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The Hard Problem

lunalum

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Thoughts?

Yes, there are thoughts. I know of my thoughts, but you can't... at least not in modern times. :D

So here are some words that theoretically resemble my thoughts....

I am not sure why Hard Problem and Soft Problem are capitalized, so perhaps I should make sure I know what you mean. The Hard Problem concerns the fact that phenomenal consciousness cannot be observed by someone outside that consciousness, and the Soft Problem concerns how the physical can give rise to consciousness? But then you say that the Hard Problem is 'why is anything conscious in the first place'? That seems more like the soft problem, but modified.

Perhaps the problems here are getting overcomplicated...

Studies are making it more and more clear that our best bet is to think of the phenomenal consciousness (or one can simply call it the 'mind' ;) ) as being created by neural processes. This standpoint is leading to great insights and is working pretty well so far, so it is at least a good starting point.
(I will add examples later if necessary.)

But maybe by 'phenomenal consciousness' you are talking about something more specific than the mind. Particular mental processes? That voice in one's head? Our identity? I am not sure....

The question of how the brain creates any of these abstract mental constructs is far more difficult. How to go from something physical to something that is.... something else? Maybe the software/hardware analogy will shed light on this. It might need a hugely new approach altogether.

But it is far too much for me to handle in one night, anyway. I'll continue some other time, but I hope this has framed things a little better...
 

ygolo

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This question of existence is not put forth when I ask if or why the country of China exists, why is it being put forth now?

Actually, I think the question of existence does come up when asking why China exists. In what way does China exist? Do Nation States exist, or they merely constructs? Will the region called "China" still exist if the nation falls apart? Perhaps this example can serve as a model question for why PC exists.

I really don't know how to define existence without limiting the scope of responses. I'd rather the answerer (you) did that.

OK, I will choose a definition that leads to neither a denial nor a tautology. If we experience something then it exists, but there may be other things that exist. Note here, the color red, and even imagined unicorns exist.

What's the difference between the experience of consciousness and consciousness itself?

On one level there is no difference. Just as a set of sets is a set in itself, the experience of experiencing is an experience.

There is a level of indirection. If the experience of a blue square is an instance of consciousness, then the experience of thinking that the experience of the blue square is an experience is the experience of consciousness. I hope that last sentence made sense.

I suppose a simpler way to sum it up is that phenomenological consciousness is what we experience.

Yes, now this is an important issue.

What you are claiming is by reducing consciousness to its correlations, we solve the hard problem. I believe this position is similar to epiphenomenalism.

I am not sure what to label my position. But I take issue with you saying that a solution to the soft problem merely establishes correlations. One can determine proximal cause in scientific ways too. Mainly by establishing that one thing happens before an other, and isolating other variables (this is what good experimentalists are able to do).

Now if you say that the time relationship and isolating variables is not enough to establish proximal cause, then how can you answer "Why does China exist?" What caused China to exist in the first place? What causes it to continue to exist? Solving the "soft problem" in this case seems to be enough. If it is not, then I think you are merely defining the problem in such a way that it is "hard." You can make the answer to any question hard in the same way.

This position, however, has some heavy criticism. Some that I can think of:

1. That because one has difficulty measuring PC, one cannot determine if a system is conscious.
2. Specific in these difficulties is that, what is being experienced consciously can only be measured in any sense through the communication of the experiencer. Presumably the experiencer has what are essentially preprogrammed responses that need not have consciousness in order to be made. E.g. you will not be able to get a robot to tell you it is conscious without programming it to, when you didn't know if it was conscious at the time of the programming.

This again seems like a way of defining consciousness so that it is hard to isolate. So what if the experiencer has had preprogrammed results? Unless we are biasing ourselves to say "if something is programmed then it cannot be conscious," we can just leave that issue open. It is still in the realm of possibility that we, ourselves, are just "programmed" (or "wired" or whatever word you want to use).

Here again, we are left with semantics. Is a robot reporting everything it senses, conscious? Is a cow mooing in pain conscious? They way you define consciousness will feed into your answers as to "why" the "experience" happens.

In short, the difficulties you mentioned above are direct results of the vagueness of the word "consciousness" itself, not results of any philosophical position.

I think the real question is "why do we as humans experience what we experience." This gets around the problem of using vague terms like "consciousness."

We have made great strides towards answering that question, and I am hopeful that we will get some solid answers.

3. That the causal direction is not being determined. It would appear that our own references to PC strongly suggest it is PC itself causing us to reference it. Yet mere correlation does not answer any questions about such causation.

Again, we can establish causal direction by looking at the time of events and isolating variables.

