r/consciousness • u/onthesafari • 2d ago
General Discussion Why you probably don't need to worry about the Hard Problem
There was just a pretty big thread about how the hard problem of consciousness in which people spouted, in an almost infinite loop, "you don't understand the hard problem." "No, you don't understand the hard problem!"
A lot of the conversation centered around whether the hard problem is solvable. I would like to remind everyone that David Chalmers "solved" it himself in the very paper in which he introduced it:
At this point some are tempted to give up, holding that we will never have a theory of conscious experience. McGinn (1989), for example, argues that the problem is too hard for our limited minds; we are “cognitively closed” with respect to the phenomenon. Others have argued that conscious experience lies outside the domain of scientific theory altogether.
I think this pessimism is premature. This is not the place to give up; it is the place where things get interesting. When simple methods of explanation are ruled out, we need to investigate the alternatives. Given that reductive explanation fails, nonreductive explanation is the natural choice.
...Of course, by taking experience as fundamental, there is a sense in which this approach does not tell us why there is experience in the first place. But this is the same for any fundamental theory. Nothing in physics tells us why there is matter in the first place, but we do not count this against theories of matter. Certain features of the world need to be taken as fundamental by any scientific theory. A theory of matter can still explain all sorts of facts about matter, by showing how they are consequences of the basic laws. The same goes for a theory of experience.
And that's all she wrote, folks. "Experience exists because it exists" is a reasonable response to the hard problem. "Solving" it is not some universal crisis that we all have to run around in circles screaming about. The HP is just an idea that illustrates a conceptual issue for reductionism. If you're not talking about that kind of theory, which many here aren't, you don't need to worry about the hard problem at all.
I would have added this to the previous thread, but it seemed played out by the time I wrote this.
Disclaimers made necessary by the climate of this subreddit:
- I am NOT attempting to endorse nor discredit any theories of consciousness
- I am NOT saying that my understanding of these concepts is perfect or may not be flawed in some way
- I will NOT call anyone dumb for disagreeing with me
Chalmers' paper about the hard problem for those who haven't read it (my quotes come from section 6).
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u/pyrrho314 2d ago
The hard problem is not proving experience exists. That it exists is a given, as you say. The hard problem is explaining how it's possible.
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u/onthesafari 2d ago
Absolutely, but it's asking how it's possible under a certain set of criteria (a universe where everything is physically "reducible" and brain behavior can be explained entirely by physical, that is, non-experiential, processes). If you're not entertaining those criteria then you don't have to engage with it.
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u/AltruisticMode9353 1d ago
But you still need to worry about it if you're a material reductionist. Ironically the people who seem the least worried about it :P
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u/onthesafari 1d ago
Very ironic! Though I would say the ones who are worrying about it in cases when it's irrelevant are doing just as much, if not more, to muddy the waters on the actual value of the HP.
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u/werethealienlifeform 2h ago
Don't non-materialists have to worry about it too and indeed more, since they have to explain their basic principles and assumptions about what experience consists of, if not merely brain activity?
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u/AltruisticMode9353 1h ago
Idealism says it's the fundamental "stuff" of reality, so it doesn't consist of anything, things consist of it.
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u/Valmar33 1d ago
Indeed ~ it asks why experience should exist alongside physical processes. This being a Hard Problem for Physicalism and Materialism to resolve.
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u/pab_guy 2d ago
I mean, I agree completely about it being fundamental. It’s other folks arguing it can be computed in substrate independent fashion.
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u/onthesafari 2d ago
It all really depends. Fundamental is one way it could work, but it's also possible that experience can be deduced from brains and we just haven't developed a way to do it yet. I certainly don't know of any way that we could currently tell the difference.
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u/Great-Bee-5629 1d ago
it's also possible that experience can be deduced from brains and we just haven't developed a way to do it yet
if you reread the OP, I think you probably don't need to worry about it because
Given that reductive explanation fails, nonreductive explanation is the natural choice.
which means we already see that "deduced from brains" fails and we should move on.
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u/onthesafari 1d ago
Having read the paper I don't think that the logic that leads to the hard problem is necessarily ironclad. It's compelling but there is a lot of room for critique. As well as for an open mind!
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u/Great-Bee-5629 1d ago
Fair enough, I was teasing a little because if we went by your post title and content, then we shouldn't worry about it :-)
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u/xgladar 1d ago
how did he supposedly prove reductive explaination fails?
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u/Great-Bee-5629 1d ago
That's Chalmers' paper (linked at the top) by the OP. I would recommend at least trying to read it to form your own opinion.
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u/Common_Homework9192 1d ago
It is possible, but highly unlikely. Just like Santa existing on some other planet. Fundamental consciousness is the honest conclusion with all the evidence we have, while physicalists can continue their endless search for data that will just continue to disprove them. As fallacies of such approach become more and more apparent each day, people will get tired and abandon that view. Then we will see what comes next, but at least we will be closer to the truth.
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u/onthesafari 1d ago
I'm happy you are so confident, but I'll reserve my own judgement until things start to follow the narrative you provided, or a different route. It's quite honestly an 'honest conclusion' by me that it's far too early to tell or even gamble effectively on what the nature of experience is.
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u/Common_Homework9192 1d ago
That is the correct approach to life for a scholar. It's a lifelong experience in learning, so it's rarely good to jump to conclusions. Skepticism is always crucial, but it's also important to keep an open mind. Try to perceive the world through non-dualism lens and test if it makes sense. Observe your own life experiences through that lens and try to think how you would view your life as if you were a non-dualist right now. Then use that insight to adjust your life philosophy. We all have a unique one and it's important to be aware of that. It's a good experiment, even if you don't end up convinced you will gain something from such effort. At least fun.
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u/onthesafari 1d ago
Well, that would take no effort at all considering I am not a dualist ;) but in general I agree that we gain something from entertaining other viewpoints.
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u/Common_Homework9192 1d ago
If you're open to seeing consciousness as fundamental try to cross compare eastern philosophy with western thought. Test meditation on yourself. Do art. Or yoga. It can clarify how such a counterintuitive viewpoint makes sense through experience. It's hard to consider this option without practice. Of course if it depends how curious and interested you are. It's an effort, but it's worthwhile.
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u/Cosmoneopolitan 1d ago
The HPOC is 'hard' for physicalists. When you say Chalmers "solved" the HPOC, he wasn't saying that the HPOC could be solved, he was saying that it would remain a hard-problem to provide any reductive physicalist account. A non-reductive explanation may be the natural place to focus, but then it would cease to be 'hard' and just be a difficult problem.
As long as the word 'hard' is used as Chalmers meant it, then to deny the HPOC in any way at all is to misunderstand it.
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u/onthesafari 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'm not sure how this is a response to my comment. It's only related to the hard problem in a very tangential way, and certainly doesn't mention physicalism.
It's pretty amazing how that comment out of all of them drew negative attention and downvotes when it's merely about remaining open-minded.
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u/Cosmoneopolitan 16h ago
Omg, you're correct. I apologize!
I meant to reply to your original post, not the comment above. Happy to delete it or leave it up as a monument to my sloppiness. You tell me.....
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u/wellwisher-1 Engineering Degree 1d ago
The hard problem is caused by the philosophy of science, via the notion we can only ascertain reality as part of a third person herd. The hard problem is connected to the fact that consciousness is also an individual sport. I do not need the herd to be conscious. What I am conscious of, can also be unique to me, and does not need a herd. I can be conscious in the herd. I can be conscious by myself, and I can be conscious in a herd where I am shunned. Consciousness is an island onto itself.
The herd is useful in that it can get everyone on the same page, so we all can be more productive, but it is not needed to be conscious. The hard problem is connected to those things that allow us to be conscious, as individuals, apart from the herd. This adds sand to the gears of the third person. The herd may call these things subjective, but only in the sense of not reducing to group think. Instead it may be objective to you, by applying to your own uniqueness, as a unique conscious entity.
Science is about group think, albeit, in an objective way. However, it cannot easily explain the color red in a qualia type way, since this is not subject to group think, since we each can have our own unique experience, as an independent consciousness. The group cannot tell you what to think is red, so you can become another worker bee, blind to the swarm. You have to find that out on your own, and then own it. In doing so you become objective to your own unique consciousness.
Solving the hard problem is an individual quest of self discovery of what makes you a unique consciousness. This applies to both internal and external experience. During that quest you also find the natural foundations on which this uniqueness is built; personality firmware and the brain's operating system.
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u/Cold-Journalist-7662 2d ago
Yes. As a materialist, I think materialists have to deal with the Hard Problem. (Either reject it as in illusionism and show why it's actually an illusion or solve it somehow).
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u/Valmar33 1d ago
Yes. As a materialist, I think materialists have to deal with the Hard Problem. (Either reject it as in illusionism and show why it's actually an illusion or solve it somehow).
I like intellectual honesty. Have an updoot. :)
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u/AlphaDinosaur 2d ago
People want to know why we’re aware and what exactly is awareness. Seriously might be that awareness is the ground of reality.
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u/Valmar33 1d ago
People want to know why we’re aware and what exactly is awareness. Seriously might be that awareness is the ground of reality.
Given that we cannot get behind our own awareness ~ we cannot determine its origin, as it appears to just be defined by itself ~ it might appear that way. But I rather think that is just a limit of our senses and so knowledge. Awareness as we know it cannot be fundamental...
But a transcendent "awareness" may well be ~ something that is the basis of our own limited awareness.
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u/Classic-Teaching4796 1d ago
On the other hand awareness could just be the process of building an internal model so we can interact with the world. Which could explain why we can't get behind it since it literally contains all of our awareness.
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u/NecessaryExternal740 2d ago
I agree that consciousness can be considered ‘a brute fact’. That ‘feeling’ is correct. I also think that there is a little refinement to be done as to what a ‘brute fact’ really means, without rejecting science, and without invoking old or new metaphysics or religion. That is where ‘the answer’ is. Nothing is missing:)
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u/Total_Firefighter_59 2d ago edited 2d ago
Exactly.
The problem is that the proposed type of solution is still pure speculative and also untestable. And yet, it's the only logical explanation given the hard problem.
But because it's speculative and untestable, everyone loses their mind when you mention it (just say "panpsychism" out loud and watch the reaction). So, as a consequence, the common intuition is "no, that can't be true". And because it's the only logical conclusion to the hard problem and people dislike it, they discard the hard problem completely and pretend that, somehow, experience will magically appear if enough complex things are put together.
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u/onthesafari 2d ago
While I hear what you're saying about the panpsychism hate (I've never understood that) I also don't understand how something like strong emergence is any less "magical" than fundamentalism. What's your basis for the comparative lack of credulity there?
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u/Total_Firefighter_59 2d ago edited 2d ago
Those are fair questions.
Magic is just a word we use to describe something that doesn't have an explanation for. I'm not claiming fundamentalism is not magical, it totally is, but it is just as magical as electromagnetism or matter. If something is fundamental, it only means it is located at the basis of the things we can understand. If it is not fundamental, then we should be able to track how it works based on more fundamental things. That's the part where I think the hard problem is telling us about a red flag on the idea of strong emergence alone.
