective and understand biology and biochemistry there doesn't seem to be any hard problem.

Yeah living systems are really complicated... and yeah the chemistry and evolution that can happen over 4 billion years is really complicated.. but I don't think by making up fuzzy words like qualia and weird thought experiments like zombies you actually highlight any real problem or illuminate any gap in our knowledge!

Yes humans have complex subjective experience and presumably all living systems even a mosquito have some sort of internal subjective experience...

But it seems like neurology and biochemistry and evolutionary biology do a pretty good job of explaining what's going on and I don't see how any of that mumbo jumbo is creating any better science?

In other words it seems like the science we have and the understanding we have does a pretty good job explaining things, and unless you're creating something better, it seems like you're just praying on the gullible and naive religious impulses by creating these weird philosophical niches!!! — Metamorphosis

This discussion was merged into Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?

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

And in this case consciousness is the ontological primitive — TheMadMan

Hmm this is a challenging notion to argue but I thank you for the task. It seems fun. I'm going to ad lib with this one.

So lets say for arguments sake consciousness as an ontological primitive is an spontaneous impulse (action potential) that wishes to create tracks or patterns (thoughts) so that it can develop a store (memory) and thus perception of the passage of time (based on memory of the past) and by proxy anticipation (or the "future" ), as well as a sense of presence (the present), it requires some substance to store information and making these thought tracks/patterns - ie for making memories.

Cue matter. If energy is the impulse of thought - potent, flexible, malleable, changeable, creativity, imagination, then matter is it's rigid or crystalline counterpart - the memory generated.

And as we know the two are related (equivalent) - by Einstein equation (e=mc2).

If consciousness is a fundamental, then the hard problem of consciousness/or matter (I think they are the same in this case) cannot be found in our brains, and is not that hard at all, it would instead be a reevaluation of the e=mc2 equation with the assumption that (c2) represents the gap (or "problem" of unifying the 2 entities: thought (energetic impulse, and memory - matter: the anatomically stable structure, the neurons).

Matter is thus the form of energy with properties of stability, it takes a solid and structured or patterned form and then remains that way until acted upon again. Just as memories take form and are slowly altered every time we revisit them with our conscious attention.

Perhaps con"solid"ation of memories also involves gravity which draws in scattered "memories" and condenses them into geometric relationships/associations (orbits, solar systems etc - perhaps a basic for logic or reasoning. Organisation, complexity. Negative entropy).

So really the question would be how does thought in this case (energy - the electricity or light coursing and rippling through the system as it thinks, acts and develops) become matter (the memories formed) and I would suggest the answer lies in the e=mc2 formula.

Speed is a relationship between time and space (distance). It is also the factor that distinguishes matter from energy - (c) the speed of light (which is energy, so it's a "self-referential" equation - apt for consciousness or "self" no? ).

In order for energy to become matter, or "thought impulse" to become "memory", time and distance must change rapidly. As the equation would suggest.

Perhaps with some relativistic expansion-dilation type of change.

A given quantity of energy or "thought" could hurtle out (space) , dissipate (entropy) and it's rate of change (with relation to time) might slow and become more stable, less chaotic, and thus precipitate into an emergent form that is much less excitable and dizzyingly zippy/fast (matter).

This primitive consciousness could be said then to be a dynamic relationship between the 4 fundamentals: energy, time, space and matter (each dependant on the qualities/properties of the others for existence and their "separable individual behaviours" ).

I hope this satisfies your request for a consciousness based emergent physicalism answer that you might enjoy contemplating.

It's at most an analogy/metaphysical, metaphorical or pseudo-physics description.

It has no scientific "proof" from a purely physicalist perspective, but I guess resolving the physical with the conscious (hard problem) wouldnt come just from objective physical explanations would it? I think it could be seen as reasonable despite not being scientific.

That I imagine physicalist will detest with every inch of their "material bodies." But I don't shy away from a bit of thought paintings/art regardless of their disgruntledness

...using the title "A potential solution to the hard problem" is itself biased already because, without first allowing the thread responses to express their criticisms to the points discussed in the article, saying it ahead of time is leading. — L'éléphant

...the "proposed solution" that the article offers... — L'éléphant

Do you doubt that the article offers a proposed solution to the hard problem? Have I created bias by announcing that that's what the article is about? I don't see how the title prevents anyone from expressing their criticism to the points discussed in the article. Furthermore, I doubt that anyone would honestly disagree that the article proposes a solution to the hard problem.