4. As you said, it is a scientific explanation (a circular one or a broken linear one), where eventually the "why" twists back on itself or reaches ignorance. Not much of a problem, but worth remembering.

This is not peculiar to scientific explanation. I challenge you to find any sort of explanation where we do not reach an end of understanding somewhere.
 

erm

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I am not sure what to label my position. But I take issue with you saying that a solution to the soft problem merely establishes correlations. One can determine proximal cause in scientific ways too. Mainly by establishing that one thing happens before an other, and isolating other variables (this is what good experimentalists are able to do).

Now if you say that the time relationship and isolating variables is not enough to establish proximal cause, then how can you answer "Why does China exist?" What caused China to exist in the first place? What causes it to continue to exist? Solving the "soft problem" in this case seems to be enough. If it is not, then I think you are merely defining the problem in such a way that it is "hard." You can make the answer to any question hard in the same way.

I only meant that one cannot measure causation, only infer it from correlation. So the soft problem involves measuring correlation.

This again seems like a way of defining consciousness so that it is hard to isolate. So what if the experiencer has had preprogrammed results? Unless we are biasing ourselves to say "if something is programmed then it cannot be conscious," we can just leave that issue open. It is still in the realm of possibility that we, ourselves, are just "programmed" (or "wired" or whatever word you want to use).

If the experiencer is preprogrammed to say it is or is not conscious. Then what it says is not reliable because the programmer doesn't know whether it is conscious or not.

Yes you can parallel that to humans. No I wasn't suggesting something programmed is not conscious.

Here again, we are left with semantics. Is a robot reporting everything it senses, conscious? Is a cow mooing in pain conscious? They way you define consciousness will feed into your answers as to "why" the "experience" happens.

In short, the difficulties you mentioned above are direct results of the vagueness of the word "consciousness" itself, not results of any philosophical position.

I think the real question is "why do we as humans experience what we experience." This gets around the problem of using vague terms like "consciousness."

We have made great strides towards answering that question, and I am hopeful that we will get some solid answers.

I don't know why you keep saying it is semantics. I've been referring to phenomenal consciousness since the start. Qualia, whilst not quite the same, is very similar to phenomenal consciousness.

If that is not specific enough, I'm not understanding why.

Again, we can establish causal direction by looking at the time of events and isolating variables.

This is not peculiar to scientific explanation. I challenge you to find any sort of explanation where we do not reach an end of understanding somewhere.

When two things always occur simultaneously, one cannot establish which one is causing the other. It's the real version of the chicken or egg dilemma. If both the release of dopamine and the experience of pleasure occur simultaneously, one cannot establish if one causes the other, or if a third party causes both.

There are other explanations that avoid the "end of understanding". Tautologies, religious explanations and others. They aren't predictive like scientific explanations are however, and I don't think this topic is worth getting into here.

I am not sure why Hard Problem and Soft Problem are capitalized, so perhaps I should make sure I know what you mean. The Hard Problem concerns the fact that phenomenal consciousness cannot be observed by someone outside that consciousness, and the Soft Problem concerns how the physical can give rise to consciousness? But then you say that the Hard Problem is 'why is anything conscious in the first place'? That seems more like the soft problem, but modified.

It's clear that I wasn't clear in defining the problems. What you state as the soft problem is what I meant as the hard problem.

Studies are making it more and more clear that our best bet is to think of the phenomenal consciousness (or one can simply call it the 'mind' ;) ) as being created by neural processes. This standpoint is leading to great insights and is working pretty well so far, so it is at least a good starting point.
(I will add examples later if necessary.)

I would like to hear those examples.

What I mean by PC:

Qualia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The question of how the brain creates any of these abstract mental constructs is far more difficult. How to go from something physical to something that is.... something else? Maybe the software/hardware analogy will shed light on this. It might need a hugely new approach altogether.

This is the hard problem.

In light of what you said, I don't think any neurological explanations have made fundamental progress in this area. Consider that thousands of years ago, one could already make the same correlations by smashing one's own head, and seeing that consciousness appears to stop temporarily.

The only things those theories appear to add is more detail into exactly what physical formation causes (correlates with) what conscious experience. This doesn't help explain why those experiences are conscious in the first place (though maybe it will in the future).
 

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What I mean by PC:

Qualia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If we were each born with a video screen on our foreheads that we could manipulate at will, and if we wrote with moving images rather than black-and-white letters, things like the color red would no longer seem mysterious, because our means of communication would capture them perfectly. It would instead be depth, for instance, that would puzzle us, since flat images are incapable of capturing it.

Should this puzzle us? Not really, since language is a means of representation, which means that it stands for something that it isn't and which it therefore does not in itself accurately convey.