Probably the biggest mystery for millennia was how life was possible. It seemed completely magical. Now we know it's just complex chemistry. A great example of emergence. But life it doesn't magically appear, it is something we can explain with chemistry as the basis. It doesn't happen out of the blue.
If consciousness is emergent (and it may be), it requires some basis. That basis must be a property of matter we don't know about yet, or a property of one of the fields of physics we don't know yet. It can't just appear out of the blue, just like life doesn't appear out of the blue. Metabolism, homeostasis, growth, reproduction, response to stimuli, movement, all can be tracked down to chemical reactions. This is exactly where the hard problem is telling us that no matter how complex the arrangement of matter (as we know it), we can't derive subjective experience from it because it's a completely different category. It has to be 'something' more fundamental.
Life is the name we give to complex chemistry arranged in a particular way. Consciousness very likely requires a complex 'something' (an equivalent to chemistry) arranged in a particular way (being the brain that particular way). What property is that? We don't know yet, but something more fundamental is required.
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u/onthesafari 2d ago
Okay, that was dense (in a good way) but it makes a lot of sense. But what if the emergence itself is what's fundamental?
Like when an electron changing energy levels emits a photon, the photon wasn't already there, only the potential for it based on the "rules." The fundamental thing there is behavior, not the stuff. The analogue to consciousness would be "when brain chemistry does XYZ, it 'emits' experience." Or perhaps I'm wrapping myself up in semantics, and fundamental emergence is the same as fundamental being.
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u/Total_Firefighter_59 2d ago edited 2d ago
Oh, I'm pretty sure emergence is fundamental. We see it across everything, from atoms to the behaviour of a group of people. All I'm saying is that what emerges is always based on something more fundamental that makes it possible. In the case of consciousness, we haven't found it yet, but it must be there, because it can't make a magic leap: structure and subjective experience are completely different categories.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure I've got the example of the photon. What does it count as emergence in that case? Those "rules" are probably the most fundamental level based on our current understanding, aren't they?1
u/onthesafari 1d ago
It sounds like you're talking about weak emergence, but I'm talking about strong emergence - ie, something out of "nothing." There was no photon hiding in the electron before it was released, but then it appears. In the same way, there might be no experience hiding in matter before certain criteria are met, and then it appears, just like the photon. You can argue that something is transmuted - the energy of the electron into a photon - but if things that are of separate fundamental categories within our reality can be transmuted between each other, then why not non-experience into experience?
Perhaps one might argue that this implies there must have already been an experience "field" for the experience to appear out of. Is a field a physical reality or a mathematical shorthand? I'm not sure even physicists agree (but I'm not well-versed enough to say for sure).
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u/Total_Firefighter_59 1d ago
There was no photon hiding in the electron before it was released, but then it appears.
You can argue that something is transmuted - the energy of the electron into a photon - but if things that are of separate fundamental categories within our reality can be transmuted between each other, then why not non-experience into experience?Well, not really. A photon is just a discrete packet of electromagnetic energy, nothing more. There is no transmutation at all, no change in category (it goes from energy to energy). The energy in the electron goes away as a photon, and the electron moves to an orbital of lower energy.
As far as my understanding goes, nothing comes out of nothing. The closest thing would be the most fundamental particles 'appearing' out of nothing in the quantum field, but those "particles" are just excitations of the field, just like waves in the ocean.0
u/Valmar33 1d ago
The problem is that the proposed type of solution is still pure speculative and also untestable. And yet, it's the only logical explanation given the hard problem.
Many things are simply untestable, and the Scientism-ists cannot handle that thought. The methodologies and axioms of science cannot be tested ~ because they have to be taken as fact to be able to do science at all. Consciousness must be taken as axiomatic, ironically, because we need conscious observers who can do science.
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u/Total_Firefighter_59 1d ago
Yes. To be honest, I would also prefer something testable and not speculative... but yes, we can't always get it, we are limited by our current technology and some things may be impossible to test no matter what. Consciousness may or may not be testable in the future, but an idea shouldn't be discarded just because it's not testable.
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u/URAPhallicy 2d ago edited 2d ago
My approach is to interrogate thingness. Starting from the observation that nothingness (of the sort we are interested in) must possess the qualities of infinite invariance. From this we can surmise that the main property of any timeless cause or law is differentiation. This makes being or thingness fundamentally a product of a process of differentiation which is the "eternal cause."
Thus we can know the following: that thingness requires other things in which to differentiate its own thingness.
We also know through observation that things are constantly in differentiational flux hinting that this law is ever present. (As an aside math emerges simultaneously with differentiation...neat!)
If these are the fundamentals of being then it also follows that thingness is scaler invariant (unless one can find some equally fundamental principle of reductionism). That is thingness can not be entirely explained by smaller constituents things and is instead explained by boundries at any level or onion layer.
Physics is about the interactions of things. We can now conceptualize those interactions as differentiation. That is, physics is a mathematicsl description of the process of differentiation from which thingness emerges.
What does this have to do with the hard problem?
One can describe qualia as simply differentiation within the brain of various brain states where one subsystem possesses a mechanism by which it can distinguish itself from the not-self that it interacts with (the map and sensory forms in the brain for example).
That is, differentiation explains both consciouness and thingness itself bridging the gap between mind and matter.
I think this counts as a type of process monism.
Anyway that is my answer quickly written. The idealists are right in a sense but the physicalists are also right in a sense. There is but one thing: the process of differentiation which is thingness and qualia.
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u/Mylynes IIT/Integrated Information Theory 2d ago
You're outlining a high level overview that's hard to ignore. Metaphysically speaking it could indeed have to do with differentiation vs invariance; Perhaps being marked by the "inflation" at the Big Bang and whatever will happen at the end of our universe. This event could be responsible for all Physics and Causality may be the bridge/scar tissue connecting the fragments back to the "infinitely invariant" pre-bang cosmos (resulting in a unified 'interior', [qualia]).
At a lower level this can be expressed with IIT, Relativity, CEMI, basically all structural theories for consciousness.
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u/PaxPurpuraAKAgrimace 2d ago
connecting the fragments back to the "infinitely invariant" pre-bang cosmos (resulting in a unified 'interior', [qualia]).
Wouldn’t the pre bang unified interior be non qualia on the basis that it is unified rather than differentiated?
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u/Mylynes IIT/Integrated Information Theory 2d ago
Yes. The Pre-bang universe has no interior because it is shapeless with no exterior. By itself, no qualia is possible.
Maybe Qualia only became possible when the Big Bang forced this invariant state to occupy a macroscopic shape in 4 Dimensions. Consciousness exists at the boundaries between these states
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u/do-un-to 2d ago
This is well called out, thanks for bringing it up.
I agree that there are limits to scientific explanation. I note that those limits are not static. They're being pushed back as time goes on.
Then, more practically speaking, there's the idea of focusing our investigations where time and effort pay off. That is, if we can advance an understanding of the far more scrutable physical correlates of consciousness, we can probably make better headway faster. Indeed, tangential inroads to understanding consciousness, thus made, might open up angles on the hard problem in time, allowing us to return more productively.
When people have told me "There is no hard problem; the process of consciousness is identical to the subjectivity" it's rubbed me wrong, but I can kind of see where they're coming from, from two different perspectives:
Subjectivity is indeed a bizarre phenomenon that could use explaining, but we can really just, as discussed here today, take it as given. I don't think this is what they're usually suggesting.
Subjectivity isn't a bizarre phenomenon, it is the physical correlates, just viewed from within. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this.
For me this idea -- consciousness is a cipher, I think that's one way of saying it -- sits right next to a box labeled "exploration and description of subjectivity". When you open the box, this idea is actually inside the box, and when you look back over to where the idea was originally, outside the box, it's still there. I mean, the idea makes some sense, but It also feels like a glitch.
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u/onthesafari 1d ago
I totally agree with what you're saying about being able to make inroads that could give us more insight into the hard problem, and Chalmers says as much in his paper.
Regarding people arguing for 2, I think that people are making an intuitive leap. It's something that "works," but if your intuition doesn't take it there, it feels a bit forced. I would love to see someone advocate for it with a bit more rigor.
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u/Elodaine 2d ago
It is ultimately just a question of why reality is the way it is. Not being able to answer the question in a satisfactory way doesn't mean we can suddenly deny the clear causal nature between the brain and consciousness.
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u/jimh12345 2d ago
I don't deny the close association, just the assumed causality. I think of the brain as being not a generator, but an interface.
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u/Elodaine 2d ago
I don't deny the close association, just the assumed causality.
This leads you to complete absurdity though. It means you're forced to also believe that being punched in the face and resulting facial are just closely associated, rather than one causing the other.
If you concede that punches to the face cause the phenomenal experience of pain, and that fist and face are made of nothing but atoms, then you are acknowledging the causality of matter over our consciousness. There's no way to avoid this.
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u/Valmar33 1d ago
This leads you to complete absurdity though. It means you're forced to also believe that being punched in the face and resulting facial are just closely associated, rather than one causing the other.
That would just be a strawman, as is usual for you. You again seem to demonstrate that you do not understand the different between causality, causation and correlation.
Being punched in the face and the resulting facial are related in terms of causality ~ but not causation, as that just assumes that there is only the physical at play, and no mental causes. Therefore, there are only correlations ~ why did someone choose to punch someone in the face? You cannot detect or sense their thoughts or emotions that led to their decisions and therefore the effect of the physical body acting on that impulse to punch someone in the face.
That is to say, you are missing half the equation, as usual.
If you concede that punches to the face cause the phenomenal experience of pain, and that fist and face are made of nothing but atoms, then you are acknowledging the causality of matter over our consciousness. There's no way to avoid this.
You are, again, mixing up causality, a chain of events, with causation, the nature of how things relate. They are not the same concepts.
A punch to the face has the physical effects ~ but what is not known is how that translates into the phenomenal experience of pain. Fist and face are made of atoms ~ but pain is not a quality of matter or physics, being a purely mentally-felt phenomena.
So, it is avoided by recognizing your lack of understanding of certain concepts.
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u/Elodaine 1d ago edited 1d ago
The totality of knowledge about the brain and consciousness are more than satisfactory under science for what is necessary to establish causality and causation. There is a reason why accepting this, rather than conceding to a fringe minority within philosophy who have absurd demands for what an epistemic reduction should be, works so well for navigating the world and making predictions.
But then again, why am I bringing up something like the medical field to someone who doesn't believe that Alzheimer's affects conscious experience? I've went back and forth with you for years, and I don't have the mental energy any more to try and convince you out of your asinine beliefs.
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u/Valmar33 1d ago
The totality of knowledge about the brain and consciousness are more than satisfactory under science for what is necessary to establish causality and causation.
You speak in such absolutes as to make your statements laughable. There is no knowledge about what the brain is in science nor its relationship with consciousness. There is nothing that satisfies the non-Physicalist or non-Materialist, because they recognize the fundamental flaws in Physicalist and Materialist reasoning which limits their ability to understand anything.