I don't think the so called hard problem can ever be solved. All our explanations are functional, that is therr nature, so how on earth can there be any kind of explanation of the sort we want for qualitative conscious experiences?

A conscious-centric framework will not even be able to explain consciousness because it is possibly the most trivial concept we have since it is the primitive base of all knowledge. There is absolutely no constraint on what can be considered to be an experience. It seems plausible to me that there are an infinite multitude of experiences that we could never even imagine for different possible kinds of sentient agents. Once you think like that, can you even point out what it means not to be conscious or be an experience? I am not even sure anymore, especially if someone like a panpsychist thinka that even the simplest possible micro-thing can have some form of experience that is just extremely, unfathomably basic.

There's no possible characterization of consciousness. It is utterly primitive to us as information-processing creatures. All we can do is fit it in as best we can with the rest of science. Since consucousness has no actual characterization, the only thing we can do is juxtapose with useful physical concepts like people already do in neuroscience. Physical concepts are doing all the hard work and science hasn't found any evidence of dualism. Sure, panpsychism could be true but again since consciousness lacks any decent characterization, which of our concepts do the heavy lifting in relating experience to the rest of reality? The physical concepts.

Again, explanations are inherently functional. Experiences are not. There will never be a good explanation of consciousness and anything useful to our knowledge will be functional and so inherently at odds with describing or explaining experiences. Maybe physical concepts don't explain consciousness like we want them to but physical concepts are central to any kind of useful explanations about fundamental reality. I think fundamental ontology is likely impossible to comprehend and the next step is a computational or informational explanation of why that is and for how that hard problem arises in intelligent machines like us in the first place.

Perhaps the most contentious feature of Consciousness is its experiential quality. — Gnomon

Nice. I rarily see people connecting consciousness with experience. (In the sense of human feeling, as you say.)

For me, consciousness is basically experience. In fact, consciousness can be only experienced.
And human experience as not accepted in general as evidence for anything --esp. by Science-- because it is totally subjective, of course.

This, and generally the subjective and non-physical nature of consiousness, are the main reasons why we have got into such a thing as the "hard problem of consciounsess". But the inability of Science to deal with consciousness is so obvious, so much expected, that it makes the "hard problem of consciounsess" too overrated. In fact, it shouldn't exist as a problem at all. Why should it? The subject of "consciousness" is out of the jurisdiction of Science.

However, the fact of my own consciousness is apodictic (beyond doubt) for each of us, is it not? That is the sense that Descartes' cogito is right on the mark, is it not? — Wayfarer

Yes, definitely. The hard problem does not exist for our own selves. For we are the experiencers of that particular locus of matter called the brain. I would be able to measure my brain waves and find out exactly what brain state made me feel what I feel. The problem is, I could never communicate that exact subjective feeling to others in an objective way. The hard problem is not in objectively measuring our own subjective experience with our brains, its in communicating our own subjective experience to another subjective being with an objective means of verification.

Its really really another variation of, "Is the green I see the green you see?" We both have the wavelength of light enter our eyes and processed by our brain a particular way. We both call it green. We could see the process of the brain and wait for each of us to say when we see green. But do we subjectively experience what we each call green exactly the same way? That's something beyond our capability to objectively know.

When I reflect on consciousness I try to think of it in physical terms to see your point of view. I put on my science helm (yes, it's a science helm and not a helmet), and I reduce all of reality to the level of atoms bouncing around in the void. Thanks Epicurus or Lucretius or Hobbes or whoever's idea that was. "Here are some atoms in this rock. But these atoms in my brain produce consciousness," I think to myself. And I wonder, "why are these brain atoms producing consciousness? What is special about them?" "Well maybe when you arrange atoms in that way they are conscious?" "But Not Aristotle," I say to myself, "that is entirely an ad hoc explanation and besides, why would the arrangement of the atoms matter?" And I am unable to answer. And that's the hard problem as I understand it. If you have an answer to that problem, I would be happy to hear it. — NotAristotle

Yes, that is the Hard Problem. How would purely physical things bring about a non-physical thing?