Of course, in the normal way of things, people consume language and understand it more or less perfectly without ever thinking of such things as "qualia"; and in this way, they're far wiser than most philosophers.
 

SolitaryWalker

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To be clear, I only disagree with a few things here. Most of what is going on is a large misunderstanding.e.

I don't think so, the disagreement is largely due to your misconception of the nature of the hard problem.



Irrelevant. (semantics).

Very few disputes are truly merely semantical. Commonly, semantic disagreements evince deeper, conceptual differences between the two participants of the debate.





I've already said my position is not dualist as you conceive it.).

If your position does not adhere to dualism, it is inconsistent with your proclamation that the hard problem is distinct from the easy problem, typically the 'easy problem' is the label used to denote the concept you have in mind, not the 'soft problem'. Easy typically refers to something that does not appear to be tremendously difficult to understand, yet soft refers to something that is intangible or pure abstract (e.g soft sciences, software and so forth). Although this point may seem to be purely semantical and irrelevant to any significant debate in philosophy of mind, the terminology does make a significant difference. If you're talking about the 'soft problem' of consciousness, it seems that you're referring to intangible, mental entities, yet if you're talking about the 'easy problem', your point does not have to have anything to do with the intangible mental entities, it may be merely about a problem a solution to which is foreseeable. Chalmers was discussing the latter rather than the former idea and hence, the distinction was between the easy and the hard problem rather than the hard and soft.

Now I am going to show how your belief in the existence of the hard problem committs you to dualism.

You've defined the soft problem as a question regarding what neural activities correlates with mental activity.

The Soft Problem is essentially what physical make-up correlates with what conscious experience (e.g. dopamine correlates with the experience of pleasure). Much leeway in that area has been made already, as it is merely measuring correlation..

If you are a physicalist, you can maintain that the neural activity that correlates with physical activity causes the physical activity in question. Thus, anything is conscious in the first place because certain kinds of neural activity cause consciousness.

The Hard Problem is why anything is phenomenally conscious in the first place (e.g. why is there the experience of pleasure?)...

Since you have defined the Hard problem as a question regarding why anything is conscious in the first place, you must infer that the existence of such a problem is justified only by dualism because physicalism by definition presupposes an answer to the 'hard problem'. In light of the materialist explanation of consciousness, there is no difference between the hard problem and the easy problem.

Last year Daniel Dennett visited my philosophy of cognitive sciences class and told us an anecdote about a conversation Chalmers had with his friend. The discussion could be recapitulated as follows.

Friend: David, I like your distinction between the Hard problem and the Easy problem of consciousness, but you got you got your labels backwards.
Chalmers: What?

What is the meaning of this? The truly hard problem is determing how exactly neural entities correlate to mental activity, once we understand that, we will have a good reason to believe that we know what causes consciousness. If 'what causes consciousness' should be regard as a question or a problem in its own right, than it is indeed very easy rather than hard.









I am suggesting it takes more evidence to show that sexual life is nowhere to be found in the entire galaxy.?)...

Of course we need more evidence to be absolutely certain, yet we seem to know enough about the galaxy now to be confident that there is no sexually produced life in the universe.

the latter of what you seem to think my position is..?)...

The trouble is that your position cannot be sustained without dualism which necessitates a reliance on the former claim.



This is not a successful parallel. Evolution has much evidence to support the parts of it that are complete. Physicalist explanations of consciousness have no evidence whatsoever. ...

It is a plausible parallel indeed because physicalism and evolution are capable of explaining how some entities at least could have, in principle begun to exist. However, their rival theories that are primarily metaphysical and lack empirical support cannot do so.





The point is, you assume my position is dualist....
The principle of charity compels me to assume that your position is dualistic as otherwise your position is incoherent.







I've already stated that reductionism is dualist by my definition.....

No, reductionism is not dualistic. Dualism presupposes that the mind is not reducible to the neural activity. Reductionism maintains the opposite, that all mental activity can be explained by a reduction to physical or neural activity, in other words, reductionism presupposes that neural activity causes consciousness. No dualist would accept such a thesis as it is the very anathema to dualism. Dualism is synonymous with non-reductionism, it is the assertion that mental entities cannot be reduced to neural activity and therefore consciousness only correlates with neural activity but is not caused by it.

It was a response based on a semantic disagreement with the term "materialism"......
Your misunderstanding of the term materialism rather than a mere disagreement. In fact your misunderstanding of Chalmers's views regarding the 'Hard problem' is the source of the confusion that motivated the principal question of the OP.