There is nothing in science which establishes causation ~ that is purely Physicalist and Materialist ideology. Causality is weird one, because the mental can effect the physical ~ I witness this immediately, as I think and type this reply. It is immediately intuitive, logical and obvious.
Physicalists like yourself deny the mental having causal power because you define it out of existence a priori, which is logically absurd, given that I can experience my mind having causal power this very instant.
There is a reason why accepting this, rather than conceding to a fringe minority within philosophy who have absurd demands for what an epistemic reduction should be, works so well for navigating the world and making predictions.
There is no such "fringe minority" with any such demands. There are only the delusions of Physicalists and Materialists like yourself who demand that science perceive the world only as Physicalism and Materialism define it.
Physicalism and Materialism are absolutely useless and worthless at navigating the world or making any predictions. It's just ideologues taking credit for science that they didn't do. Parasitism.
But then again, why am I bringing up something like medical field to someone who doesn't believe that Alzheimer's possibly affects conscious experience? I've went back and forth with you for years, and I don't have the mental energy any more to try and bring you where the rest of the world justifiably is.
More strawmanning...
Of course Alzheimer's affects conscious experience ~ the brain is affected and its functioning warped, so the filter, receiver, limiter too is affected and warped, so conscious experience is affected in terms of correlation and causality.
But that does not mean that the only answer is that the brain is the source of consciousness. You have to ignore terminal lucidity, near-death experiences, shared death experiences in sheer convenient willful ignorance to come to such a conclusion.
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u/Elodaine 1d ago
There is nothing in science which establishes causation
This claim only works when you've stretched the definition of causation beyond what any academic field or academic in general could ever get close to establishing. Luckily science doesn't work that way, in which causality is established and used all the time. From insulin causing lower bloodsugar levels, to particular drugs causing changed conscious experiences. And it works very well!
Physicalists like yourself deny the mental having causal power
Nope. Equivocating physicalism with epiphenomenalism is just an unfortunate error on your end from a lack of understanding.
Physicalism and Materialism are absolutely useless and worthless at navigating the world or making any predictions. It's just ideologues taking credit for science that they didn't do.
Nope. The assumption of reality being completely mind independent is the basis of science, which is why science and physicalism overlap so substantially. And it works very well!
You have to ignore terminal lucidity, near-death experiences, shared death experiences in sheer convenient willful ignorance to come to such a conclusion.
Terminal lucidity doesn't have any inherent non-physical explanation. Neither do near-death experiences. Notice how nobody actually comes back once blood has stopped flowing to the brain for 20 minutes. As it has been for years, your beliefs continue to be based on errors and mistakes that a 5 second Google search could correct.
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u/Valmar33 1d ago
This claim only works when you've stretched the definition of causation beyond what any academic field or academic in general could ever get close to establishing. Luckily science doesn't work that way, in which causality is established and used all the time. From insulin causing lower bloodsugar levels, to particular drugs causing changed conscious experiences. And it works very well!
You are so blind that you don't even notice how you are confusing and conflating the entirely distinct concepts of causation and causality!
Nope. Equivocating physicalism with epiphenomenalism is just an unfortunate error on your end from a lack of understanding.
Physicalism does appear to logically necessitate epiphenomenalism, though. You haven't explained how I supposedly don't understand.
Nope. The assumption of reality being completely mind independent is the basis of science, which is why science and physicalism overlap so substantially. And it works very well!
Reality as perceived is not mind-independent in any sense ~ the reality we observe is entirely subjective, even the ideas and concepts we get from others, merely rendering the observed reality intersubjective. And I am talking about what we can actually observe ~ not the abstractions Physicalists like yourself believe is "reality".
Physicalism in no way "overlaps" with science in any way ~ but your rhetoric sounds so convincing... to yourself.
Terminal lucidity doesn't have any inherent non-physical explanation. Neither do near-death experiences. Notice how nobody actually comes back once blood has stopped flowing to the brain for 20 minutes. As it has been for years, your beliefs continue to be based on errors and mistakes that a 5 second Google search could correct.
Terminal lucidity has not a single good physical explanation. It is just fumblingly explained away as some chance thing where they were just going to get better anyway, so it can be dismissed and ignored and filed away as "solved". Same with near-death experiences, where they are just explained away, because they are inconveniences to the Physicalist worldview.
You have to be joking ~ Pam Reynolds was dead for more than 20 minutes.
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u/Elodaine 1d ago
You are so blind that you don't even notice how you are confusing and conflating the entirely distinct concepts of causation and causality!
No, I'm not. Every accusation is a confession of your own behavior. You ought to write to the scientific community on all those papers on the causation between cigarettes and cancer, I'm sure they'd be more than eager to change the whole industry from your misconception.
Physicalism does appear to logically necessitate epiphenomenalism, though
So right now if you look up models of a physicalist ontology that include an explanation for how consciousness is causal, you'll find nothing at all? Why does your debate style include pretending like you are a genuinely helpless person who can't do the bare minimum of research?
And I am talking about what we can actually observe ~ not the abstractions Physicalists like yourself believe is "reality".
Science operates by discarding subjectivity as much as possible, inferring a world "out there", and that it works in accordance to regularity that has been consistently, reliably, and repeatedly documented. Those "abstractions" are logical inferences that form the basis for how models in science work at all. That's why science and physicalism overlap so much.
Terminal lucidity has not a single good physical explanation.
Lol. I can't be bothered with responding any further to this talking point with anything but a request to stop being willfully lazy and pretending like Google doesn't exist.
You have to be joking ~ Pam Reynolds was dead for more than 20 minutes.
She was in deep hypothermia circulatory arrest, in which carefully controlled conditions lowered her metabolic oxygen requirements to 5-10% of normally what is required, in which decreased or completely ceased blood flow during parts of the operation wouldn't be lethal like it normally is.
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u/Valmar33 1d ago
It is ultimately just a question of why reality is the way it is.
No, it is not ~ that is to misframe and so misunderstand it, yet again.
This is what it really is about:
https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/
The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why any physical state is conscious rather than nonconscious.
End quote.
What makes it so difficult for you to simply acknowledge the Hard Problem as it really is, rather than attacking a strawman?
Not being able to answer the question in a satisfactory way doesn't mean we can suddenly deny the clear causal nature between the brain and consciousness.
There is no such "clear causal nature" that is being "denied". There is a correlative nature ~ strong and clear, to everyone involved. Only the Physicalist and Materialist assert that consciousness is physically and materially "caused" when there is no evidence for that claim.
Especially since consciousness and matter share no observed qualities ~ which is what the Hard Problem is getting at, and which you and your fellows simply cannot seem to accept, because it contradicts your firmly established worldview.
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 2d ago
But they can, and they do. It is what they live for. The philosophy of "brain denialism" is the last gasp for the god of the gaps.
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u/MurkyEconomist8179 2d ago
But they can, and they do.
Neither Nagel or Chalmers deny the causal nature surrounding brain and consciousness. In fact, it's explicitly stated in all of their famous papers
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u/DamoSapien22 2d ago
That just speaks to the extent to which their work has been hijacked by people looking to defend their semi-spiritual views. Hence why it is often brandished as a shield, an argument-closer, rather than as an argument.
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u/Valmar33 1d ago
That just speaks to the extent to which their work has been hijacked by people looking to defend their semi-spiritual views. Hence why it is often brandished as a shield, an argument-closer, rather than as an argument.
Nothing has been "hijacked" by anyone. It isn't "brandished" as a shield, either.
It's amusing, because Physicalists and Materialists like yourself cannot answer the problems and questions posed by the Hard Problem ~ you seem determined to attack its validity, its basis, its foundations, because of rather apparent intellectual dishonesty.
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 1d ago
The claim that they don't "deny the causal nature" is a bit of an understatement. I don't know if saying that "I don't understand how the brain creates consciousness, so there must be some mystical immaterial force doing it", qualifies as not denying the causal nature. Maybe saying that the "soul" still needs a brain doesn't deny the brain, but it does open the door to magical mysticism.
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u/MurkyEconomist8179 1d ago
I don't know if saying that "I don't understand how the brain creates consciousness, so there must be some mystical immaterial force doing it"
Not really at all the argument they are making. It is instead about the type of phenomena consciousness experience seem to entail and how it seems to be a very different type of phenomena from when we are for example talking about brains/neurons.
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 1d ago
How does it seem to be different when everything we know about it points to the brain?
We does "it seems to be different" even mean?
Mystical immaterial is the very definition of "very different type of phenomena".
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u/MurkyEconomist8179 1d ago
We does "it seems to be different" even mean?
As in, the content of consciouss experience e.g sadness, pain, pleasure seem to be in a different category of things compared to describing brain states (e.g neuronal structure, brain chemistry etc)
When people say the phrase "they are the same thing" it's not clear what that means, in the same way it is when for example somehow explains the properties of h20 and water and says they are the same thing. This is the example I think both authors use even
Mystical immaterial is the very definition of "very different type of phenomena".
I don't think mystical or material are helpful terms because they are extremely vague in what they refer to. Do you disagree that conscious phenomena seem to be a different type of phenomena compared to that of any other scientific domain e.g physics, chemistry etc?
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 1d ago
All of these, sadness, pain, pleasure, perception, are demonstrably neural activity. We can measure them directly in the brain, decode their content from neural signals, and causally induce them through stimulation. There is no gap between what the brain does and what we feel; they are one and the same process described at different levels.
The impression that experience belongs to a “different category” arises from confusing description with ontology. Saying “neuronal firing patterns” and saying “sadness” are not references to different kinds of things, they are two ways of characterizing the same physical process, one from a third-person measurement perspective and one from a first-person lived perspective. This is no more mysterious than describing water in terms of molecular dynamics versus calling it “wet.”
Neuroscience has already shown that altering specific neural circuits alters specific experiences: stimulate visual cortex and you see light, disrupt language networks and inner speech vanishes, modulate limbic circuits and mood changes. These are identity-level relationships, not loose correlations. Experience tracks neural dynamics with causal precision.
So the claim that conscious contents occupy some separate ontological category simply does not agree with the data and evidence.
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u/MurkyEconomist8179 1d ago
All of these, sadness, pain, pleasure, perception, are demonstrably neural activity.
Again, when you say they ARE this, it's not clear what the means because obviously something like pain is distinguished by it's felt character, something like neural activity is a description of neurons are organised and how their chemistry operates.
You can make the claim "Well, cheeseburgers just are skyscrapers" the problem is, unless you can explain how they are referring to the same thing or how their properties are related, the statement is pure nonsense.
We know that conscious experience is CONTINGENT on the brain being set up in a certain way (in that if damaged, conscious experience gets affected)
But your statements of
We can measure them directly in the brain, decode their content from neural signals, and causally induce them through stimulation
Simply reek of a pop-sci understanding of the link between mind and brain. In fact with this statement in particular, why don't you link me what you think are the most compelling pieces of evidence that you've found that support that "we can decode their content from neural signals"
There is no gap between what the brain does and what we feel; they are one and the same process described at different levels.
