@SW
My position is simple: In regards to phenomenal consciousness, no evidence has been produced to show that the physical is the cause of the mental.
It is not Dualist. In fact, it could be many positions:
If evidence arose that conclusively linked the mental to the physical, it would be a Physicalist position.
If evidence arose that conclusively proved that there is no reason to posit the existence of the physical, it would be an Idealist position.
If evidence arose that conclusively proved that all physical things are conscious in some manner (proto-conscious), it would be a Panpsychist position.
If evidence arose that conclusively showed that phenomenal consciousness does not exist, it would be a Reductive-Materialist position.
You claim I presuppose Dualism, which would only be true if I was referring to your definition of the Hard Problem. I am not.
I would instead state that you presuppose Reductionism. As you use the lack of the "Hard Problem" in the manner of a premise.
"I have no idea what any of that means."
You suggested that your position was a less complex explanation. I suggested that Idealism is the least complex explanation aside from Solipsism. As Solipsism makes the least number of assumptions.
Now in terms of semantics, I see your definition of Dualism as the one commonly used in Philosophy of Mind, and my definition of the Hard Problem as the one most commonly used in Philosophy of Mind.
Call it an "inference" if you want, but even correlation is an inference. The only difference is the number of steps taken to reach the conclusion.
We are in close agreement then, rather than a fundamental disagreement.
All I mean was essentially that Correlation is the method through which causation is inferred. Yes, correlation involves inference, but less inference than causation.
Now you are assuming the programmer doesn't know weather the thing being programed is conscious or not. How do you prove that? It is a very similar statement to saying you cannot measure consciousness. If it is possible to measure consciousness, it seems reasonable to assume some programmer knows how.
Also, asking the experiencer whether or not it is conscious IS unreliable, but not due to philosophical stance. What philosophical stances beyond tautological ones, would this be a reliable form of measuring consciousness?
This is all the point I was making. Simply that if the programmer doesn't know how to measure consciousness, then whichever answer he programs is not reliable.
So no, asking the experiencer if they are conscious is not reliable either. What degree of difference there is in these to cases, I am unsure of.
If we ask the experiencer what it/he/she is experiencing and it/he/she is capable of answering, then it/he/she is describing some phenomenal aspect of something.
Now this is where we disagree. Unless by capable of answering, you mean capable of answering truthfully. I won't address this though, until I see your response to a point I will make below.
Then what is the basis of the criticism you offered?
Hopefully I have answered this above. In simple form, that programming a machine to say it is phenomenally conscious, is not a reliable measure of whether the machine is phenomenally conscious or not.
Well, I say it because it seems like a matter of semantics to me. You say that Qualia is not the same as PC here, but to Luna you say that's what you meant.
It is clear that the semantics involved here is a source of confusion, at the very least.
Not true, as the difference between PC and Qualia is small, so much so that they are often used interchangeably.
I went over our disagreement here. Correlations between time-like separated events is what we use to determine causation. I think the examples Luna will provide (she's a cognitive science person) may illustrate how this can be done.
One example of direct measurement of qualia is a bit of Japanese research where they directly measured the words an experiencer was reading by interpreting the electrical impulses from the brain.
Now if it can be further established that the electrical impulses precede when the experiencer actually experience the words being read, then we would have found proximal cause of a bit of qualia.
The last part was a hypothetical (not yet established by current research as far as I know) but we have been able to establish, for instance, that a prick on the finger occurs a large portion of a second before the person experiences the prick. They did controls by pricking directly in the brain which was "felt" significantly more quickly. Standard errors of experimenting provide the evidence that the difference is significant.
Yes, this is all good progress in solving the soft problem. I know you equate it to the hard problem, I will address that below.
Well I definitely disagree here. Tautologies represent the "end of understanding" as well, and in what religion is there no "end of understanding?" Present me with a concrete example of something that doesn't have an end of understanding, and I will simply ask why that is true. If you can answer that, I will ask the question again...ad infinitum. If you can provide be with an inductive proof that my "why is this true" questions are answered, then I can question the induction itself. You are them left with an answer that needs to answer all why questions. If you answer with something like "All that is true is due to God." Then we have a "twisted up" answer.
No, I do not equate the ability to ask "why?" to proof that an end of understanding has not been reached. One can always ask "why?", whether coherently or not.
The difference is this: A scientific explanation refers to correlations (and thus causations), and infers predictions from those (over simplified, yes). So if the big bang created the universe, what created that and so on. Either the chain of correlations continues, or it reaches a fundamental area where progress ceases. Asking why is to wonder whether further correlations exist outside of our understanding.
An explanation that reaches an end of understanding is usually a tautology. So A=A is true because it is true, asking "why?" is incoherent and is met with what is essentially repetition that A=A, but can of course still be asked. This is inherently unscientific in nature (not anti-scientific however), but is a very different type of explanation.
God, if true, is often a tautological explanation. As god supposedly made itself, and thus explains itself. A reference to the truth that, to explain everything, one cannot refer to anything outside of everything. Everything has to explain itself, and thus a tautology will be the final step.
The second part of "defining in" the difference between the hard problem and the soft problem, comes from the definition of "mental life." If you are assuming that the "mental life" is different from what the measurer believes is consiousness, then of course you are going to conclude to conclude that we cannot measure qualia.
What i showed is that if you believe in any sort of pure dichotomy of phenomenon, then there will be an analogous "hard problem."
Now this is serious progress.
So, you've made a good point, and put forth a good explanation.
It relates to my point about causation. I think I can express it in a different way to how you have:
So, if one presupposes that there is an explanatory gap between the mental and physical, one of course creates a Hard Problem. Usually this is done because of the "weirdness" in the idea of one causing the other.
As my point on correlation shows, there is no more problem in the physical causing the mental, or vice versa, as there is that the physical causes the physical, or the mental causes the mental. So, a nerve impulse causing pain, is as much a hard problem as one ball in motion causing another to enter motion.
My counterpoint to this, is that it inherently presupposes that there is no hard problem, and thus in a twisted sense presupposes there is. To demonstrate this, it denies any future possibility that more light will be shed on the causation between the mental and the physical, instead only allowing more detailed correlations. So it essentially denies theories like Idealism and such to the position of Strong Agnosticism (that they can never be known), rather than Weak Agnosticism (that they aren't currently known). Meaning it does not solve the Hard Problem, it essentially ignores it. That does not change the importance of the point, but shows that the Hard Problem is not being reduced to semantics. As such, I think arguments in favour of Idealism or Reductive Materialism sidestep this issue.