I once had a professor who assigned seemingly tedious and thankless essays that focused on summarizing the nature of doctrines and the views of certain philosophers. He insisted that we should not confuse the definitions of philosophical terminology and I resented that because he seemed to be concerned with trivial matters rather than genuine philosophical questions. Shortly before I dropped his class, I asked him why he placed such a high emphasis on mere terminology and accuracy of recapitulation of the views of eminent philosophers and the response I got was to the effect that it helps to avoid merely verbal disagreements and conceptual confusions. Not until very recently did I begin to appreciate his efforts.


That said, claiming both Consciousness and Non-consciousness (what I called dualism originally) is more complex a claim than claiming merely Consciousness. Which is more complex than claiming merely one's own Consciousness.....

I have no idea what any of that means.


No,

It's not relevant to my position......

Oh, it is very relevant. Had you gotten your semantics right, we would not even be having this debate to begin with. I am sure you've heard of the Linguistic turn that took place in Oxford in the 1950s and how ordinary language philosophers such as Austin and Hart deflated many abstruse metaphysical notions by virtue of ordinary language analysis. I think they have gone too far too assert that they could eliminate philosophical problems altogether, however, I do believe that their method had much merit in the regard that it could expose many ideas that resemble recondite philosophical issues as non-sense disguised in metaphysical speculation founded on a misunderstanding of language.






Irrelevant. Hopefully you understand my position enough now to see that.......

Yes, my understanding of your position helped me see that the refutation of dualism is irrelevant to your views. However, it also helped me realize that I have over-estimated the conceptual integrity of your views by assuming that they are coherent because they presuppose a dualistic background.



I've already suggested Idealism as one. I can suggest denial of consciousness as another........

Do we have any more of a reason to consider Idealism as an explanation of the nature of consciousness than we have a reason to consider the existence of sexually reproducing aliens, dragons, gods and so forth? The main reason why I regard physicalist as the most viable hypothesis is because it offers empirical support for its explanation of how an explanation of consciousness can be founded on its basic tenets. Namely that consciousness is reducible to brain activity. We cannot say the same about dualism, idealism or solipsism.



Here's what I meant:

Proving that consciousness is correlated with the brain, or that consciousness is produced by the brain, does not prove that consciousness is limited to the brain.........

Of course it does not, but it offers us a reason to continue looking for a way to prove that consciousness is indeed produced by the brain.

Just like proving that stars give off light does not prove that there is no light elsewhere..........

We have to look to stars as the source of explanation for light in all astronomical contexts until we discover that other entities can produce light. Similarly, we have to regard neurons as the sole cause of mental activity until we discover that different entities can produce mental activity. That is one of the fundamental principles of my argument.



My position, for the final time, is that Physicalism has no evidence as a solution to the hard problem...........

Physicalism presupposes that there is no hard problem. The hard problem rests on a dualistic promissory note, its existence depends on a vindication of dualism.

I agree that it is not good reason to claim that Physicalism is false, which is precisely why I NEVER made that claim............

You should have done that in order to make your position appear salvageable, as after all, many respectable researchers in neuroscience and philosophy endorse dualism today.



I've been saying we shouldn't believe either until they get evidence.

My position is to acknowledge ignorance where it is due.

You should not accept this position because in order to go forward, you need to establish a certain method that you will use to continue your investigation of consciousness. Will you elect the Dry Mind approach or the Wet Mind? That is, will you think that consciousness should be studied neurologically or without any reference to the brain? If you're a physicalist, the former is the most obvious and intuitive choice, if you're a dualist, you may wish to investigate the latter approach in greater detail.
 

Polaris

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SolitaryWalker said:
The main reason why I regard physicalist as the most viable hypothesis is because it offers empirical support for its explanation of how an explanation of consciousness can be founded on its basic tenets.
Empiricism stands directly opposite to a deeper understanding of consciousness. One does not learn about a wellspring by turning away from it and traveling down the stream; one must catch the water just as it gushes forth; one must be original.

Science will never manage this, because though it starts with spontaneous observations and creative hypotheses, these are at once thrown aside in favor of a worldview that only has room for those things which are repeated over and over until, though they are memories through and through, they have quite forgotten the life they emerged from and to which they still retain an attachment.

Empiricism is a means by which life obscures its nature in order to gain a greater degree of control over itself. Empiricism is the veil of Maya, a power granted at the cost of blindness. The question is, do you search for the truth, or is it strength that you want? In fact, there is no difference between the two; everything you know increases your personal freedom (burden though it may be), and that freedom goes beyond anything that science can ever offer, for each one of us is far more than a formula, a theory, or an organism; we're alive, and to be alive is to transcend everything.
 

ygolo

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I only meant that one cannot measure causation, only infer it from correlation. So the soft problem involves measuring correlation.