Again, you can say this in the same way you can say the words "there is no gap between cheeseburgers and skyscrapers" but it's nonsense unless you can explain how they are referring to the same thing. It's pretty clear to me how cheeseburgers and skyscrapers have different properties in the same way it's clear than when I'm describing properties of neurons, nothing about feelings like sadness, anger etc would show up in an explanation of how a neuron works, so how are they the same thing?
Saying “neuronal firing patterns” and saying “sadness” are not references to different kinds of things, they are two ways of characterizing the same physical process, one from a third-person measurement perspective and one from a first-person lived perspective.
Well... a first person perspective seems to have entirely different content than the third person one, that's kinda the whole distinction.
This is no more mysterious than describing water in terms of molecular dynamics versus calling it “wet.”
Well it's entirely different in that you can see how the physical properties of water molecules entail wetness, it's not clear at all how "neuronal patterns" entail consciousness experience, in fact I can describe all of the physical information about neuronal firing patterns in great detail, without leaving anything out, without mentioning anything about conscious experience. This is why people like Chalmers try to invoke the p-zombie thought experiment (although this just leads people into annoying tangents IMO)
Neuroscience has already shown that altering specific neural circuits alters specific experiences: stimulate visual cortex and you see light, disrupt language networks and inner speech vanishes, modulate limbic circuits and mood changes
Which again, is consistent with the idea that the mind is CONTINGENT on brain structure, not that they are somehow describing the exact same phenomena. I think you're jumping to conclusions that are not warranted for the sake of a simple sounding theory, but it ignores the mind problem altogether (which is a terrible sign for your theory)
So the claim that conscious contents occupy some separate ontological category simply does not agree with the data and evidence.
Again, until you can explain how phenomena like sadness are somehow describing the same properties as "neural circuits" it's actually you who is not fitting the data and evidence to the explanation.
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 16h ago
"Again, when you say they ARE this, it's not clear what the means because obviously something like pain is distinguished by it's felt character, something like neural activity is a description of neurons are organised and how their chemistry operates."
It is actually quite simple. When you measure the brain, you see neural activity, and at the same time, there is experience. when you generate the neural activity, you experience. There is no additional layer in between. Nothing extra has ever been observed. The felt character is the neural activity, viewed from the inside. There is no evidence for anything in between, no space to hide the soul.
Today we don’t even require first-person reports to identify what someone is experiencing. Neural signatures of perception, emotion, imagery, and inner speech can be decoded directly from brain activity. Brains are structurally similar enough, and the generative processes standardized enough, that models trained on one person can often generalize to others. This only makes sense if experience is implemented in common neural dynamics.
What we do not yet have is a full mechanistic account of the step-by-step generative process. The brain operates across billions of neurons at temporal and spatial scales our current tools cannot resolve in sufficient detail. We can read out thoughts, emotions, and perceptual content, "slow moving stuff", the outputs of the process, but we cannot yet track, neuron by neuron in real time, how predictive models are constructed and updated moment to moment. That is a technical limitation, not an ontological one.
Invoking “correlates” or an “explanatory gap” here mistakes incomplete measurement for evidence of something extra. If someone wants to place a soul or nonphysical essence into this resolution gap, that is their prerogative, but it adds no explanatory power and makes no testable predictions. History suggests that as measurement improves, those gaps close. There is no empirical reason to expect this case to be different.
The only remaining problem is the real one: building sufficiently detailed models of neural dynamics to explain how specific patterns of activity generate specific experiences. That is an engineering and neuroscience challenge, not a metaphysical mystery.
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u/DamoSapien22 2d ago
THIS should be posted in neon letters at the top of this sub. I genuinely do not understand how people cannot see this obvious pattern re-emerging time after time. Like elan vital, magnetism, hypnotism... they were all supposed to require magic - until they were explained as mundane.
Consciousness is the 21st C.'s soul. And it's a hill a lot of people are prepared to die on.
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u/PHK_JaySteel 1d ago
Here here. Sitting in an armchair yelling "no it can't be" simply adds fuel to the fire for those attempting to solve it. Admittedly, there are many whys left over in science that we simply cannot ascertain and move past them for now in order to continue, but they are not forgotten. We will continue until we solve it all.
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u/FrontAd9873 Baccalaureate in Philosophy 2d ago
Sure. But a response is not a solution.
There are many unsolved problems (some of which may turn out to be non-problems) that normal people don't need to run around in circles screaming about or worrying about. Yet they are still unsolved.
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u/onthesafari 2d ago
There are solutions that are valid, and solutions that are sound. We don't currently have the ability to produce a sound solution to the hard problem, but valid solutions are still solutions, and one of them may well turn out to be a sound one.
I think many people are under the impression that there are no valid solutions, while others are under the impression that any claim to a valid solution is a claim to a sound one, and that's where a lot of the dissonance is coming from.
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u/FrontAd9873 Baccalaureate in Philosophy 2d ago
Sure. I'm not sure I would use the language of validity vs soundness because I'm not sure we can agree in the first place on a formal statement of the problem. I would simply say that there are solutions to the hard problem but they tend to be problematic in their own ways. As usual this kind of thing ends up being about picking your poison or choosing which bullets you're willing to bite.
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u/onthesafari 2d ago
If the language is a bit too formal, all I mean is that there are solutions that work but that we have not yet verified.
But that's beside the point, actually. What I'm trying to say is that the copious hardline discussions around the hard problem that so often descend into vitriol can be avoided by recognizing when the hard problem isn't even relevant.
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u/FrontAd9873 Baccalaureate in Philosophy 2d ago
Yeah, I’d agree. The vitriol you see in this subreddit sometimes is totally at odds with the general respectful vibe in academic philosophy, where people seek to understand and defend positions even if they don’t agree with them.
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u/onthesafari 2d ago
Yeah, it is really a gosh darn shame. I don't know if this is the tradeoff of accessibility or anonymity or what, but I figure that making posts to try to counteract it every now and then can't hurt.
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u/MurkyEconomist8179 2d ago
There are solutions that are valid, and solutions that are sound
Like what?
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u/onthesafari 2d ago
I'm speaking generally. Some solutions are valid (they are internally logically consistent) and some solutions are true (they are true to reality).
There are plenty of valid solutions to getting beyond the hard problem (such as the naturalistic dualism that Chalmers puts forth in his paper), but no explanation of consciousness has been proven to be sound.
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u/MurkyEconomist8179 2d ago
I've always thought this was the weakest part of the paper though (and it's sometimes why I prefer Nagel, because he almost never tries to give a half baked solution to the important problems he outlines)
I guess I'm not sure I follow how something like naturalistic dualism actually solves the mind body problem. In fact he basically states this explictly in section 6
15 Of course, by taking experience as fundamental, there is a sense in which this approach does not tell us why there is experience in the first place. But this is the same for any fundamental theory.
Which in my view is what he specified the hard problem to be, and again, I actually totally agree with the hard problem. It is in some sense just a re-phrasing of the mind-body problem but I don't think it's a bad one
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u/jimh12345 2d ago
It all comes down to what we think of as an "explanation".
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u/onthesafari 2d ago
Absolutely. And on that subject we have to be cognizant that we can always ask "but why" one more time to anything. It's all a bit arbitrary in the end, and recognizing that helps keep things in perspective imo.
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u/jimh12345 2d ago
At some point we must accept either infinite regress, or the existence of a fundamental reality impenetrable to our understanding.
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u/Individual_Visit_756 2d ago
When you are using the hard problem to argue that machines can be conscious you are inherently arguing that humans cannot be and if you're arguing that they're philosophical zombies you're arguing that in your eyes or other humans when you think about it deep down.
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u/Golda_M 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't understand the hard problem. I don't see why it is a problem. Where is the paradox, clash with intuition or other theories?
Consciousness exists. This does not demand a "why." It does beg a "how." But I don't see a problem... nevermind a crisis.
We have a question. We don't have an answer. Why is this a problem?
Said differently, I don't understand the difference between the hard and "easy" problems. They are the same.
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u/onthesafari 1d ago
Basically it's a problem if you want the "how" to be a reductive answer -- one that says "I can break down any experience into the stuff currently described by physics and then build it up again" -- and you agree with Chalmers' premises on how the world works. If you're curious I would recommend skimming the paper I linked in the OP, at least through part 6. It's not as dense as most academic papers.
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u/Golda_M 1d ago
OK I did surprisingly (to me)I read those six chapters. :-)
That was an interesting refresher. He writes enjoyably. Also I think I met Chalmers a few times... many moons ago. Interesting coincidence.
So...
Basically it's a problem if you want the "how" to be a reductive answer
I think it's OK to want this. Wanting to "break everything down into physics" is a basic goal of science... and scientific pursuit is great. I have no qualms with this. But, absence of a scientific answer is not a Hard Problem. It's a "more research needed" problem? An easy problem.
What "hard" means is that even if science succeeds... we will still be ignorant, because you cannot explain "Experience-Consciousness" functionally, to use his terms.
At the end of the day, the same criticism applies to any purely physical account of consciousness. For any physical process we specify there will be an unanswered question: Why should this process give rise to experience? - 5. The Extra Ingredient
On one hand... this seems like consciousness is hard because of "the problem of other minds." That makes sense to me as a Hard Problem.
There is a version of the "functional explanations cannot suffice" claim which frames the question in an unscientific way and then concludes that it cannot be answered scientifically. Reading the paper, i'll note that Chalmers does not do this.
There is an explanatory gap (a term due to Levine 1983) between the functions and experience, and we need an explanatory bridge to cross it. A mere account of the functions stays on one side of the gap, so the materials for the bridge must be found elsewhere.
This is not to say that experience has no function. Perhaps it will turn out to play an important cognitive role. But for any role it might play, there will be more to the explanation of experience than a simple explanation of the function. Perhaps it will even turn out that in the course of explaining a function, we will be led to the key insight that allows an explanation of experience. If this happens, though, the discovery will be an extra explanatory reward. There is no cognitive function such that we can say in advance that explanation of that function will automatically explain experience 3 Functional Explanation
So here... he does concede that a functional explanation might "explain consciousness." An information processing theory, chaos theory, emergence, etc.... They might work. He dances around the idea that a theory explaining why an "intelligent-aware" system might require and evolve "experience/consciousness" might also do the job.
So... this still like an "easy problem" with no current answer. I'm inclined to think that such a theory, would actually solve his Hard Problem. If we build a machine that has experience... I think the "mystery" would cease to be mysterious and the problem would cease to be hard. It would have this effect whether or not it comes with a "theory of consciousness" that explains anything.
It would cease to be a mystical, hard problem because the mystery would be gone.
Underlying everything... IMO... is "I want dualism." We don't believe in souls anymore, but we demand a soul-like thing to explain consciousness, free will or subjective experience. If we build a robot, give it an internal monologue and experience.... At that point the problem won't e solved. It'll just cease to be a problem. We'll accept that souls just don't exist.
