I've been following this conversation with interest but I don't yet understand whether the computer-based terminology is meant to be a useful analogy or a literal description of the brain/mind/consciousness situation. Would any of you be able to help me out here? — J

The HPoC, as I understand it, derives from the question how (or if) the brain's code for our perceptions includes the subjective experience of perceptions by an experiencing self. — ucarr

As you can see from my above quote, I think the (IT) based terminology is a useful analogy for describing brain_mind activity. In my attack upon the HPoC, I look upon the question of how and why subjectivity stands associated with the brain as an advanced level project in reiteration.

One of my central concepts is the assumption reiteration is how organic memory operates within in a brain.

In your earlier quote immediately above, you argue that our working memory is not solely based on the immediate connection between self and world. In addition to this, you say our working memory can also be based upon imagination and dreams. — ucarr

What I am saying is imagination and dreams are a manifestation of the work being done in working memory. There is also the work of interpreting sensory data and one's memories, which includes imaginings and dreams, is used as a basis for interpreting sensory data. — Harry Hindu

I don't see any escape from the contradiction. In your original intention with your quote, you argued that the experience of seeing red can be interior to the mind. Through virtual seeing via the mind-supported imagination, we can lie in our bed at night and "experience" seeing red based on the neuronal memory circuits stored in our brain. Therein resides no literal red. In your later quote, you say, emphatically:

If the "I" is accessing anything, it is the world via its senses. Working memory is just a working model of the immediate environment relative to the body. — Harry Hindu

This quote says (independent of your intended meaning) working memory is an internal representation of the world. You're describing a bifurcation of sensory experience and virtual seeing. Virtual seeing is constructed from code-bearing memory for "red."

As I understand you now, you're saying: cognitively speaking, the color red is visual information stored in memory as code, and stored code is working memory.

...within the neuronal circuits of the brain wherein we interpret the specific wavelength for red, there's nothing therein that's red because the relativistic effect that supports our experience of red exists within the context of the visual field of our eyes, not within the neuronal circuits of the visual cortex of our brain. — ucarr

But we can imagine and dream of red things. So it seems to me that the color red is the form visual information takes and stored as such — Harry Hindu

When you introduce the word "information," you rocket away from the external world into the interior of the mind. No, the color red itself is not the form of visual information stored in the mind. Instead, there is electro-chemical, neuron-mediated code within the brain.

The HPoC, as I understand it, derives from the question how (or if) the brain's code for our perceptions signifies the subjective experience of perceptions by an experiencing self.

What I am trying to say is that primary "substance" of the world is process, relationships or information. — Harry Hindu

What form the data takes in memory is the ultimate question here. — Harry Hindu

You seem to be saying neuron circuits and electro-chemical code are an interpretation of a more fundamental level of reality populated by process, relationships or information.

As I understand this, the hard boundaries of a physical world of material things is the interpretation of an underlying reality of processes, relationships and information.

Is there a sense in which consciousness overflows its symbolic representations? — Pantagruel

Please note that in our conversation, consciousness is representation. As such, consciousness itself is a construction from the aggregated quanta of (presumably) Planck scale cognitive atoms.

Things get really interesting when we conjecture that consciousness, the boundary administrator, acts upon itself in that role in its own constructions of representations of objective things. Circularity.

Empirical knowledge is precisely reflected in exhausted by what is symbolically represented. — Pantagruel

Folks keep telling me: "The map is not the territory."

However consciousness can know some things in a way that seems to transcend empirical encapsulation of this kind. That fact that it can "know" that something can be brought about by conducting itself counterfactually, for example, acting "against" the way things are in order to bring about something different. So does intuitive knowledge transcend empirical encapsulation? Or does it in fact such an encapsulation itself? — Pantagruel

Premise -

Empirical knowledge is precisely reflected in exhausted by what is symbolically represented. — Pantagruel

Argument -

However consciousness can know some things in a way that seems to transcend empirical encapsulation of this kind. The fact that it can "know" that something can be brought about by conducting itself counterfactually, for example, acting "against" the way things are in order to bring about something different. — Pantagruel

Questions -

So does intuitive knowledge transcend empirical encapsulation? Or is it in fact such an encapsulation itself? — Pantagruel

Your premise is addressed by Kant's distinction between experience through the senses and understanding by abstract reasoning. Abstract reasoning sometimes liberates the understanding from the report of the senses by arriving at a valid, non-empirical conclusion to an abstract premise. When this happens, we say, "Our abstract reasoning has discovered a counter-intuitive truth about the world."

Your argument examples abstract reasoning liberating the understanding from the encapsulation of the appearance of things via the senses.

Your questions: Intuitive knowledge viewed in our context here in this conversation presents as the low resolution feedback looping mnemonics of abstract reasoning about the world. All of the spirals of feedback looping cognitive circularity involving subjectivity are higher-order loops. A low resolution loop, as in the case of intuition, can be enriched by the addition of information, thus rendering it as a high resolution loop.

At low resolution, or at high resolution, abstract reasoning has the capacity to liberate itself from the limitations and distortions of experience rendered through the senses. As the resolution increases, the more thoroughgoing the liberation.

Kant on God

Looking at your questions within the context of the big picture:

These questions hark back to the free will or fate puzzle. Can humans really create something? If they can, then certain individuals, from time to time, will arrive at new thinking not a statistical probability hard-wired into a bounded existence. On the other side, if existence is a bounded infinity, what happens is still pre-ordained by probability, even if it will take forever for all possibilities to actualize. This unlimited timeline of unlimited probabilities is the phenomenon projecting the illusion of human creativity.