Thus the con­nection between mind and meaning, on the one hand, and subjectivity and consciousness, on the other, was completely severed.

This is far from the position I am taking. My position involves no such division. It does involve a close adherence to the principle of parsimony -- specifically that we not posit phenomena for which we have no evidence. I am not and never have been a behaviorist, nor do I question the importance of consciousness and subjectivity to the operation of human minds. I do object to the reanimation of the analogous introspection of non-human minds without an empirical warrant, with my specific point being that since we can explain all of our observations of non-human cognition using the data processing paradigm, there is no warrant to posit either subjectivity or consciousness in that domain.

Cognitivism, far from closing this gap, perpetuated it in a materialist form by opening a new gap between subpersonal, computational cognition and subjective mental phenomena.

Neither is this my position. If you read my paper on the Hard Problem, you will see that it closes this gap. My work in progress is near completion and makes a significant step toward explaining this integration by showing how neurally encoded information can become intentionally active = active in the intentional theater of operations. That does not explain why there is an intentional theater of operation (why consciousness and subjectivity exist), but does show how physical activity can be linked to intentional operations.

Enactivism asserts that via sensory-motor coupling with an environment, an organism enacts a world. — Joshs

This is a most peculiar claim. It seems to imply that there is no per-existing environment that informs the organism and might kill it if it went unsensed. It reminds me of a claim I heard earlier this year that one one died of COVID.

Subjective consciousness arises out of this normatively driven activity. — Joshs

And so, in a single sentence the Hard Problem is solved!

Here is the logic of this, assuming that you mean consciousness evolves "out of this normatively driven activity." Evolution works because some variations are inheritable and increase the reproductive success of the the variant organism. To apply that paradigm, one must show:
(1) That consciousness has physical effects -- for if it did not, it could not increase reproductive success.
(2) That consciousness has a physical basis -- for if it did not, it could not be encoded in DNA to be inherited.
In other words, you must provide a physicalist solution to the Hard Problem.

However, as I showed in my paper, this is is logically impossible. The reason is simple. Physical science begins with a fundamental abstraction. Although all knowledge involves a knowing subject and a known object, the physical sciences focus on physical objects and prescind from the knowing subject and her experiences. They therefore lack the concepts and data required to connect their findings to the intentional theater of operations and its elements (e.g. subjective consciousness).

So, you cannot do what is required to show that consciousness can evolve without bringing in the data on knowing subjects as subjects the physical sciences have abstracted away.

The first idea is that living be­ings are autonomous agents that actively generate and maintain them­selves, and thereby also enact or bring forth their own cognitive do­mains.

At last, a point we agree upon. We each have our own projection of the world, and different species may have non-overlapping projections. We do not have the magnetic sense of some birds or the echo sense of bats.

The second idea is that the nervous system is an autonomous dynamic system: It actively generates and maintains its own coherent and meaningful patterns of activity, according to its operation as a cir­cular and reentrant network of interacting neurons.

This distorts the interactive nature of cognition, and indeed, of life itself. We have only marginal control over what we sense. Sensibles act on senses, not vice versa. Sentient beings spend significant resources reacting to their environments. So, biological neural nets, while they may have re-entrant features are not circular systems. Rather, in sensing, environmental objects modify our neural net, and that modification is our neural representation of those objects.

The nervous system does not process information in the computationalist sense, but creates meaning.

So, there is no biological data processing? How, then, does visual edge extraction work? Why are AI neural nets able to simulate biological behavior?

How do you define "meaning"? Without a definition that allows "meaning" to be created by a physical operation, this is mere hand waving, a faith claim -- what Evan Thompson would like to be the case, not anything that has been shown. To create "meaning" as an intentional state requires an intentional operation and none is indicated.

Sensorimotor coupling between organism and environment modulates, but does not determine, the formation of en­dogenous, dynamic patterns of neural activity, which in turn inform sensorimotor coupling.

This is vitalism pure and simple. Physics is completely deterministic except for quantum observations, which Thompson is not invoking. So, something in addition physical operations is required for patterns of activity not be predetermined. In humans, we observe subjective awareness, which physics prescinds from. In non-humans the only way to subjectivity is via the deprecated practice of analogous introspection.