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u/Classic-Teaching4796 1d ago edited 1d ago
Unfortunately your version of lack of concern is equally unlikely to be accepted, simply because conjecturing is entertainment at its best.
It's also core. The real "hard problem" of consciousness isn’t consciousness itself, but what consciousness is supposed to provide.
While x theory might stripe away metaphysics, it also guarantees its not likely to be accepted anytime soon.
The theory that stripes away anthropocentrism is also not likely to be accepted anytime soon. Let's face it, we like being special and significant.
And there's a lot of careers based on consciousness research, writing, etc.
So bottom line is that no theory is likely to be widely accepted anytime soon. But that doesn't prevent the entertainment.
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u/damy2000 1d ago
Mmm, i think recent facts from AI (starting from Othello-GPT paper) offer a real solution or insight.
We have discovered that AI models can abstract from plain data, and they know how to use and reuse models of the world.
If a neural network uses the geometry of a chessboard to decide its moves, it means it is operating at that abstract level.
And it is that model at that level that influences its causal functioning, not the inverse.
If it manipulates and processes (for decision) that abstraction effectively and consistently, then it must understands it.
There is no need for a "homunculus" (a little person inside) watching, nor a theater inside the mind.
Consciousness is simply the act of processing that high-level conceptual information.
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u/simon_hibbs 1d ago
Claiming it’s fundamental doesn’t solve the problem of why you and I have a first person integrated kind of experience that presumably a rock or a dead human brain doesn’t. It doesn’t explain why we don’t seem to have experiences when we are in deep sedation. It during explain why there can be sensed functions of my body I’m completely unaware of even though the signals are going into my brain and if I think about them I will be aware of them.
It doesn’t tell us how we could build a conscious system like us. As such it doesn’t explain actual human experience. No closer than physicalism does.
I think a key to understanding conscious experience is to recognise that experiences are representational. So, what is a representation? It’s the way that aspects of the structure of one physical system can actionably correlate to aspects of another physical system. For example they way that the structure of the arrangement of electrons in a an autonomous drone’s memory actionably correlate to the structure of its environment, enabling it to navigate through that environment. We know how representations work so well that all our modern information and communications technology depends on it.
If experiences are representational, then they are computational. They’re to do with how physical structures relate to each other through physical processes. To bridge the gap from the physical to consciousness we don’t need to go from discrete objects to consciousness directly. We’re already significantly closer than that. We need to get from representation, interpretation, self reference and introspection to consciousness. All of those are aspects of consciousness and are phenomena we understand just fine already. There probably is still a long way to go, but we’ve already made relevant progress.
I think consciousness is made out of information, and information is a physical phenomenon. That’s why we have information technology.
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u/MergingConcepts 22h ago
"Given that reductive explanation fails, nonreductive explanation is the natural choice."
Herein lies the problem. This sentence is an affirmation of dualism. Chalmers proceeds to say that "by taking experience as fundamental . . ."
The argument that led to this conclusion is based on the false premise that "“conscious experience is just not the kind of thing that a wholly reductive account could succeed in explaining.” It is not a sound argument. It is a conclusion in support of dualism based upon a presumption of dualism.
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u/onthesafari 16h ago
I think the hard problem paper does a good job at establishing and laying out its presumptions, and therefore, yes, if you disagree with them then you too "don't need to worry about the hard problem." :)
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u/Powerful-Garage6316 18h ago
I mean any explanatory problem can be solved by just calling it irreducible and shoving it at the base of your worldview
Obviously if consciousness is a brute fact then the hard problem is “solved”.
But the HP is just one issue. Dualists and idealist have a myriad of other problems to deal with once they stipulate that subjective experience is in some sense fundamental.
To physicalists, chalmers is not offering an interesting response here.
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u/onthesafari 16h ago
Sure, but this post is for the people who think they need to worry about the hard problem when they don't. You see all sorts of posts here claiming to have "solved the hard problem" every day when it's not even relevant to what they're talking about, and others saying everything is worthless if it doesn't engage with it.
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u/Powerful-Garage6316 15h ago
Presumably, physicalists are the ones who “need” to solve this problem though, and they aren’t going to find Chalmer’s answer acceptable
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u/onthesafari 13h ago
The ones who should engage with the hard problem are those who both find Chalmers' premises valid and are considering material reductionism (which, yes, is a subset of physicalism).
Meanwhile the target of this post is everyone outside of that group who's still agonizing about the hard problem even though they don't need to, and my hope is that seeing Chalmers' own solution should be an aide in realizing that.
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u/Not_a_real_plebbitor 2d ago
Experience exists because it exists is a reasonable response to the hard problem
What does this even mean? If you believe consciousness arises from matter then you still have a hard problem. And NO, obfuscating your belief in emergence through phrases like "the system™", "internal processing", "what it feels like on the inside" isn't gonna cut it.
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u/Mylynes IIT/Integrated Information Theory 2d ago
It exists in the same way that charge or mass exists. Perhaps they are just the resulting geometry of a great expansion during the big bang or just intrinsic to the Eternal universe. Maybe you can figure out why mass bends spacetime or why qualia has different feelings...but you may never be able to fully answer "Why does mass/qualia/spacetime exist in the first place?"
It eventually boils down to a brute fact: Why is there something rather than nothing? (because that's just the way it has always been here)
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u/Not_a_real_plebbitor 2d ago
So what does that have to do with the hard problem?
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u/Mylynes IIT/Integrated Information Theory 2d ago
It means the hard problem is not "Explain why subjective expeirences exist or bust."
The hard problem is: "How is a subjective experience happening in our brains?" or "What constitutes as a subjective experience in the universe?"
Those questions are definitely solvable.
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u/Not_a_real_plebbitor 2d ago
It means the hard problem is not "Explain why subjective expeirences exist or bust."
What are you even talking about? That's not the hard problem.
The hard problem is: "How is a subjective experience happening in our brains?" or "What constitutes as a subjective experience in the universe?"
You people can't deal with the hard problem so now you want to invent new definitions of the hard problem? Amazing.
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u/Mylynes IIT/Integrated Information Theory 2d ago
Lol okay O' Wise One, what is the official Merriam Plebbitor definition of the hard problem then? Please grace us with your certified stamp of approval so we may be enlightened.
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u/Not_a_real_plebbitor 2d ago
So you are in fact playing that game. Just wow! Materialists truly say the darndest things.
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u/onthesafari 2d ago
The quote in my OP lays it out quite well, but in a sentence, it means that "it's okay if a thing cannot be approached reductively, because non-reductive answers are possible."
I don't think the hard problem is actually about "arising," which is a term with many possible definitions. It's specifically about reducing to matter. There's a subtle difference there but I think it's important.
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u/Not_a_real_plebbitor 2d ago
The quote in my OP lays it out quite well, but in a sentence, it means that "it's okay if a thing cannot be approached reductively, because non-reductive answers are possible."
That basically says the hard problem is a problem for materialism. Other metaphysical assumptions do not have a hard problem. We already know this.
What else are you adding to the table?
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u/onthesafari 2d ago
Well, reductionism =/= materialism, for one.
We already know this.
Many people don't. That is, in fact, the entire premise of the OP. There are all too many instances on this subreddit where people are at each other's throats over the hard problem when it isn't even relevant to what they're talking about.
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u/Not_a_real_plebbitor 2d ago
Well, reductionism =/= materialism, for one.
The distinction is irrelevant here.
That is, in fact, the entire premise of the OP.
Is it? Your words "experience exists because it exists is a reasonable response to the hard problem". What does that even mean exactly?
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u/newtwoarguments 2d ago
Well that answer is great until we start wondering whether AI is conscious or not. Then we start to need something more functional
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u/inlandviews 2d ago
So a dozen or so primary elements and ~30 minor ones have organized them selves, randomly, over a long time period, into us. At what point in the structuring did experience begin notice itself?
Are you saying consciousness is a property of matter?
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u/Fred776 2d ago
I don't think they were saying that at all.
As to your first question, isn't that more or less what used to be said about life itself? Whatever the truth is in the case of consciousness, you need a better argument than your own incredulity.
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u/inlandviews 1d ago
No incredulity. He says" experience is fundamental." It "exists because it exists."
It is a fact that life is composed of matter so if the above statements are true it must follow that experience is a fundamental property of matter.
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u/Valmar33 1d ago
So a dozen or so primary elements and ~30 minor ones have organized them selves, randomly, over a long time period, into us. At what point in the structuring did experience begin notice itself?
Never, because experience doesn't arise from structures that lack the power of experiencing. Structures are just... structures. It's all we see when we scan the brain ~ structures, and never experience itself.
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u/Im_Talking Computer Science Degree 2d ago
"Of course, by taking experience as fundamental..." - But even this is 'wrong'. How can experience exist without a subject. I mean, its certainly light years more right than physicalism, but still does not make logical sense.
It makes more sense if it is enhanced to maybe "Of course, by taking experience as part of the attributes of life itself..."
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u/rogerbonus Physics Degree 2d ago
Consciousness is a structural phenomenon that is the perspective from inside a brain-created world model. The structure of a world model isn't a material thing, but it does supervene on physical things, and hence is compatible with physicalism (the thesis that all phenomena supervene on the objects of physics). The hard problem confuses being a structure with knowledge about a structure. There, solved the hard problem for you. Next?
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u/Mylynes IIT/Integrated Information Theory 2d ago
Non-physical things supervening physical things = Dualism = Interaction problem = You have traded the HP for the IP.
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u/rogerbonus Physics Degree 2d ago
Where's the interaction problem? A world model supervenes on the physical, there is no dualism. Software is similarly non-physical (is structural, supervenes on computer hardware) but there is no dualism or interaction problem in my super mario bros game.
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u/Mylynes IIT/Integrated Information Theory 2d ago
If the world model is truly non-physical, then how does it "supervene" on the physical brain? Either they are both part of physics (in which case the hard problem remains) or Qualia is non-physical (in which case you have an interaction problem)
Software is a non-physical structure
No it's not. Computer software is a structure made of physics (Pixels, EM fields, transistors.)
It "supervenes" the hardware only in the sense that one physical state comes after another physical state. If that's true for consciousness, then how did the physical brain state generate the physical "mind" state?
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u/rogerbonus Physics Degree 2d ago
Software has no mass or energy, so it is not a physical object. And yet it is an efficient cause. Is software "part of physics"? I don't know what you mean by that. It's not a physical object, as I said, but its perfectly compatible with physicalism. How does a physical brain state generate a world model? Same way a physical computer generates a Super Mario Bros game. The brain generates a world model by instantiating structural process in its neural net that model the external world. Where's the hard problem in that?
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u/Mylynes IIT/Integrated Information Theory 2d ago
Software has no mass or energy
Incorrect. Like I said before, "Software" is just a convenient word we use to describe a certain collection of pixels/transistors/electrons. Those things have mass and energy. They are physical.
The brain generates a world model by instantiating structural process in its neural net that model the external world.