So, unbounded (and incomplete) is the way to go if you're favoring human freedom and creativity, and especially so if you embrace the elusive physics of the upturning spiral of consciousness.

Great -- and deep -- questions.

Is there a possibility that where this is headed is going to end up restating in QM terms what Kant clarified in the subject (consciousness) that is isolated from the thing in itself (wave, QM theories), due to the phenomenal veil (consciousness’s constructions)? — Fire Ologist

I think your forward vision of where this is going is good. Little doubt rejiggering Kant with (hopefully) substantial additions and nuancing of transcendental idealism will occur.

For me, the gist of QM is discovery of the boundary of a quantum, as there is a boundary of a photon or, recently, the discovery there is a quantum of space. Well, if space itself is a construction from space-atoms at the Planck scale, then even what appears to our perception at the Newtonian scale as a neutral background is a construction with atomic boundaries negotiated in aggregate into a larger thing.

Who would've thought the boundary negotiations of the hard boundary particle form and the soft boundary of the waveform would be so rich with complex physics?

...there are two parts to consciousness. One is as the seat of perception, like a dog is conscious, a function of the brain, out there in the world, like any other thing in itself. The second part, for human beings, is consciousness of this consciousness. — Fire Ologist

Yes, the first level is the baseline of the cognitive construction; consciousness constructs a representation of the thing-in-itself. Now, even here at the baseline of consciousness, we have to be careful: since we're dealing with a representation of the thing-in-itself, we're already dealing with an "echo" of the prior thing-in-itself. Echoes are resident within circularity, so the physics of even the baseline of consciousness is complex.

The second level is the tentpole feature of what's known about consciousness to date: subjectivity, or internally consistent selfhood. Structurally, this is a higher-order ring of the upwardly evolving spiral of mnemonics-based cognition.

At this level, the boundary negotiations are perplexed by the entelechy and the telos of subjectivity. Now, the physics of consciousness must address the structures attendant upon non-local physics: thermo-dynamics, morpho-dynamics, teleo-dynamics.

Where does the transitive bridge fit in?

If I’m making any sense to you. — Fire Ologist

Have no doubt you're making good sense when you ask a million dollar question. If we take recourse to Schrödinger's equation, we can conjecture that our assembled consciousness formats superposition into position, which is to say it resolves the conflated boundaries of paradox down to the hard boundaries of the particle form.

This conjectured transitive function of consciousness is the wall of empirical experience QM had to break through en route to discovering the hard boundaries of apparently continuous material objects are made up of discrete quanta.

Conceptually, this is cogent. — Pantagruel

Thank-you.

But it still begs the question of the exact nature of the representation construct. — Pantagruel

This is a work in progress. I present my theories incomplete because my method of working requires interaction with other thinkers who check/advance my own thinking. Considering my work method being embedded within the hot kitchen of debate, of course the conjectured method of construction by boundary negotiations is presently vague. This is not to suggest I'm not working from an already elaborated database of systematic reasoning and scholarship.

I view it in light of what I'd call "constructive realism". — Pantagruel

That's a useful label. Thank-you

...are we talking about the conscious experience qua representation, or are we talking about some kind of construct - presumably a material-symbolic artefact - that instantiates or incorporates this conscious experience? — Pantagruel

This is a deep question. Presently, I am focusing on consciousness as a builder by way of being a boundary administrator. The boundary negotiations work towards construction of a representation of reality. Using this simple structure for my method of attack helps me keep my focus manageable.

One of the deep questions is whether reality can be experienced directly, or only indirectly through constructed representations. I suppose Kant's noumena presents an argument against the possibility of direct cognitive access to reality (things-in-themselves). I also suppose Kant harks back to Plato, who claimed our perceptions can only copy eternal forms imperfectly.

In the same vein, there is the deep question whether consciousness via the neuronal circuits of the brain is an endlessly hierarchical spiral upwards through evolving levels of cognition.

Also, there's the question whether the sweeping dynamism of an upwardly evolving spiral of memory, if it is at all physical, can be ever be examined in stasis; is the memory spiral like photons which are physical, but have no rest mass?

If the "I" is accessing anything, it is the world via its senses. Working memory is just a working model of the immediate environment relative to the body. — Harry Hindu

...red exists within the context of the visual field of our eyes... — ucarr

But we can imagine and dream of red things. — Harry Hindu

In your earlier quote immediately above, you argue that our working memory is not solely based on the immediate connection between self and world. In addition to this, you say our working memory can also be based upon imagination and dreams.

...do we have solve the problem of the ontology of knowledge before we can start talking about the ontology of the world? — Harry Hindu

If "the ontology of knowledge" can be construed as "the physics of consciousness," the central question of this conversation, then it seems that understanding the ontology of the world -- at least regarding physicalist physics -- has come first, and now consciousness lies under the microscope.

Is it strictly mental, or does it also inhabit the empirical realm of practical physics? — ucarr

To me this seems like asking the question, Is the "representation" real? — Pantagruel

I'm asking if math representations have referents within the practical world of empirical physics. Since math supposedly allows us to create valid forms we cannot experience empirically, it presents as formidable evidence there is a real and immaterial realm.

It seems incontrovertibly to be so... Our increasing mastery of quantum phenomena being solid evidence. — Pantagruel

From the above I gather that you, like me, believe math inhabits the empirical realm.

If you are suggesting that consciousness functions as an organizational principle of reality I'd agree that is evident. — Pantagruel

So far, I'm suggesting that consciousness functions as an organizational principle of the representation of reality.

In turn, this representation is a construction deriving from the cognitive complex linking the senses, the brain and the mind.