Here we have a fundamental difference in opinion.

I think the root of the disagreement is the assumption of simultaneity. There are very few things that happen exactly simultaneously. In fact, as you likely know, our best understanding of simultaneity says that it is dependent on the reference frame of the observer. Furthermore, two things that occur subcutaneously in some reference frame cannot affect each other. So we can immediately rule out causation in both directions (because the two points in space-time are space-like separated).

So in short, the only correlations between events we care to look at are ones that are between time-like separated events. If we isolate variables further, we will be able to determine causation. 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.


If the experiencer is preprogrammed to say it is or is not conscious. Then what it says is not reliable because the programmer doesn't know whether it is conscious or not.

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?

What we need to do is to do measure "qualia" as you call it. Qualia is often defined as "introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives."

Here they use the words "our." Therein lies some ambiguity. What do we include in "us"?

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.

Is it "introspectively accessible?" Here in, lies one aspect of "defining in" the difference between the hard problem and the soft problem. How you define "introspection" directly feeds whether or not you can know if the experiencer is introspecting.

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.

Yes you can parallel that to humans. No I wasn't suggesting something programmed is not conscious.

Then what is the basis of the criticism you offered?

I don't know why you keep saying it is semantics. I've been referring to phenomenal consciousness since the start. Qualia, whilst not quite the same, is very similar to phenomenal consciousness.

If that is not specific enough, I'm not understanding why.

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.

When two things always occur simultaneously, one cannot establish which one is causing the other. It's the real version of the chicken or egg dilemma. If both the release of dopamine and the experience of pleasure occur simultaneously, one cannot establish if one causes the other, or if a third party causes both.

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.

There are other explanations that avoid the "end of understanding". Tautologies, religious explanations and others. They aren't predictive like scientific explanations are however, and I don't think this topic is worth getting into here.

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.

If you are saying that the main difference is that science is not satisfied with such answers, than I agree with you. But then the criticism you gave seems irrelevant.
 

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Nearly impossible question...it is one I think about all the time, and yet I really have nothing to say...
 

Into It

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We have made great strides towards answering that question, and I am hopeful that we will get some solid answers.

Have we? No matter what we can explain physically, it is the gap between the physical and "experiential" that must be bridged, and I don't know if I agree that we have made great strides in that area...but truthfully, I may just not have heard the information. Would you explain what strides have been made in bridging that gap? Intuitively it appears to me impossible to explain.
 

ygolo

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Have we? No matter what we can explain physically, it is the gap between the physical and "experiential" that must be bridged, and I don't know if I agree that we have made great strides in that area...but truthfully, I may just not have heard the information. Would you explain what strides have been made in bridging that gap? Intuitively it appears to me impossible to explain.

I think it is impossible to explain only if you define it to be impossible to explain. Perhaps your very notion of the "gap" is the source of the impossibility.

I ask a simple question: do you believe there are things that are neither "physical" nor "experiential?" Are there things that are both? Or is this a pure-dichotomy for you (phenomena have to be either physical or experiential but not both)?

If you believe that it is a pure dichotomy, we might as well call things physical and non-physical.

In fact, I believe this to be the case:
No amount of cause-effect explanation will change the minds of those who believe in a pure dichotomy of physical and experiential

Pseudo-Proof of above proposition:
Explanations of why things happen is the process of assigning causes to particular effects. On one side you have a cause on the other you have an effect. But that one thing causes another is often clear, especially at a high level.

If you get pricked and you feel the prick, the prick was the cause of the feeling.

You can delve deeper. The prick caused an electrical impulse to be sent down your nerve issue to the brain which in turn caused your feeling of the prick.

You can delve deeper still, but I don't know as much about this as a cognitive scientist would. One could imagine that electrical impulses travel along the nerve tissue to the brain where it triggers a particular pattern of brain-cell firing, which in turn causes​

In this way a digraph of cause and effect can be created. Note that any edge of the digraph has two vertices connected to it. The vertices of the digraph are phenomenon, some of which you call "physical" and the rest of which you call "experiential" (if you believe in the pure dichotomy).
Now when you have a deeper explanation between cause and effect you replace an edge with a digraph of phenomena of it's own where there is at least one path from the original cause phenomenon to the original effect phenomenon.
This deeper explanation is once again a digraph of phenomenon, some of which you call physical, the rest of which you call experiential.