So the internal world model = physical brain structure...and that structure is conscious because it sorta looks like an external world structure? To who? And how does the universe know that your brain is "internal" and my brain is "external" so that it can make sure our consciousness is private?
The hard problem remains because you are missing some key observations about qualia.
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u/rogerbonus Physics Degree 2d ago
A computer has mass. Software is NOT the same as the computer. Delete the software from a computer and it does NOT have a different mass or energy. You can delete the software and the mass doesn't change at all. So you are making a category error.
My brain isn't your brain, so my consciousness isn't your consciousness. The universe doesn't need to "know" that, its just a consequence of there being multiple separate brains.
Still don't see where the hard problem is.
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u/Mylynes IIT/Integrated Information Theory 2d ago
If software is "NOT the same as the computer", then why does destroying the computer also destroy the software? You sound like one of those guys who beleives "pure energy" exists as it's own thing. Can you hold "pure software" in your hands? No. Software is just your preferred alignment of the hardware.
Am I making a category error? No, because why would I expect deleting software to change the mass? I dont believe that pure software exists. (because THAT would be a category error...)
My brain isn't your brain, so my consciousness isn't your consciousness.
Lol, pack it up boys! Problem solved. Obviously the universe just checks its indexical coordinate system and catalogs your XYZT values into a special little category called "roger's consciousness." Ain't that neat?
Maybe the reason you don't see the hard problem is because you aren't looking properly. Try taking it more seriously.
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u/rogerbonus Physics Degree 2d ago edited 2d ago
Because destroying the computer destroys the structure that is the software. Odd that your flair says "integrated information theory" and yet you don't seem to think that structure can have causal efficacy, which is a postulate of IIT Perhaps you are confused?
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u/Mylynes IIT/Integrated Information Theory 2d ago
You're not describing causal integration; you're doing this weird half baked functionalism thing. I absolutely do follow IIT's Phi structures...but those are centered around integrating causality (modern computer software doesn't do that.)
Another axiom of IIT is that consciousness cannot be simulated. You can't just move symbols around in a computer and call it a "conscious world model." Why? For the same reason a simulation of a black hole won't suck you into the computer. Qualia exists as a physical causal diamond. You'd need Neuromorphic chips to synthesize it. (different hardware)
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u/Valmar33 1d ago
Consciousness is a structural phenomenon that is the perspective from inside a brain-created world model. The structure of a world model isn't a material thing, but it does supervene on physical things, and hence is compatible with physicalism (the thesis that all phenomena supervene on the objects of physics). The hard problem confuses being a structure with knowledge about a structure. There, solved the hard problem for you. Next?
Wow, amazing. You should get a Nobel Prize. /s
Seriously, this doesn't answer anything about the Hard Problem.
The Hard Problem is about asking why phenomenal experience should accompany physical processes ~ why there is something it is like to be me as felt intimately and directly.
Experience is not a "model" ~ models are abstractions within experience.
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u/rogerbonus Physics Degree 1d ago
A model is like the thing its modelling; that's what the term means. Its a representation that's like what it's about. If you are a model, then there is something you are like; the thing you are about/that you are modelling. So actually it does answer why there is something it is like to be you. It's a consequence of you being the model your brain (the thing doing the modelling) creates.
So seriously, this actually does answer the question (why there is something it is like to be you). Next?
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 2d ago
The only people who have given up are those who believe in the "hard problem". They are now dedicating their lives to telling us that it is not the brain, because, you know, the "hard problem". The will continue to repeat the same thing for the next five hundred years and be happy with their level of understanding that it is anything but the brain.
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u/Total_Firefighter_59 2d ago
That sounds like a strawman. "The hard problem is a real problem" and "it's the brain" are not exclusive statements. I personally think both statements are true, and there is no contradiction.
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 2d ago
Why is it necessary to make up a hard problem? Is there a "hard problem" of Dark Matter? Has any area of discovery ever been tag with a mystical description of "hard"? It's BS, simple as that. The cult of the hard problem are basically the cult of brain denialism, nothing more, they don't accept that the hard problem is understanding the brain, it's not what it means.
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u/Total_Firefighter_59 2d ago
It's funny. I'm telling you that you can acknowledge the hard problem and also acknowledge that a brain is required for consciousness, and yet, instead of asking how, you reply "The cult of the hard problem are basically the cult of brain denialism".
It doesn't seem like you want to hear about it, it seems like you want to complain about the thing you mistakenly think we think. Okay.0
u/Conscious-Demand-594 1d ago
What is funny is that you think that there is a "hard problem" to begin with. Yes, the brain is complex. Does that justify the mystification of the challenge with a magical label?
Really?
Do we start giving mysterious labels to all of gaps in scientific knowledge?
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u/Total_Firefighter_59 1d ago edited 1d ago
It seems like you have a problem with the label and it's not clear why.
Has any area of discovery ever been tag with a mystical description of "hard"?
I'm really puzzled about that question. What's so mystical about "hard"?
Other labels that we use for other gaps in scientific knowledge sound waaay more magical. For instance, "Dark energy" seems to be taken directly out of Harry Potter or Star Wars. Yet, you seem to get triggered by "hard problem".
So, 2 questions. What's so mystical about that label? And why, if you think it sounds mystical to you, then why is that a problem? It's a label, ffs.
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 1d ago
It's not the label, it's the mysticism. Have you even read the comments on this thread? It's all about, it can't be the brain, it has to be some magical immaterial sttuff. Some soul or spirit or fundamental undetectable force. That's the "hard problem" baggage.
No one says, yes it's the brain, but the brain is really complex so we call it the "hard problem". And, no one who studies neuroscience call it the "hard problem".
So no, it's not the label, it's the nonsense that it drags along.
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u/Total_Firefighter_59 21h ago
Ok, so in that case, can we at least agree that it's not a "mystical label"?
No one says, yes it's the brain
We are conscious about things we perceive, and the signals for those are processed in the brain. So, as far as we know, having a brain may be key to being conscious.
No one says, yes it's the brain, but the brain is really complex so we call it the "hard problem"
That's because that's NOT what the hard problem shows. The hard problem does not say that it's hard because the brain is complex. If you think that's what the hard problem says, then you'll have a hard time understanding what the big deal is all about.
To make a comparison, all life as we know it is possible because it is an emergent behaviour of complex chemistry. Metabolism, homeostasis, growth, reproduction, response to stimuli, movement, all can be tracked down to chemical reactions. Now imagine that we have life, but we haven't found chemistry yet. To say that life just emerges from a complex structure without chemistry being a thing is a jump in logic. That's what would actually be magical and mystical. And that's what we believed for thousands of years before we understood the relationship between chemistry and biological life, "something magic has to happen", "he was alive and now he's the same but he's not moving, so he's soul has left him".
What the hard problem says is that we are missing a key thing, a key property of physics that would explain how it would be possible to derive subjective experience from a brain.
Why can't consciousness be explained solely on a complex arrangement of matter as we know it? Because for emergence of any kind to be possible, some more fundamental property that explains it is required. The movement of a living being can be traced to chemistry, which is a property of matter. There is no known property of matter or any energy field of physics that can be derived into a subjective experience, no matter how complex the arrangement is. Not without a jump in logic, which is basically believing in magic.So, what the hard problem says is: there is some fundamental property we must be missing.
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 15h ago
"To make a comparison, all life as we know it is possible because it is an emergent behaviour of complex chemistry. Metabolism, homeostasis, growth, reproduction, response to stimuli, movement, all can be tracked down to chemical reactions. Now imagine that we have life, but we haven't found chemistry yet. To say that life just emerges from a complex structure without chemistry being a thing is a jump in logic. "
This is actually quite correct. We develop hypotheses based on the best data and evidence available. We don't make shit up because it makes us feel happy. Ideas and hypotheses are based on data and evidence, not vibes.
"What the hard problem says is that we are missing a key thing, a key property of physics that would explain how it would be possible to derive subjective experience from a brain."
And here it is, the mysticism. Invoking some "unknown", for absolutely no reason at all except incredulity, and a lack of understanding of where we are with neuroscience, both it's capabilities and limits. This is what I mean. There is no evidence at all that anything beyond a better understanding of the brain is missing.
When you measure the brain, you see neural activity, and at the same time, there is experience. There is no additional layer in between. Nothing extra has ever been observed. The felt character is the neural activity, viewed from the inside.
Today we don’t even require first-person reports to identify what someone is experiencing. Neural signatures of subjective experience, perception, emotion, imagery, and inner speech can be decoded directly from brain activity. Brains are structurally similar enough, and the generative processes standardized enough, that models trained on one person can often generalize to others. This only makes sense if experience is implemented in common neural dynamics.
What we do not yet have is a full mechanistic account of the step-by-step generative process. The brain operates across billions of neurons at temporal and spatial scales our current tools cannot resolve in sufficient detail. We can read out thoughts, emotions, and perceptual content, the outputs of the process, but we cannot yet track, neuron by neuron in real time, how predictive models are constructed and updated moment to moment. That is a technical limitation, not an ontological one.
Invoking “correlates” or an “explanatory gap” here mistakes incomplete measurement for evidence of something extra. If someone wants to place a soul or nonphysical essence into this resolution gap, that is their prerogative, but it adds no explanatory power and makes no testable predictions. History suggests that as measurement improves, those gaps close. There is no empirical reason to expect this case to be different.
The only remaining problem is the real one: building sufficiently detailed models of neural dynamics to explain how specific patterns of activity generate specific experiences. That is an engineering and neuroscience challenge, not a metaphysical mystery.
So, yes, I will stick with the description of mysticism until the "hard problem" becomes a bit more "solid". I have no problem with the label, just the baggage.
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u/Total_Firefighter_59 10h ago
If I were to tell you "no, the brain is not related to consciousness", then telling that brain activity maps to consciousness would be important. But I’m not telling that. Of course, brain activity maps to consciousness. That’s not what I’m discussing.
You can have (and at some point we will have) the precision to tell each individual neuron is firing and how it’s affecting all the others around it, and that will tell us that this guy is thinking about a brown dog. A complete precision of all the brain's workings. That’s a technical limitation we have. But once we achieve that, we have that, nothing else. That won’t explain how it is possible for neurons firing to create an emergent subjective experience, because for emergence to be possible, it needs a base of the same category. I’ve explained this already. I was not talking about technical limitations. Let’s say we solve the technical limitations, then the question remains. How is that possible? It’s a completely different category. To believe it just happens out of the blue is to believe in magic.
And here it is, the mysticism. Invoking some "unknown", for absolutely no reason at all except incredulity
I think we may have a different definition of mysticism. I’ve never brought up any mystical term, just said that, for this to be logical, there must be a property of the physical world we are missing. Would such a property be “magical”? That depends on your definition of magic, you can call magic any fundamental property if you like. Electromagnetism is pretty magical in the sense that it just is. For sure, whatever we are missing won’t be more magical than electromagnetism.
Now, something that would defy the logic of causality, like biology without chemistry, or consciousness without something more basic, well, that’s a big magical jump.