I think it probable the role of consciousness regarding the organizational principles of QM_Newton is a very deep question.

The handshake between consciousness (in its formatting role as boundary administrator) and (the building blocks of) QM_Newton is presently perplexed by the boundary negotiations of consciousness regarding the hard boundaries of the particle form vis-á-vis the soft boundaries of the waveform.

I think the way consciousness variably navigates these two modes of physics lies at the heart of the HPoC. At present, we have two complex schools of thought: materialism/immaterialism. Also, of late, we have a middle zone featuring emergence_supervenience.

It might be the case that a cogent analysis of this variable navigation will shine light on what it means to "see" QM mathematically at the Newtonian scale of experience.

In turn, such cogent analysis might help answer questions pertaining to the existential status of mathematics. Is it strictly mental, or does it also inhabit the empirical realm of practical physics?

...I would hazard that more than just the construction of a picture of reality is going on. Constructing reality itself perhaps. However, undoubtedly constructing the picture is a significant part of that project. — Pantagruel

You do a good job clarifying the richness of the palette of QM applications. In order to keep the scope of my focus manageable, for now I'd like to stick to consciousness as a boundary administrator in the construction process of a picture of reality composed of sub-sets ambiguously parts_gestalt.

Perhaps some justification for this particular focus gets expressed in your conjecture:

I would hazard that more than just the construction of a picture of reality is going on. Constructing reality itself perhaps. — Pantagruel

If consciousness, working in tandem with QM, constructs reality itself, that function is the role of boundary administrator writ large.

I would say the brain is more like the actual computer with a CPU, working memory and long-term memory, not just a CPU. Each part is necessary and cannot function without the other parts. — Harry Hindu

I understand you to be referring to R.A.M./R.O.M. with: "working memory and long-term memory."

I would distinguish between "processing" and "views" as a view being a type of processing where the information being processed is about the world relative to the one processing the information. This is why the world appears and sounds to be located relative to your eyes and ears and that all of our sensory perceptions are about the world relative to our locating in space-time. — Harry Hindu

I understand you to be saying that the "views" type of processing is closely tied to the location of the referent and its viewer.

We seem to have a problem with how we experience other's working memory compared to how we experience our own working memory. — Harry Hindu

I think consciousness, performing in its virtual imaging mode, as based on memory, greatly complicates and perplexes the discreteness and certainty of the location of the referent in relation to the viewer. The portability of memory in time and in space complicates our understanding of the original link between referent and viewer regarding their respective locations.

Furthermore, I think this loosening of the link between the two is one of the main causes of the HPoC. I can access my own subjective memory directly. I can only attempt to access another person's subjective memory indirectly, as via listening to a narrative recounted from memory by another person.

I'm not asking which one is real. I'm simply asking what form does the contents in any type of working memory take... If it is simply a matter of perspective - of BEING your working memory as opposed to representing the working memory of others because it would be impossible to BE others' working memory so your only option is to represent it, then that is ok. — Harry Hindu

I think it's possible to understand that even in the case of one's own subjective memory of being oneself, a separation exists between oneself as thing-in-itself (a kind of pure objectivity of a thing, extant, I believe, more as concept than experience) and a mental representation within subjectivity.

I guess I'm saying we are not exactly our thoughts. Evidence for this might be the fact that sometimes the motives for our behaviors are unconscious.

As to the question of the general form of working memory, firstly, I think memory has a circular structure. Going forward from there, I speculate subjectivity is a higher-order of mnemonic feedback looping. Going forward from there, our ability to know what it's like to be someone else depends upon our virtual viewing (in our imagination) of the GUI of the contents (code) of the other person's working memory.

Dauntingly complicated, isn't it?

Certainly quantum phenomena are not a discrete and isolate realm, because they not only do manifest directly at the classical level... — Pantagruel

I understand you to be referring to such macro-QM effects as the tenants living atop a skyscraper aging faster than those living on the ground floor due to the time dilation of the stronger gravitational field at the skyscraper's base.

...but are increasingly being exploited (by consciousness) in advanced technologies. — Pantagruel

I'm wild-guessing the qubits of quantum computing will be manipulatable in various ways towards enhancing the power of organic consciousness: the optical systems of humans acting in concert with qubits might enable direct perception of hyper-cubic space.

By my argument above, I'm defending the notion consciousness acts as a boundary administrator in the construction process of a picture of reality composed of sub-sets ambiguously parts_gestalt.

Why should this be the case? On the one hand, you seem to be presenting a metaphysics of consciousness as a natural feature of reality. — Pantagruel

We're getting into the metaphysics of consciousness when we start examining Schrödinger's Equation and begin understanding some particulars of the propagation/collapse of the wave function.

Observation-as-measurement, i.e., consciousness, as made explicit by the differential equation, effects a transformation from superposition to decided position. So, yes, this transformation, which can be characterized as the physics of "will," is a sine qua non function of consciousness_reality.

But then you seem to fall back on a more anthropomorphic interpretation. — Pantagruel

Of course we're in the anthropomorphic zone when we examine theoretical/experimental experiences "observing" the wave function mathematically at our human scale of experience.

The central focus of this conversation is providing a definition of consciousness as a transitive agent in addition to its well-known role as a perceiver.

The purpose of the definition of consciousness as a transitive agent is to bridge the suppositional gap between QM and Newton.

Premise - Consciousness is the bridge linking QM with Newton.

If this premise is correct, then we now have a way forward in our examination of consciousness as a physical phenomenon amenable to scientific investigation.