So note, in every cause-effect explanation (digraph of phenomenon) an edge between the physical and experiential represents the same "gap" as there was originally (the gap between one physical phenomenon and one experiential one)

Note that in the above proof, I did not at all rely on the nature of consciousness. All I relied upon was the nature of cause-effect explanation and the fact that there was a pure dichotomy between "physical" and "experiential."

Replace "physical" and "experiential" with "springleboinger" and "nutsaphim", as long as the two types of phenomenon are two sides of a pure dichotomy, you will always have a gap. That is why I keep saying the Hard Problem is different from the Soft Problem only due to semantics.

I don't believe in the pure dichotomy between physical and experiential. I personally think of software as being neither physical nor experiential, and the things that the Japanese read out of people's minds to be both.
 

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That is why I keep saying the Hard Problem is different from the Soft Problem only due to semantics.[/B].

The falsity of this statement is the source of the seemingly unbridgeable gap between your position and that of erm. As I have explained in my previous post, this debate started due to erm's fundamental misunderstanding of the definition of the Hard Problem.

The concept of the hard problem has been discovered by David Chalmers, a philosopher of mind who subscribed to a view known as dualism. Chalmers believed that consciousness was not caused by neural activity alone.

His philosophical orientation led him to proclaim a fundamental distinction between neuroscience and the study of consciousness. For Chalmers, understanding how neurons cause some mental activities is one thing, but understanding why consciousness exists is another. This thinker saw these two tasks as independent from one another because as a dualist, he believed that neural activity can at best explain the origin of some mental entities but not all.

Erm created a confusion in this thread by ignoring the dualistic underpinnings of the hard problem of consciousness. In other words, he did not realize that the hard problem evaporates completely if dualism is rejected. The easy problem is the endeavor of establishing relationships between neural states and mental states. Hard problem is defined as the task of explaining why consciousness arises. If physicalism is true, than consciousness arises due to neural activity alone which means that an understanding of neural activity constitutes both the easy and the hard problem.

The debate about the hard problem is at the core related to one of the oldest and most controversial discourses in philosophy of mind: the antithesis of dualism and physicalism. Your posts did not overcome the misunderstanding of the discussion because they've merely asserted adherence to physicalism, yet offered few reasons for rejecting dualism or showing that a dismissal of dualism is necessary for an elimination of the 'Hard problem'. Erm's profound confusion about the subject prevented him from even realizing that his position requires dualism, which is why my previous post was concerned with showing that it indeed does require dualism and the foregoing messages dealt with various reasons for rejecting that position. If my reasons for rejecting dualism are to be accepted, than one has no reason to believe that the hard problem exists.
 

ygolo

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SW, did you follow my proof using digraphs to represent various understandings of cause and effect?

I do not presuppose physicalism in that proof.

What i showed is that if you believe in any sort of pure dichotomy of phenomenon, then there will be an analogous "hard problem."

So it would be a corollary that if someone is a dualist believing the associated pure dichotomy, then (s)he will see a hard problem of consciousness. IOW, dualism entails the hard problem of consciousness.

Admittedly, I did not prove that if the hard problem exists that then there is a pure dichotomy. So there is no similar corollary (so far in my understanding) that the hard problem of consciousness entails dualism.

I am agnostic when it comes to dualism, physicalism, materialism, etc.

It is true that the examples I used could make me seem physicalist. But the examples were purely for illustrative purposes regarding the "digraph nature" of casue-effect understanding.

I could have said that "the feeling of a prick on the finger is caused by imagining a prick on the finger," and continued my deeper examination from there. This still would not have changed the "digraph nature" of the "why" of phenomenon.

You must understand my conception of solutions to "why" questions as digraphs to understand my position.
 

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SW, did you follow my proof using digraphs to represent various understandings of cause and effect?position.

I must say that I have only read it briefly without looking into it in depth because I perceived it as irrelevant. I will have a closer look soon.

I do not presuppose physicalism in that proof. .

I thought that you did so when you claimed that the mind is analogous to the body in a way that software is to hardware. Essentially hard-ware is the combination of physical entities that create software which parallels the central physicalist assertion that the brain is the combination of physical entities that creates the mind. It seems striking to me that you claim that physicalism was not one of the assumptions of your argument, yet your analogy seems to reveal a materialistic conviction.

What i showed is that if you believe in any sort of pure dichotomy of phenomenon,.

Could you clarify what a pure dichotomy is? This term seems to be central to your discussion and perhaps my lack of understanding of what you meant precluded me from grasping the core of your argument. If I had to guess, I would think that the pure dichotomy refers to the dichotomy between the mind and the body that physicalism presupposes. At least, that is how I interpreted your post upon initial review.

then there will be an analogous "hard problem.",.