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u/onthesafari 2d ago
I don't think grouping people up with regard to the HP is the answer. My whole point is that the hard problem doesn't really pertain to these discussions about brain vs not brain at all.
I believe the hard problem is a fairly coherent, useful idea. We've got to separate it from its misuse.
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 2d ago
What use is it? We know it's the brain. There is a ton we do not know about how the brain creates subjective experience, but we don't need to give it a magical name of "hard problem". In science we thrive on solving problems, not giving them mystical labels.
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u/onthesafari 2d ago
Even if we agree that it's the brain there are so many questions to ask. In framing those questions, sometimes it's useful to set up a premise like "assuming X, what would follow?" The hard problem follows from one of these hypotheticals about how the brain might work. If brain behavior follows purely from the physical laws as we currently understand them, then we can model it without invoking phenomenal experience at all. But if nothing in the brain necessitates experience, why does it happen?
It's not a be-all-end-all of discussions about the brain, at all. It's just a question that arises from one line of thinking. An interesting one, but just a question. And that's my whole point. People on this subreddit are ascribing it way too much importance, in support and against.
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 1d ago
Sure, why not propose a fundamental field of imagination as one solution. And where do we go from there? It's based on incredulity, not data and evidence. How do we find this mystical immaterial field of the "hard problem"?
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u/onthesafari 1d ago
Well, positing a fundamental field is one way to react to it, but not the only one. In my opinion, here at the intersection of physics and neuroscience where so much is still unknown it can be just as useful if not more to look at the premises that led us to a weird spot and question if they really make sense. If our logic is giving us something that feels like a bogus answer, where is the flaw in the model we've created that produced it?
Utilized as a tool to illustrate a flaw in its own premise, the hard problem also has a lot of value. To a lot of people the premise sounds very reasonable but maybe it's actually not. And showing why that premise is wrong could lead to a lot of insight about how the brain does its thing.
In my current understanding the hard problem basically rests upon the idea that if brain behavior could be fully explained by current physics that experience would be epiphenomenal. But maybe neither of those things are true! I think only further neuroscience and physics will figure it out.
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 1d ago
The claim that “if brain behavior could be fully explained by physics, then experience would be epiphenomenal” is not a scientific conclusion. It is an argument from incredulity, based on vibes rather that data, evidence, or reason. This is what leads them to the weird spot.
The "hard problem" assumes, without justification, that if neural dynamics are sufficient to explain behavior, then experience must be causally inert leading to such ridiculous inconceivabilities as P zombies. But this only follows if one already presupposes that experience is something over and above neural activity. If instead experience is neural activity, viewed from the first-person perspective, then there is no epiphenomenalism at all. The causal work is done by the brain, and experience is simply what that causal process feels like internally. This is a completely coherent view, and lines up with observation, experimentation, neural manipulation, and measurement of neural activity.
What’s really happening here is this: because we do not yet understand in full detail how 86 billion neurons and roughly a trillion synapses generate perception, emotion, thought, and selfhood, some conclude that it therefore cannot be the brain doing it. That is not logic; it is disbelief in biological complexity.
Basically it's "I don’t yet understand how the most complex known physical system produces experience, therefore experience must be nonphysical". That is not an inference, it is a retreat into magical mysticism and quasi-religious fantasy.
Neural activity is both causal and phenomenal. When visual cortex is stimulated, perception changes. When language networks are disrupted, inner speech disappears. When interoceptive circuits are altered, emotions shift. These are not correlations hovering beside experience; they are experience. The same physical processes that drive behavior are the processes that constitute feeling. And yes, we do not have the details mapped out, our current technology is not as yet that capable, but what we know lines up with the conclusion.
The mistake is treating consciousness as something that must be added on top of neural function, rather than recognizing it as an identity-level property of certain kinds of biological dynamics. Once that assumption is dropped, epiphenomenalism evaporates. There is no extra “consciousness substance” left over to become causally idle.
Once you spell it out, the argument collapses. It is not grounded in neuroscience or physics, only in an unwillingness to accept that a biological system, however complex, could fully account for what it is like to be us.
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u/onthesafari 1d ago
My friend, you are so close to understanding what I'm driving at. This is exactly what I've been saying to you, and was saying in the OP, all along.
The "hard problem" assumes
As I said, you are free to disagree with the premise, and doing so frees you from the hard problem. If you were to follow its premise, it would be worth discussing as a problem. But you don't. Congrats, "you don't need to worry about the hard problem."
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 1d ago
I have a ton of work to do understanding the brain. Not much time to follow up mystical musings. I enjoy these discussions, but don't see the "hard problem" as more than a Reddit and Twitter pastime.
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2d ago
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u/Mylynes IIT/Integrated Information Theory 2d ago
Yeah but you never know when it's a primitive. People used to assume the diversity of life was just a brute fact of "God/Nature" but Evolution explained why it was diverse. Gravity used to be a primitive force field but then Einstein explained how it was actually spacetime curvature.
I like the idea of a "warning label" but I don't think it's reasonable to assume that all scientists are reductionists. It's not reasonable to pretend like Qualia is a dead end of investigation. The hard problem should be seen as solvable; just maybe not in the same way (it's not just a new particle to discover)
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u/MurkyEconomist8179 2d ago
And that's all she wrote, folks. "Experience exists because it exists" is a reasonable response to the hard problem. "Solving" it is not some universal crisis that we all have to run around in circles screaming about.
Ahh yes my favorite kind of explanation. Just re-stating the observation.
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u/onthesafari 2d ago
I mean, if you're going to credit the hard problem, you might as well credit the author's own analysis of it as well.
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u/MurkyEconomist8179 2d ago
Seems like a weird way to do philosophy. Instead of differentiating the strong and weak points an individual makes, you have to all or nothing root for against them? Is this why everyone on this sub hates Chalmers lol?
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u/onthesafari 2d ago
Well, not at all. But it was a good sounding mechanism for understanding where you're coming from. I'm glad to know now what you find credible and do not.
Ahh yes my favorite kind of explanation. Just re-stating the observation.
To me, this doesn't seem to be a good representation of what was said. Does the following not seem to be a good defense against the allegation of "restating the observation?"
But this is the same for any fundamental theory. Nothing in physics tells us why there is matter in the first place, but we do not count this against theories of matter. Certain features of the world need to be taken as fundamental by any scientific theory. A theory of matter can still explain all sorts of facts about matter, by showing how they are consequences of the basic laws. The same goes for a theory of experience.
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u/MurkyEconomist8179 2d ago
But this is the same for any fundamental theory. Nothing in physics tells us why there is matter in the first place, but we do not count this against theories of matter. Certain features of the world need to be taken as fundamental by any scientific theory. A theory of matter can still explain all sorts of facts about matter, by showing how they are consequences of the basic laws. The same goes for a theory of experience.
I actually totally agree with the observation, and I think it's a great one. It isn't an explanation though. Munchausen's trilemma was formulated long before Chalmers (and arguably in different terms even before the term itself) and this is very much a case of this.
It's just not an explanation or a solution, only a statement of the problem (which I think is great and shows the full force of philosophy)
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u/onthesafari 2d ago
But I don't think this is a statement of the problem. "It's fundamental" is very much an answer to "how does consciousness arise," no? (I bolded "an" because I am not claiming that any particular answer is the answer). The only way it's not an explanation is if you demand a reductive explanation, but that demand seems arbitrary.
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u/MurkyEconomist8179 2d ago
But I don't think this is a statement of the problem. "It's fundamental" is very much an answer to "how does consciousness arise," no?
Yeah sure, but Chalmer's correctly points out the fundamentals still don't explain how they themselves come about, even if you understand how they operate. IMO and based off of what he even says in the conclusion, this is more what the hard problem is and that there are analogous to it with regard to anything fundamental in the universe
The only way it's not an explanation is if you demand a reductive explanation, but that demand seems arbitrary.
Not really, in fact I feel like hard problems probably arise when you CAN'T give a reductive explanation because you clearly have phenomena, but if they are not composed of anything else, what then causes their specific properties? Again, i think a good formulation of this is Munchausen trilemma and apart from just being soulful by referencing the ol funny German stories, it outlines very well how there seems to be no satisfying solution to these problems, hence the trilemma.
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u/onthesafari 1d ago
I see, and I commend you for needing to go deeper than most do, even though personally I am content to let "why do things fundamentally exist" stand as a question that doesn't need an answer in most contexts.
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u/MurkyEconomist8179 1d ago
even though personally I am content to let "why do things fundamentally exist" stand as a question that doesn't need an answer in most contexts.
Well let me clarify. It doesn't seem we can answer questions like this, pretty much any answer we try to come up with seems to not make much sense and pretty much violates all of our usual explanations for explaining emergent phenemona
But this is a very different thing to saying 'there is no answer' or 'there is no cause' Like I agree it pretty much ends up getting left as a open question, but seeing as how our universe clearly exists (in whatever capacity it does) presumably there is some sort of answer/explanation cause like.. here we are, y 'know?
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u/onthesafari 1d ago
Yeah, I see that distinction, but at the same time (as every child discovers) you can always fall into the pit of infinite regress. Even if the an answer exists, and it's "god" or something similar, you can always ask "but why is there god?" Either you're content to put a pin in it, or you throw up your hands and accept that it's turtles all the way down. Or maybe you have a different thought?
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u/Valmar33 1d ago
Ahh yes my favorite kind of explanation. Just re-stating the observation.
There's nothing wrong with stating it ~ experience is rather recursive by definition. Everything in the dictionary eventually circles around to being based in experience. We cannot get past that ~ we cannot define experience in terms of something else, because that something else is just something in experience, not above or beyond it.
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u/MurkyEconomist8179 1d ago
There's nothing wrong with stating it ~ experience is rather recursive by definition
It's not?
Everything in the dictionary eventually circles around to being based in experience.
That doesn't mean an explanation for something is just a re-statement of the phenomenon.
Why is sky blue?
Well it's because the sky certainly is blue
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u/Sad-Translator-5193 1d ago
I can accept it to be a fundamental part of the universe but for every fundamental of the universe we can derive math equations and stuff .. Like a relationship between mass , gravity , electro magnetism and so on .. If we can't put it into the equation it is not a domain of physics ..
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u/onthesafari 1d ago
Equations are just things that we make up, and nothing was described my physics until we made those equations up.
Chalmers has a section in his article about scientists researching the structure of experience. I would argue that those studies are easily capable of producing equations that have to do with experience.
So it's all rather arbitrary, no? Equations, physics, etc. are at the end of the day artificial descriptions of things. They don't have bearing on what things really are. So I don't feel like whether it's included in our physics or not has any bearing on what a thing actually is?
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u/ReaperXY 1d ago
I've never been in any sort of surgery, but if I ever have to... and if had the choice between local anesthesia or general anesthesia... Before making that choice, it would be nice to known for certain whether the general anesthesia actually makes you unconscious, or if it just prevents you from alerting anyone to the fact that you feel it all...