...the subjective experience of knowing one is seeing things in the world, including knowing one is seeing oneself. — ucarr

That's several different experiences and objects stacked on top of each other. — jkop

Yes, it's the vertical stacking of higher-orders of memory feedback looping; this is what the current generation of robots lacks. That's why, as yet, robots lack subjectivity. Subjectivity requires awareness of being an aware subject of both objective and subjective experience.

What could that be like? — jkop

Were you not aware of being aware of me when you addressed your above question to me? Of course your were in possession of that second tier of awareness, or how else could you have addressed your question to me?

What is the cat like when it is not being seen? — Patterner

My conjectural answer is superposition; I draw this directly from what Schrödinger says about the cat in the box before the door is opened: the possible radioactive decay of the particle possibly triggering the killing of the cat, while unobserved, holds superposition of an undecided cat simultaneously alive/dead.

Note - At our Newtonian scale of experience, the vast network of sentients observing events makes macro-scale superposition extremely improbable. Even so, we do frequently experience something superposition-adjacent: in a courtroom with a defendant on trial for murder, in the instance of the murder presumably having occurred without a witness, that alleged murder holds something like superposition in that it's uncertain whether it did or did not occur. This uncertainty, for the judge, jury, prosecutor and defense is akin to the murder holding superposition: it simultaneously did/did not occur. Via circumstantial evidence, inference serves as the "observer" supplying the jury with an "observation" of the event. It then empowers them to resolve which possibility becomes a decided reality.

So, we see, as a generalization, that superposition is logical uncertainty rendered in physics.

For more on this, please click the hyperlink below:

What Does Consciousness Do?

When you imagine a cat, however, there is no relation between the experience and a cat (neither physical nor mental cat). What you are experiencing then is your own creative use of memories and beliefs with the intent to figure out (by what it feels like) what the cat is like. — jkop

As I understand you, you are saying when I imagine a cat, I'm having a completely internal experience between different parts of myself, i.e., I'm having an experience between the virtual seeing of a cat via my imagination and my intent to understand what a cat is like.

The visible properties of the cat fix what it's like for you to experience the cat. Your use of memories and beliefs about cats fix what it's like for you imagine the cat. — jkop

I agree with what you've written in the paragraph immediately above, but I also think the simulation of virtual seeing via memory-supported imagination of the physical cat retains its connection to the physical cat. I see evidence of this unbroken connection in your own words: "The visible properties of the cat fix what it's like for you to experience the cat."

A literal interpretation of the term 'mental image' is a fallacy of ambiguity. — jkop

What I see re: 'mental image' is "image" modified by "mental." Since "image" by definition means: a representation of the external form of a person or thing in art:, "mental" is redundant because "representation" includes the virtual seeing of something physical recorded in memory.

You're saying the HPoC stems from an ambiguity of language without a referent ambiguity in nature? — ucarr

Right. Chalmers assumes that an experience is accompanied by a property of what it's like to have the experience. That's property-dualism. — jkop

You're saying Chalmers posits the "what it's like to be x" experience as a mental property emergent from the physical properties of the brain? Also, you're saying this bifurcation on Chalmers' part is an ambiguity of language with no referent ambiguity within the physics of the natural world?

Why do you think the mental property to which Chalmers refers is an erroneous use of the sense of "experience" (intentionalistic) and not simply the subjective memory of the person?

As if seeing the cat consists of two experiences, one of the cat, and another of what it's like. Separately or somehow coalesced. I find the dualism implausible and redundant. I believe that seeing is the experience, and what the experience is like is what the cat is like. — jkop

Why do you think a man can know he's seeing a cat but not also separate that knowledge from his knowledge of his knowledge? We're not simply aware. We're also self-aware.

My above question trains its focus upon a separation between seeing a cat and knowing that one is seeing a cat. In order to give an account of seeing the cat to a listener at a later date, doesn't that require that the storyteller hold in memory both the experience of seeing the cat and the experience of being aware of seeing the cat?

I think this is what Chalmers assumes. Therefore, as I understand him, the HPoC isn't about seeing things in the world, but rather it is about the subjective experience of knowing one is seeing things in the world, including knowing one is seeing oneself.

The HPoC, therefore, isn't based upon a false bifurcation of things seen in the world and then subsequently rendered into a physical property and a mental property; it's based upon the question about how self-awareness is apparently attached to a physical brain whose physico_material processes seem to give no account, in physico_material terms, of that attendant self-awareness.

In the sense that an imagination is invisible and a cat is visible, they can't be compared, — jkop

An imagination is invisible to the 3rd person perspective; it is not invisible to the 1st person perspective.
I can't see what you imagine; I can see what I imagine.

Notice that there is no need to assume dualism between the cat and what it's like to see the cat: the experience is the cat. — jkop

Do you claim a cat seen via the virtual viewing of imagination is no less physico_material than a cat seen via the optics of the eyes?

Many forms of dualism are fallacies of ambiguity. — jkop

Language open to more than one interpretation falsely suggests two objective and parallel modes of being?

A literal interpretation of the term 'mental image' is a fallacy of ambiguity. — jkop

I see the redundancy; I don't see the ambiguity.

So perhaps the hard problem of consciousness is a fallacy of ambiguity? — jkop

You're saying the HPoC stems from an ambiguity of language without a referent ambiguity in nature?

The central executive in a computer does not view the data it is working with. The data simply exists in memory and is manipulated in real-time by the central executive. — Harry Hindu

If by central executive you mean CPU (central processing unit), then I say it's not an unreasonable stretch to construe "processing" as "views." In each case -- the CPU in one and the brain in the other -- a processor processes data in the act of constructing a world view. Furthermore, the brain also manipulates data that simply exists in memory. When you imagine or dream of the experience of seeing red, that's an example of your brain manipulating data that simply exists in memory.