This statement and the previous seem to say that if you believe in the dichotomy regarding the mind and the body, a hard problem will emerge and the hard problem is the supposition that the cause of consciousness must be explained without an appeal to neural activity. Thus far, it seems to me that you're saying that if you believe in the 'pure dichotomy of phenomenon' or dualism, you will believe in the hard problem. I can agree with that.

So it would be a corollary that if someone is a dualist believing the associated pure dichotomy, then (s)he will see a hard problem of consciousness..",.

It seems to me that this passage confirms that my interpretation of your views was correct or that if dualism is true, a belief in the hard problem is justified.

IOW, dualism entails the hard problem of consciousness...",.

Agreed.



Admittedly, I did not prove that if the hard problem exists that then there is a pure dichotomy. ...",.

I think you ought to have implied that.

So there is no similar corollary (so far in my understanding) that the hard problem of consciousness entails dualism....",.


It seems to me that we have just agreed that dualism entails the existence of the hard problem, however, I would also agree that the existence of the hard problem does not necessitate dualism. Solipsism and idealism would be logical possibilities, yet I do not see any reason to take them seriously as both presuppose the mind as the ultimate reality. What we can be certain about is that if the hard problem exists, materialism can be ruled out, but since neither idealism nor solipsism are tenable hypotheses, one can infer that if the hard problem exists, dualism is most likely true. In other words, the hard problem does not necessitate dualism, but the belief in the hard problem does entail a belief in dualism because all other hypotheses (solipsism and idealism) are preposterous.


.
But the examples were purely for illustrative purposes regarding the "digraph nature" of casue-effect understanding. ....",.

I am having a difficult time seeing the relevance of the cause and effect principle to the hard problem of consciousness.



You must understand my conception of solutions to "why" questions as digraphs to understand my position.

I don't see how your solution is contingent on the 'cause and effect' principle and furthermore how it shows that the present debate about the 'hard problem' is semantical rather than conceptual.

I do recognize that you do not presuppose physicalism in your claim which is the main distinction between your argument and mine. However, I cannot see any other way of showing that the hard problem does not exist. Perhaps deflating the hard problem wasn't your point, which it did not seem to be, but then again, what exactly was your conclusion? Surely it was not that the distinction between the hard and the easy problem is merely semantical, because if it was, I do not see anything in your argument that entails such an outcome.
 

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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.
 

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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...

That statement is false. As a matter of fact, we have established a causal link between some neural activity and some kinds of mental activity. For example, amnesia is represented in the brain by a loss of certain neural functions which always equates to a loss of certain mental functions. We have reasons to believe in some physicalist entities, that is, in some mental entities that are caused by the brain. However, we have no conclusive evidence for the existence of a single, exclusively mental entity, or a mental item that clearly is not caused by the brain or endures in the event of a brain's demise. This means that at the moment physicalism is better supported by evidence than dualism is, the fact that its not fully supported is irrelevant as it shows that the evidence for materialism exceeds the evidence for any rival conception of consciousness.



You claim I presuppose Dualism, which would only be true if I was referring to your definition of the Hard Problem. I am not...

You defined the Hard Problem as a question of why anything is conscious in the first place.
The Hard Problem is why anything is phenomenally conscious in the first place (e.g. why is there the experience of pleasure?)..

If you were a physicalist, you would not have had a hard problem because physicalism presupposes that the answer to the easy problem is the answer to the hard problem. That is, neural activity causes consciousness. Since you deny that, you may be a dualist, idealist or a solipsist. The principle of charity led me to assume that you're a dualist, as the other positions cannot even be construed as defensible.



I would instead state that you presuppose Reductionism. As you use the lack of the "Hard Problem" in the manner of a premise.?)..

I did not presuppose it nor use physicalism as a premise, I used it as a conclusion to an argument. (More evidence is available in favor of physicalism than for any other conception of consciousness, hence, physicalism is more likely to be true than dualism, with less said for idealism and solipsism, the better.)




I suggested that Idealism is the least complex explanation aside from Solipsism. As Solipsism makes the least number of assumptions..?)..

Idealism and solipsism are absurd and don't even merit consideration, their simplicity is irrelevant. Physicalism is to be preferred to dualism not only because its simple, but because it has the conceptual integrity that parallels that of dualism.


and my definition of the Hard Problem as the one most commonly used in Philosophy of Mind. ..?)..

You've overlooked the dualistic underpinnings of the hard problem. Indeed, Chalmers, the writer who propounded the notion was a dualist and most authors who heartily endorse the concept share his metaphysical convictions on the matter. If you're not going to committ to dualism, explain how the belief in the hard problem is compatible with non-dualistic metaphysics. You may argue that its compatible with solipsism and idealism, but then you'd have to give a reason why idealism or solipsism merit consideration. Idealism received little support since Berkeley and even fewer eminent thinkers took solipsism seriously for compelling reasons.
 