The fifth idea is that experience is not an epiphenomenal side issue, but central to any understanding of the mind, and needs to be investigated in a careful phenomenological manner

I agree with this Aristotelian position.

It’s called ‘the hard problem’ for a reason! You’re dealing with a question that is at the basis of a great many philosophical questions and there are no easy answers. — Wayfarer

The April-May 2024 issue of Philosophy Now has an article by Raymond Tallis entitled The Illusion of Illusionism. Speaking of Consciousness, Tallis says, “There is . . . . nothing in matter or energy as seen through the eyes of physics that explains how a part of the material world might become aware of itself”. {my bold} The Aeon article is extremely interesting in terms of the science, but it only describes a separate pathway for sensory signals to reach the brain, and sheds no light on how those signals are interpreted into a meaningful mental experience.

In the Aeon article Humphrey quotes Encyclopedia Britannica (1929) : "One theory holds that each atom of the physical body possesses an inherent attribute of consciousness". {my bold} But Humphrey seems to think we have "moved on" from that Panpsychism solution to the Hard Problem. Ironically, the "all mind" approach has recently become popular among some prominent psychological scientists : e.g. Christof Koch.

Humphrey seems to favor the Psychonic Theory*1: "The psychonic theory contends, in the end, that consciousness equals synaptic function. It is evident where consciousness, defined as psychonic energy,".{my bold} It describes a stimulus/response mechanism that produces an "electrical aura", but nothing we could interpret as conscious awareness. Therefore, to be effective, that Psychonic Energy must include the missing something that Tallis noted..

My own pet theory is philosophical instead of scientific, and it postulates a form of Energy that could be described as Psychonic, but I call it Enformy, alluding to Plato's Forms. And, like Panpsychism, it postulates that the potential for Consciousness is inherent in the Energy that causes all transformations in the material world. So, my hybrid theory has one foot in Physicalism, and one in Panpsychism.

My amateur philosophical thesis says that there is "something in matter and energy" that might explain how the physical world could become aware of itself. That "something" is the power to transform one kind (form) of thing into another. It is implicit in the program of Evolution, which began with nothing but a speck of Potential, and constructed the vast multiplex world of matter/energy/mind we now sentiently "see" around us*2. Unfortunately, the original source of that transformative power will be another "hard" philosophical problem.

I may have more to say about the Blindsight article in another post. But I'm in over my head as it is, so the less I say the better. . . . for now. As you said, there are no easy philosophical answers. :smile:


*1. The psychonic theory of consciousness
If human behaviour is composed of Unit Responses and if, in the preceding section, without any reference at all to consciousness, we have briefly described what such a response is and how it is determined, can we say with the behaviorist that there is no need to postulate the entrance of any conscious factor in the process beginning with stimulus and ending with final reaction?
https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2006-20942-004

*2. Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations, to have affective consciousness, subjective states that have a positive or negative valence
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/sentience#:~:text=Sentience%20is%20the%20capacity%20to,From%3A%20Neuroscience%2C%202022

One is that it is a dimensionally diminished map of reality -- — Dfpolis

Very nice

The Hard Problem arises because an object acting on our senses does not mean that we are aware of it — Dfpolis

Firstly, sorry, but you might need to apply some imagination because I am not using words precisely, nor necessarily properly (from an academic/conventional perspective). Does the following help in any way? Please bear with my use of "real" for e.g.

1. There is a real consciousness humans have, like all animals, at least, albeit in varying "complexities." It is organic attunement to organic feelings drives movements sensations presently and with no movement in time, possibly not space, as in monistic ("aware-ing"). But Ive said too much because we cannot know aware-ing; aware-ing is "pre" knowing. Our only access to aware-ing is being the aware-ing.
2. The aware-ing can organically attune, when feelings of pleasure arise, aware-ing pleasure; pain, aware-ing pain. Apple comes into view, aware-ing apple. Not "I" subject of the sentence see apple object. Aware-ing x-ing is one present event; no duality because Mind hasn't constructed difference yet.
3. Once mind emerged (through (to oversimplify) the evolution of Language) aware-ing x-ing was displaced by "I" am looking at an apple, or I am enjoying this Icecream.
4. While at one time (and still, I'll explain later) organic aware-ing processed x-ing as x-ing engaged with body in the oneness/present processes of Nature just being; now displaced by mind, aware-ing attunes to apple, or pleasure, or icecream; and, it does so riding on the back of this "I" and what it engages with is, by the Laws of mind, necessarily "different". First, they are objects, to body's "I". Second, they are apple not orange; pleasure not pain.
5. So now "aware" of an object acting on my senses just means that the natural aware-ing, where there is no hard problem, is displaced by mediating processes of constuctions and projects. Such that there is the "illusion" of a hard problem; the illusion that we are "aware" of an "object" when really we have constructed it then projected it as object.