What form the data takes in memory is the ultimate question here. — Harry Hindu

From our perspective it takes the form of silicon circuits, computer code and logic gates. From others' perspective the data in your working memory takes the form of neurons and the chemical and electrical signals between them. But from our own minds, we do not experience neurons and their chemical and electrical signals. We experience colors, shapes, sounds, etc. of which others' working memory is composed of. From our own perspective, our own working memory takes the form of colors, shapes, etc. and it is only by observing others' working memories that we experience something different. So which form does working memory actually take? Which one is the real form working memory takes? — Harry Hindu

Can you rewrite this passage?

I guess you want to go from:

What form the data takes in memory is the ultimate question here. — Harry Hindu

to:

So which form does working memory actually take? Which one is the real form working memory takes? — Harry Hindu

I guess the passage is intended to be a narrative that elaborates two or more forms of "working memory."

Also, I guess you believe one form is real and the other not.

I don't believe consciousness is an illusion, and I don't believe it is immaterial, I believe we cannot know either of these things. — Skalidris

You're telling me the category type for consciousness is unknowable.

The hard problem of consciousness arises when one believes consciousness can successfully study (and explain) itself as an object in the world. — Skalidris

You're telling me the category type being unknowable is intimately tied to consciousness being necessary to the examination of consciousness.

You can see that “and” is already in the definition and even if we try to phrase it differently to avoid the “and”, you’ll still need to talk about the several inputs being received, and what’s “several”? It is at least one unit AND another. Do you see the circularity? — Skalidris

You're telling me "and" is fundamental, and thus cannot be analyzed down to smaller parts.

So even if we can associate physical processes with consciousness, we cannot break down the intuitive meaning into smaller parts, and breaking something into smaller parts is how we explain things. — Skalidris

You're telling me the intuitive meaning of consciousness inside the mind is fundamental.

To go back to the "and" example, any definition or description of the material processes behind "and" includes the concept "and". — Skalidris

You're telling me examination of "consciousness," like examination of "and," always leads to a circular definition, and thus the identity of these terms cannot be illuminated by analysis.

If, as you imply, consciousness is thwarted by the self-referential state into useless circularity, then that's a claim that supports: consciousness exists outside of the subject/object bi-conditional. — ucarr

No, it simply implies that we do not know. — Skalidris

In this case, I think your claim: consciousness examining consciousness always leads to circularity implies beyond doubt that self-examination, in the case of consciousness, cannot lead to a bi-conditional interweave of subject/object. This, in turn, implies subjectivity is pure; it stands outside of the subject_object duet. Mysteriously, this has something to do with the claim: we can't examine how subjectivity arises from brain functions.

...we could explain the "And" logic gate but yet never be able to explain the "And" concept. — Skalidris

So far, I'm not understanding why you think the concept of the conjunction operator cannot be explained: ¬ {x ∧ Y} both x and y are negated; {¬{x} ∨ {y}} x is negated, y is not. By contrasting "and" with "or," the two operators clarify and explain each other. In other words, the "and" operator is an attractor that puts multiple members into one set, whereas the"or" operator is a separator that puts multiple members into separate sets, as demonstrated by the two expressions above. Now there, I've defined the "and" operator without any circularity.

Likewise, when we experience seeing red, it's because that specific wavelength stands in contrast to other wavelengths of visible light. Therefore, within the neuronal circuits of the brain wherein we interpret the specific wavelength for red, there's nothing therein that's red because the relativistic effect that supports our experience of red exists within the context of the visual field of our eyes, not within the neuronal circuits of the visual cortex of our brain. — ucarr

But we can imagine and dream of red things. So it seems to me that the color red is the form visual information takes and stored as such for future use in making predictions about the world. For us to be able to apply what we predict to the world, our predictions need to be similar to what we attempting to realize in the world, or else how could we apply new ideas to the world? — Harry Hindu

You have exposed an error in my narrative quoted at top. I've underlined the part of my narrative where I've jumped the proper continuity by omitting something: after the brain assembles a visual image of the world seen optically, the color content is next coded so that red equals not-green and not-blue, and so this third element is relativistically red as specified by the corresponding EM wavelength, itself distinct from the green and blue wavelengths.

Next, a mnemonic loop for recording of the visual image in color is produced. An accessible memory loop of the experience of the visual image in color becomes available for imagination and dreams.

Through all the orders of feedback looping minus the one culminating in an accessible memory loop of the experience of the visual image in red, no colors are in the neuronal circuits of the brain. At the level of the memory loop of the experience of the visual image of red, the remembered color of red is present as coding via modulated circuits simulating the relativistic effect: red. The visual construction of the experience of seeing red is played back as a memory on a virtual GUI also encoded in the feedback loop.

Well, now you're establishing some kind of Cartesian theater where there is a GUI that is being viewed, but viewed by what? — Harry Hindu

Viewed by the brain that constructs the simulation of the world within the visual field of the eyes.

Okay but you can only access the code via a GUI. I can only access your neurons via my GUI. Your neurons and the code appear in my GUI as visual representations of what is "out there". The neurons and the code do not exist as represented by the GUI. As you said, the GUI is a representation, and not the neurons and code as it actually is. So maybe terms like, "neurons" and "code" are representations of how they appear in the GUI and not how they are in the world, and how they are in the world is simply information or process and we are confusing the map (GUI) with the territory. — Harry Hindu

This applies within the scope of the simulation. A simulation has a referent outside of itself. If the simulation is successful, i.e., if it accurately describes its referent, then its coding also accurately describes its referent. So, no. The coding for a simulation is not hermetically sealed within the territory of the simulation.