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That statement is false. As a matter of fact, we have established a causal link between some neural activity and some kinds of mental activity. For example, amnesia is represented in the brain by a loss of certain neural functions which always equates to a loss of certain mental functions. We have reasons to believe in some physicalist entities, that is, in some mental entities that are caused by the brain. However, we have no conclusive evidence for the existence of a single, exclusively mental entity, or a mental item that clearly is not caused by the brain or endures in the event of a brain's demise. This means that at the moment physicalism is better supported by evidence than dualism is, the fact that its not fully supported is irrelevant as it shows that the evidence for materialism exceeds the evidence for any rival conception of consciousness.

That evidence is again towards the soft problem. Correlation of the physical with the mental.

What Physicalism attempts is to show that the Soft Problem is equivalent to the Hard Problem. In order to do this, it would need to prove that there is not mental activity outside of the physical. A step further is to prove it is nowhere outside of the brain, though that is solely in regards to the commonly held Physicalist positions. First, of course, it would need to prove that there is anything outside of the mental.

As for Idealism, Solipsism, presumably Panpsychism as well. You will have to provide reason as to why they are absurd. Only Dualism appears absurd from my position. Precisely because of the nature of causation means there is as much distinction between the mental and the physical, as there is between the physical and the physical. Denying Phenomenal consciousness I also see as absurd, as its existence is as known to me as A=A (it is proven directly through experience).

Solipsism, Idealism and Panpsychism all equate the Hard problem to the Soft problem, just as Physicalism does. Except Panpsychism and Physicalism both suppose the existence of the physical, which does not seem a necessary leap to me in explaining reality.
 

ygolo

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@SW:

1) I think we need to have a discussion about the nature of software eventually, but I think I need make my position a little more clear first.

2) I think our arguments are similar and the differences you pointed are accurate. I may be wrong about this being a matter of semantics. I have not given an argument for support of my position, I merely stated my opinion, based on how I interpreted the hard problem and the soft problem.

@erm:

I think we still have disagreements about the programmer/experiencer example and the about the "end of understanding." Nevertheless, perhaps we should table these points for now, since the crux of our disagreement seems to be in some form a basic misunderstanding. So I will step back, and ask some questions.

1) Are the phenomena that need explanation the same in the hard problem as in the soft problem?

2a) If the answer to 1) is no, what phenomena need explanations in the hard problem that don't in the soft problem, and vice versa?

2b) If the answer to 1) is yes, then are the criteria for accepting explanations of phenomena different between the hard and soft problems? If so, what are the differences? If not, then what is the difference between the hard and soft problems?

3) Can you conceive of anything that is neither physical nor mental?

4) Can you conceive of anything that is both physical and mental?
 

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What Physicalism attempts is to show that the Soft Problem is equivalent to the Hard Problem.
In order to do this, it would need to prove that there is not mental activity outside of the physical..

We need to prove that there is no mental activity outside of the neural network only as much as we need to prove that no species evolve outside of a system of evolution. The bottom line is that today we know of only one way regarding how mental activity arises and that is through brain-activity, all other claims are mere speculation.


You will have to provide reason as to why they are absurd. Only Dualism appears absurd from my position. ..

Idealism is untenable because it asserts that the mind constitutes fundamental reality despite the fact that such a proposition is contradicted by empirical experience. Essentially people have shared experiences about many physical entities, yet the same is rarely the case with regard to most mental experiences. Two people are more likely to have experienced feeling, touching or seeing a certain piece of stone than to have experienced a certain nightmare.

Solipsism is strictly speaking irrefutable, it could be the case that everything I experience is a mere concoction of my imagination, however, there is also no reason to endorse this claim. It is in the same category as many other kinds of theological and metaphysical speculations; one cannot refute them but one also has no reason to believe in them in the first place.



Precisely because of the nature of causation means there is as much distinction between the mental and the physical, as there is between the physical and the physical. Denying Phenomenal consciousness I also see as absurd, as its existence is as known to me as A=A (it is proven directly through experience).

Solipsism, Idealism and Panpsychism all equate the Hard problem to the Soft problem, just as Physicalism does..

Idealism does not equate the easy problem with the hard. Idealism posits that the mind is the ultimate reality which suggests that its unlikely that mental activity is caused by the physical. Therefore understanding the relationship between the neurons and mental states is unlikely to solve the hard problem or to explain why some entities are conscious.
 
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