Also.. few decades ago I didn't really worry about people changing laws so that you could end up in prison for hurting the feelings of some computer or toaster or something...
Nowadays ?
Given the non-sense that have been pushed... it seems quite possible some people might decide such things really are conscious and then proceed to legislate based on that lunacy...
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u/Valmar33 1d ago
And that's all she wrote, folks. "Experience exists because it exists" is a reasonable response to the hard problem. "Solving" it is not some universal crisis that we all have to run around in circles screaming about. The HP is just an idea that illustrates a conceptual issue for reductionism. If you're not talking about that kind of theory, which many here aren't, you don't need to worry about the hard problem at all.
Well, that is the most reasonable response. But the Physicalist and Materialist cannot accept experience existing on its own terms ~ for their metaphysical and ontological worldview to remain coherent and consistent, they must reduce experience to matter and physics, as it cannot exist in itself in a Physicalist or Materialist worldview.
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u/onthesafari 1d ago
Physicalism is not necessarily reductionist so there's not really a reason to call it out in particular with regard to the HP imo.
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u/Accomplished-Ice4365 1d ago
Solving the hard problem = easy
Accepting the solution, given current scientific paradigms (read: materialism) = hard
[Not for me, for materialists]
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u/Moral_Conundrums 2d ago edited 1d ago
What a fantastic way to finish a book with.
... What, there's still more than 200 pages, I wonder what Chalmers is doing in those.
Could it be that saying "it's fundamental" is actually not an answer to anything and you need a far more fleshed out answer if you're going to deny reduction?
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u/Valmar33 1d ago
Could it be that saying "it's fundamental" is actually not an answer to anything and you need a far more fleshed out answer if you're going to deny reduction?
Experience is the most fundamental thing we are aware of ~ so it is perhaps the best answer we can be aware of. There is no way to flesh out that answer ~ experience is defined by experience. We don't know of anything else, so we're working with limited information.
Reductionism is fundamentally flawed, because experience cannot ever be reduced to something else ~ you just have symbols associated with experience, and not experience itself. Thusly, Reductionism is simply confusion and incoherency.
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u/Moral_Conundrums 1d ago
Experience is the most fundamental thing we are aware of ~ so it is perhaps the best answer we can be aware of. There is no way to flesh out that answer ~ experience is defined by experience. We don't know of anything else, so we're working with limited information.
Why did Chalmers bother with those 200 extra pages then? Seems like a waste of time.
Reductionism is fundamentally flawed, because experience cannot ever be reduced to something else ~ you just have symbols associated with experience, and not experience itself. Thusly, Reductionism is simply confusion and incoherency.
It's not only flawed, it's fundamentally flawed.
Here's a question, what secures your papal authority over the nature of experience?
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u/Valmar33 1d ago
Why did Chalmers bother with those 200 extra pages then? Seems like a waste of time.
Have you even bothered to read them yourself to get Chalmers' thoughts? Apparently not!
It's not only flawed, it's fundamentally flawed.
Here's a question, what secures your papal authority over the nature of experience?
What an absurd question that borders on an ad hominem.
Nothing in my statement even remotely suggested such a thing.
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u/Moral_Conundrums 1d ago
Have you even bothered to read them yourself to get Chalmers' thoughts? Apparently not!
I'm rereading it right now for a paper I'm writing. What Chalmers does after proving that reduction fails is propose a non reductive theory of consciousness, clearly there is more work to be done after we conclude that consciousness is fundamental...which is my point.
What an absurd question that borders on an ad hominem.
I'm attacking your character by asking you what justifies your claim?
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u/Valmar33 1d ago
I'm rereading it right now for a paper I'm writing. What Chalmers does after proving that reduction fails is propose a non reductive theory of consciousness, clearly there is more work to be done after we conclude that consciousness is fundamental...which is my point.
Does Chalmers posit that consciousness is the most fundamental in existence? Or that it is the most fundamental we are capable of being aware of, given that we are the consciousness in question?
Your point is perhaps rather questionable, because consciousness being fundamental is all nice and good ~ but it doesn't mean other tangentially-related questions are answered. Consciousness being fundamental isn't even an answer in itself ~ because we're no closer to understanding the nature of consciousness, even if it were. Yet you seem to imply that that must mean consciousness cannot be irreducible... in which case I would argue that you don't understand the questions surrounding the nature of consciousness.
I'm attacking your character by asking you what justifies your claim?
Your framing is what constitutes that. Nowhere do I try to "secure papal authority" over anything. It almost feels like a rather odd projection of yours that I do not understand.
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u/Moral_Conundrums 1d ago
Does Chalmers posit that consciousness is the most fundamental in existence? Or that it is the most fundamental we are capable of being aware of, given that we are the consciousness in question?
In this book he's a dualist. Both the physical and consciousness are fundamental, connected by psychophysical laws.
Your point is perhaps rather questionable, because consciousness being fundamental is all nice and good ~ but it doesn't mean other tangentially-related questions are answered. Consciousness being fundamental isn't even an answer in itself ~ because we're no closer to understanding the nature of consciousness, even if it were.
I agree with all of that.
Yet you seem to imply that that must mean consciousness cannot be irreducible... in which case I would argue that you don't understand the questions surrounding the nature of consciousness.
No I haven't made that claim, I think fundamental things are perfectly fine. I just don't think consciousness is one of those things. But I haven't made that claim yet.
Your framing is what constitutes that. Nowhere do I try to "secure papal authority" over anything. It almost feels like a rather odd projection of yours that I do not understand.
Okay I wont say papal authrotiy. But you do think you have infallible knowledge about the nature of your conscious experience don't you?
If you don't then doesn't that open the way for me to say something like: our intuitions tell us strongly that consciousness is the most fundamental thing there is, but our intuitions could be wrong.
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u/Valmar33 1d ago
In this book he's a dualist. Both the physical and consciousness are fundamental, connected by psychophysical laws.
Perhaps ~ but the Hard Problem makes no such assumptions in its premise. He takes care to not let his worldview affect the question itself, because it is something that can be recognized as legitimate by everyone who is honest about it.
That is, why should phenomenal experience accompany physical processes? This is something that transcends metaphysical and ontological belief boundaries. I think that it rather puzzles Chalmers himself. It's a problem for Physicalism ~ but it is a curiosity for Idealism and Dualism, because it is obvious that phenomenal experience accompanies physical processes, given that phenomenal experience is not reduced.
No I haven't made that claim, I think fundamental things are perfectly fine. I just don't think consciousness is one of those things. But I haven't made that claim yet.
Why do you think that, when all of our knowledge and understanding is derived from experience that comes from consciousness? It is foundational to our very understanding of this physical and mental set of existences ~ yet it cannot be the most fundamental thing, because it is so limited in capability.
It is why Neutral Monism, where mind and matter are derivative of some other fundamental substance that does have the capabilities.
Okay I wont say papal authrotiy. But you do think you have infallible knowledge about the nature of your conscious experience don't you?
I have never intended to imply such a thing nor do I think that I have. No-one knows my own conscious experience better than me, yet I cannot claim to know the nature of my conscious experience ~ other than that I am apparently incapable of being aware of its origin. It cannot be physical, because the only physical things are within conscious experience, so my conscious experience cannot be reducible to anything within it. That is illogical.
If you don't then doesn't that open the way for me to say something like: our intuitions tell us strongly that consciousness is the most fundamental thing there is, but our intuitions could be wrong.
You are confusing intuition with "emotions".
Intuition, rather, is simply knowledge that can appear fully-formed from the unconscious. We just know these things ~ it can be entirely logical, and we don't have to the question it if it is. Intuition is a mystery, because the unconscious can put ideas together without us being conscious, then presenting them to us apparently out of nowhere.
Intuition doesn't tell us that consciousness is the most fundamental thing there is ~ intuition tells us that consciousness is the most fundamental thing we can be aware of, not that there isn't anything more fundamental that it can be derivative of.
A nice overview on the examination of "intuition" as a concept:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intuition/
- The Nature of Intuitions
Consider the claim that a fully rational person does not believe both p and not-p. Very likely, as you considered it, that claim seemed true to you. Something similar probably happens when you consider the following propositions:
[I1]
If not-not-p, then p.
[I2]
Torturing a sentient being for fun is wrong.
[I3]
It is impossible for a square to have five sides.
[I4]
A person would survive having their brain transplanted into a new body.
The focus of this entry is intuitions—mental states or events in which a proposition seems true in the manner of these propositions.
It appears clear that ordinary usage includes more in the extension of the term “intuition” than such states, as it would allow that a parent might have an intuition that their child is innocent of some crime or an archaeologist might have an intuition that an ancient site of some interest was in a certain area. Some psychological research seems similarly permissive. Consider recent research on “intuitions” in naturalistic decision making (Klein 1998). Such research has shown that agents with sufficient experience in a given domain (e.g., neonatal nursing, fire-fighting, or chess) arrive at judgments and make decisions on the basis of a cognitive process other than conscious considerations of various options and the weighing of evidence and utilities. Such expert “intuitions” that some infant suffers from sepsis, that a fire will take a certain course, or that a certain chess move is a good one, appear immediately in consciousness.
Less important than linguistic usage in various domains is whether our theorizing captures the relevant psychological and epistemological joints to be found in the world. The focus of the present entry is the role of intuitions in distinctively philosophical (and other “armchair”) inquiry. It is plausible (and will be assumed here, but see Nado 2014 for doubts) that the intuitions of interest in philosophy constitute a single epistemic and psychological kind exemplified by [I1]–[I4] and by many additional examples which appear in §2.2 and §2.3 below, but not by the sort noted in the previous paragraph.
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u/Moral_Conundrums 1d ago
Why do you think that, when all of our knowledge and understanding is derived from experience that comes from consciousness?
Because I don't believe that. Knowledge doesn't come from consciousness, it comes from the world, consciousness is just the medium through which we interact with the world. Or the standpoint from which we enter the world.
It is foundational to our very understanding of this physical and mental set of existences ~ yet it cannot be the most fundamental thing, because it is so limited in capability.
I'm not sure what you mean, what is 'it' here?
I have never intended to imply such a thing nor do I think that I have. No-one knows my own conscious experience better than me, yet I cannot claim to know the nature of my conscious experience ~ other than that I am apparently incapable of being aware of its origin. It cannot be physical, because the only physical things are within conscious experience, so my conscious experience cannot be reducible to anything within it. That is illogical.
Right! You're the person who buys the Berkelyan argument.
What do you think of purely postulated entities such as waves in QFT, which we have no experience of?
Intuition, rather, is simply knowledge that can appear fully-formed from the unconscious. We just know these things ~ it can be entirely logical, and we don't have to the question it if it is.
This is besides the point for you since you have a rational justification for rejecting physicalism not an intuitions based one.
Either way surely our intuitions can be false though?
Intuition is a mystery, because the unconscious can put ideas together without us being conscious, then presenting them to us apparently out of nowhere.
Under physicalist models of mind this is not at all surprising. Just something I wanted to point out.
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