As to what the neuronal circuits (modulated electric currents) are really like in context, in the world out there they are like themselves: building blocks; in the world of the simulation: they are like themselves: building blocks; in the world of themselves they are like themselves: building blocks.

We're supposed to confuse the map with the territory. How could the map be useful without this confusion of identities? If the map were completely distinct from the territory, it would effect no simulation of the world and thus be useless.

Simulation is specifically about the confusion, or overlapping of two identities. If your brain's simulation of the external world were not cause for suspension of disbelief of the sameness between what you perceive and what's out there, you'd never go outside of your house.

Are the building blocks and the construction of them bi-conditional? If you wish to navigate the world intelligently, and that especially means designing schemes to achieve your goals, you'd better hope they are. The brain's coding of its perception of the world is not a transformation of that world, but merely an internalization of it.

Sidebar -- Firstly, Skalidris, I'm glad you're again posting to your conversation here. After your long absence, I was afraid you'd checked out permanently, and that's less fun.

The whole 'hard problem' arises from regarding consciousness as an object, which it is not, while science itself is based on objective facts. It's not complicated, but it's hard to see. — Wayfarer

Wayfarer above makes a good point. Herein, we're all talking about consciousness, voicing factual claims about it. These actions treat consciousness as an object grammatically speaking: "voicing factual claims about it." Predicate: voicing claims; Preposition: about; Object: it. Grammatically speaking, if you can predicate claims about something, then that something is an object, a thing. It's out there in reality to be examined and understood. If it's not out there, then what the heck are we talking about in this conversation? If subjectivity were ineffable, nobody would be talking about it. Nearly everybody talks about it at one time or another. I'm not seeing any modal difference between the efforts of neuroscience and the efforts of the typical layperson trying to understand the human psychology of their families and friends.

I think subjectivity and objectivity are always paired; I suspect their relationship is the bi-conditional logical operator. Regarding Nagel's: "There's something that it's like to be a bat." I'm waiting for an immaterialist to prove logically the necessity of the metaphysical separation of subjectivity from objectivity.

I'm trying to understand why the obvious grammatical objectification of consciousness doesn't carry over into objective reality. I don't, however, want to sidetrack us into lengthy discussions about the limitations and distortions of language; we all know that's a full topic unto itself.

Consciousness can indeed associate itself with all kinds of objects, but doing so creates a self referential problem, aka the hard problem of consciousness. — Skalidris

I take this to be the heart of your premise for this conversation. I'll try to parse it:

"Consciousness can indeed associate itself with all kinds of objects..." Why is this not a simple and clear example of one thing: consciousness, associating itself with other things: all kinds of objects? Isn't connection of things to things what "associate" means?

No, I haven't forgotten the immaterialist mantra: "Consciousness is not a thing." I know, your above statement is not literal. So what is it saying? If consciousness is not a thing, how does it perform actions, like "associate itself with all kinds of objects." Usually, subjects who execute actions are things. It's hard to authorize pundits who make statements that grammatically contradict the intended meanings of said statements.

"...but doing so creates a self referential problem, aka the hard problem of consciousness."

Have you elaborated how it is the case that when one thing associates itself with another thing, with one of the things being consciousness, a self-referential problem always ensues? Do either Nagel or Chalmers examine this self-referential problem?

Yes. Indeed you have a problem making predications about a subject that's not a subject. From the get-go, you're inhabiting the realm of paradox.

To me, this type of reasoning implies impossible premises. And to show that, let's first start with possible premises. We know that:

1) One indispensable element for the perception of objects is consciousness.
2) Time flows in one direction.

The logical conclusion from this is that consciousness cannot be viewed solely as an object since it has to be there for the perception of objects. Consciousness can only be viewed as consciousness (cannot be broken down into something else since it is always there as a whole in our reasoning). — Skalidris

Your first sentence implies consciousness cannot examine itself. Can you explain how this is the case given the fact that, in this very instant, we are examples of consciousness examining itself? If we're not doing that, then what are we doing?

In the second sentence you mysteriously claim "Consciousness can only be viewed as consciousness..." as if consciousness viewing itself doesn't objectify itself. In order to make your claim consciousness is not an object, you have to turn it into an object.

Can you explain why this premise is not an impossible premise leading to the logical circularity you're propounding?

You claim consciousness is not approachable by setting up yourself in a paradox, then claim the paradox you've created is the proof objective examination of consciousness is impossible. Well, yeah, by your own setup.

Suppose we discard your premise and replace it with another premise: consciousness can examine itself. This gets us out of the paradox, at least grammatically speaking.

Can you show why we're still existentially locked within paradox and circularity when consciousness tries to examine itself?

Any materialistic theories about it is followed by this question "why are these materialistic phenomena accompanied by experience?". And any materialistic attempt to answer that question also ends up being followed by the same question, creating a circularity that seems impossible to escape. — Skalidris

However, when we ask ourselves “why are these materialistic phenomena accompanied by experience?”, we trigger a self referential explanation that has no other outcome than being circular because it circles back to incorrect premises that contradict the rest of the reasoning. — Skalidris

Above I've underlined an important sentence. I'm surmising it expresses your core belief there is no possible materialist explanation connecting brain functions with subjectivity. I'm guessing you justify this belief by taking recourse to emergence and supervenience. I think your core belief is supported by a metaphysical commitment: consciousness exists outside of the subject/object bi-conditional.

If, as you imply, consciousness is thwarted by the self-referential state into useless circularity, then that's a claim that supports: consciousness exists outside of the subject/object bi-conditional.

Do you have an argument to support this claim?