At the level of sensation we do not judge, we respond. Errors are ineffective responses, not falsehoods. At the intellectual level, we judge, affirming or deny this of that. The result (our new intellectual representation) either reflects reality adequately for our purpose or not. That implies that we have purposes, not just needs. — Dfpolis

This quote supports/addresses, the immediately preceding. But the last sentence brings up a new point. You are exactly right. For Mind. For Mind, one of its driving mechanisms is that the Signifiers move to construct meaning; they run through a dialectic, and settle upon knowledge or belief. Until the process recycles for any given "truth" from this is an apple to God is metaphysically necessary. And the mechanism which allows for each settlement at the end of each dialectic is function: what is, given all movements gathering at this locus in History, the fittest settlement? What is the fittest representation to manifest into the world? It is functional to believe a certain red fruit is an apple. If a philosopher proposed tge necessity of God, it would be functional to settle there.

So yes, the constructions and projections of Mind serve a purpose. It is only body which is satisfying simply its needs.

Never say never! Yes, this seems impossible today. But science is full of 'making the impossible possible'. Did we conceive that cell phones would exist 300 years ago? That mankind would ever be able to travel to the moon? Judging what is possible in the future based on what we know today has a history of throwing egg on the face of our collective human race. :)

This is why it is viable to call it 'the hard problem' instead of 'the impossible problem'. — Philosophim

This would require a little more than improvements in transportation or communication… This would require that our mind is restructured in a way that does not require “consciousness” to be a building block in our mind. And even if that is managed, this would be replaced by another “building block” and we would then face the same problem for this other building block. We use tools from our mind to understand the world, just like in the Lego analogy I explained later in this message, and it’s impossible to explain these tools when all we have to do so are the same tools we’re trying to explain...

your argument is a bit like saying it's logically impossible to prove the existence of time because it's an object in the world and we can't perceive it as such because each act of perception is a static measurement that never captures its flow. — Baden

You're comparing apples and oranges. You're talking about the inability to understand something because we would assume that we don't have the right tools in our mind (which couldn't be a certainty solely based on logic), and I'm talking about the inability to understand something because it's self referential. We need consciousness to think, therefore we need consciousness to make any inference about consciousness, that's the problem.

Imagine a child is trying to figure out how a plastic Lego brick was made, but all they have to work with are other Lego bricks. The child could build something that looks like a drilling rig out of the bricks and they can pretend that this rig drills deep into the ground to extract some natural substance (also made of bricks) and then use another set of bricks to build a pretend fire, imagining that the substance is somehow broken down by the fire to create the bricks themselves. But the child can't actually break down or change the bricks. They're trying to use the very bricks they're made of to explain how those bricks came into being, which creates the self-referential problem. The “hard problem of the Lego brick” could be that whatever they try to build, they’ll have no way to actually check if what they built is truly like what’s happening in reality because they’ll never be able to actually build a brick.

Even if we can study our brain and associate phenomena with consciousness, our understanding of it is made through consciousness, through this subjective notion in our mind. And breaking down consciousness is impossible: it's always there as a whole, at least if we consider the whole to be the experience of the subject (you could study altered states of consciousness to learn more about the missing elements in these experiences).

Thanks. As it happens, I googled Feinberg and Mallatt The first hit was a review of their book by Stephen Rose which concludes:

As they cheerfully admit, neuroevolution does not solve the “hard problem”. But then perhaps it isn’t a real problem at all, but a ghostly remnant of a past dualistic way of thinking.

So they seem to be hewing to the same path as the late Daniel Dennett. And I don't think he even addresses the hard problem, although I'm not going to launch into an argument about it all over again. It's too hard! ;-)

(Incidentally Rose's book is Can Neuroscience Change our Minds? which looks much more congenial to my way of thinking.)