How can it be that consciousness exists outside of the subject/object bi-conditional?

I'm supposing immaterialism puts forward consciousness as its star witness for the possibility of existence uncoupled from materialism, and this uncoupling is centered within the circularity to which you refer.

You name the possible premises; do you name the impossible premises?

Let me try to name an impossible premise: a subject that is not its own object.

Can an existing thing not be self-referential (to itself) as an object? If it can, we must ask where is it located in space and time (both of which are material)?

Speaking generally, existence precedes essence and, speaking more specifically, brain precedes mind, at least from the materialist point of view: brain and mind always co-exist, but there's no thought without brain, as demonstrated causally by the maxim: absent brain, absent mind.

Of course, immaterialism posits existence of essences outside of space and time.

Are we now afoot within Kant's transcendental idealism? Are we hearkening back to its ancestor, Platonic idealism?

No. Today's immaterialists have probably nuanced their positions beyond Kant.

What if: "when we ask ourselves 'why are these materialistic phenomena accompanied by experience?', we trigger a self referential explanation that has no other outcome than being circular..." is an important clue to the reason why consciousness as an objective thing appears to be immaterial?

I'm suggesting consciousness as a phenomenon is rooted in mnemonic echoings upwardly mobile through higher-orders of the self-referential. These higher-orders are essential to subjectivity. They play fast and loose with matter, but never uncouple from it completely.

The abstractionism of multi-tiered feedback looping via neuronal circuits of the brain is how we arrive at useful concepts such as infinity, sets and Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis.

Mnemonic circularity, ethereal but still material.

The battery poles are certainly Real. but until they are connected into a circuit, the electric current is only Potential. — Gnomon

There's no difference of opinion here. Yes, in this situation, the electric current is potential before the circuit closes.

Our difference centers on whether or not a potential current embodied within a charged battery is physical whereas a potential current embodied within the mind's memory is abstract. In both cases the potential is tied to something physical: a) the charged battery and its difference of potential; b) the mind's memory and the difference of potential it represents abstractly.

I say: a) involves two physical things; b) involves one physical thing and one abstraction.

Difference is a mental concept : Ideal not-yet Real. — Gnomon

If you live in Germany and your brother lives in France, you don't say the difference of your relative positions is a mental concept. In a parallel, the difference of the charge on the negative plate from the charge on the positive electrode is not a mental concept.

Potential is not a real thing, but an ideal concept that points to a future state. — Gnomon

The difference in the state of a real system from one phase to another is not an ideal concept.
Speaking of water, do you say its difference of state from liquid to solid is an ideal concept?

Difference and Potential are found only in Conscious Minds, not in the material world — Gnomon

Picture a desert rock sitting in a pool of water at noon. After nightfall, the same rock is encased in the frozen pool. You know that during the desert winter, the temperature at noon in the low seventies falls forty degrees at night to the low thirties. Are potential and difference only in your mind?

Consciousness may be the only thing that can study consciousness. If consciousness is feeling and thinking, then that which feels and thinks can feel and think about itself.
Maybe? — Patterner

:up:

But that's the thing. What makes a mass of neurons conscious, but a mass of silicon circuits not conscious? — Harry Hindu

We don't yet know — J

A mass of neurons has processing of memory functions attached; I'm not sure, but I think AI operates in similar fashion.

Potential is not-yet Real. — Gnomon

...the Voltage of an electric battery is its potential for future current flow measured in Amps. — Gnomon

This polarization of negatively charged particles into a concentration apart from positive charge, thus creating a potential for current flow, examples a physical state of a system. Difference of potential is rooted in the extant charge of the concentrated particles. It is real.

The difference of potential of a system for performance of a function -- a charged battery that powers the illumination of a light bulb -- is a part of physico-material reality.

There is a basic difference between having an idea about current flow and having a charged battery ready to deliver current flow.

Well, now you're establishing some kind of Cartesian theater where there is a GUI that is being viewed, but viewed by what? — Harry Hindu

Are you implying the GUI is being viewed by an immaterial mind? Would this be, in context of your thinking, cognition-to-cognition, along the lines of mental telepathy?

...the computer screen is a physical object that emits light so this still does not seem to be a valid example. — Harry Hindu

If you're implying GUI content is not consciousness, I say it's intelligible, and intelligibility is one half of the consciousness duet of intelligibility meets agent intellect. Also, I say that GUI, being an analog signifier, simulates the natural world and thus it is something beyond stimuli that's more at consciousness than not; it's the surrogate of the programmer's consciousness.

What I'm trying to say is that the world may be more like the GUI than the code — Harry Hindu

So, simulation of the world by GUI is movement towards consciousness and thus it resembles the mind more than it resembles its code?

What I am trying to say is that primary "substance" of the world is process, relationships or information. — Harry Hindu

Consciousness is more fundamental than matter?

Perhaps an inversion is more correct: matter emerges from mind?

Hard to tell, innit? Whether definitions set the stage for good philosophy, or get in the way of it. — Mww

Somebody's gotta say something, otherwise our theater becomes a graveyard. When I mis-speak half-truth, eventually someone will correct me, so in the meantime eat, drink and be merry, and stop sweating the crumbs on the floor.

Is paradox a synonym for enformaction? — ucarr

No. Does "the power to enform" seem paradoxical to you? — Gnomon

Yes.

That combination of Cause & Laws is what I call EnFormAction (EFA) : the natural holistic tendency to create complex systems from simpler components — Gnomon

I thought maybe your holistic combination of substance, form and dynamics creates an environment wherein parts are simultaneously discrete and gestalt.

Premise -These questions make an approach to distilling what consciousness does objectively: it resolves paradoxes. — ucarr

That may be the evolutionary adaptive function that led to conscious awareness of Self & Other, which are often at odds. — Gnomon

The whole landscape of evolution is a branching web of boundaries both combining and separating.

The sentient and its environment have a part/whole relationship. Consciousness, using its measuring tool, science, navigates and negotiates boundaries until satisfactory measurement is achieved; we call this "arriving at an understanding."

So, consciousness, resolving the environment down from superposition to the discrete boundaries of natural order, enacts a stabilizing and ordering function. We see these stabilizing and ordering effects across a spectrum from ant colonies to modern cities.

Speaking metaphorically, consciousness looks at the raw stuff of nature and, proceeding forward from there, generates an exploded diagram of the constituent parts, assembling and disassembling them in spiraling cycles of gradual change.

...in humans, Meaning places the world data in relationship to the Self-concept. — Gnomon

So, for sentients, meaning is always personal?

Can facts persist without meaning, i.e., can facts exist without observation?

Let's suppose they can't. Does that suggest to us that an environment without sentience is always in superposition? So, before the door to Schrödinger's box opens, the cat inside is always: extant/non-extant; dead/alive? The tree falling in the forest does/doesn't make a sound?

Is paradox a synonym for enformaction?

Premise -These questions make an approach to distilling what consciousness does objectively: it resolves paradoxes.

Mind is a holistic Function of brain, not identical with the neural network. — Gnomon

Raw data → brain → simulation → mind → meaning ???

Does consciousness, in its act of resolving superposition, configure undecidable parts into non-reductive wholes?

So, consciousness parses boundaries?

So, consciousness parses undecidable boundaries into non-reductive wholes?

Is consciousness hard to analyze – literally split into parts – because it’s about unification of parts into seamless wholes?

Is consciousness paradoxically about holism -- that's its function: configuring parts into seamless wholes -- and yet (strategically) incomplete?

Is consciousness uncontainable because it's strategically incomplete?

Premise - Consciousness is uncontainable because, given existence, there's always another question.

As I understand it, meta- refers to anything that is over & above meaningless matter : the Map is not the Terrain. — Gnomon

Is matter meaningless, or bursting with paradoxical meaning in superposition?

So, the map, being larger than the terrain, emerges from it, but reduces not down to it?

Is it the converse? Since mind is no match for matter, it must hide the shame of its abstractionism in the form of simple and elegant theories and their terse equations?

Since no analytic narrative can get beyond its approach to a material thing, the deadness of its monotonous voice must fall to the ground in reverence of the seething dirt from which it emerges?

Sidebar: I hope you'll throw open the gates and release your reactions; this is a Roar-Shock test.

Life is just maintenance of structures until death and in that we must tweak, convulse and dance to make the boredom bearable. — Nils Loc

Yes. The artist, pushing against the boundaries of what human can be, what human can do, distracts an audience from its tedium: sweet distraction, almost unbearably brief.

When we keep each other entertained with outrageous possibility, that is something seeming sweeter than righteousness, but, alas, it perishes whereas dull sanctity, everlasting to a certainty, bankrolls
existence.

21st century physics has equated Information with causal Energy — Gnomon

So, you embrace the understanding information is physico-material?

Energy is the relationship between information regimes. That is, energy is manifested, at any level, between structures, processes and systems of information in all of its forms — Gnomon

So, in the case of an information field flanked by energy fields, we have a grouping of three energy fields, a two-plus-one with info being one type of energy and the flanks being another type of energy?

Hello, 180 Proof,

we h. sapiens are embodied subjects (i.e. mindbodies); our minds are more-than-minds (i.e. non-ideality)-dependent;

:up: :100:

I hope you will weigh-in.

Higher-Order Memory

... a human body ... converts ... Data into Meaning — Gnomon

When the brain converts data into meaning, do you think the process involves using one narrative (data) to generate another narrative-about-a-narrative (meaning)?

Is meaning a higher-order narrative of a baseline narrative (data)?

Is meaning a terminal lying distant from a data starting point?

If I write 2+2, that's a datum (it too has meaning, but for sake of simplicity, right now we'll only see it as a datum)?

If I go on from 2+2 to write: 2+2 = 4, that's a meaning?

Now we can ask, in order for an information processor to have higher-order meaning capacity, must it harbor an in-dwelling subjective self that endures through a continuous personal history?

A windblown rock hits a statue of a man in the face. That's a datum.

A windblown rock hits a living man in the face. Later, talking to his wife, he says, "A rock blew into my face today, and that's why I have a black eye."

Is the living man's statement to his wife the higher-order narrative, i.e., the narrative expressing meaning of the datum: a rock injured a living man's face.

So, meaning is interpretation of an event, with said interpretation operating within a personal identity who discovers meaning in events that s/he reconciles to, for specific example, its enduring interest in survival?

Does all of this suggest a higher-order memory function for spinning out narratives-of-narratives?

If so, why is this brain-centered higher-order memory function immaterial?

But we can imagine and dream of red things. So it seems to me that the color red is the form visual information takes and stored as such for future use in making predictions about the world. — Harry Hindu

...within the neuronal circuits of the brain wherein we interpret the specific wavelength for red, there's nothing therein that's red because the relativistic effect that supports our experience of red exists within the context of the visual field of our eyes, not within the neuronal circuits of the visual cortex of our brain — ucarr

Now we go deeper into the brain_mind interface. The experience of seeing red, like the experience of seeing animated graphic images on a computer screen, is an interpretation of code for the experience. The Graphical User Interface of images viewed on a computer screen is an interpretation of Java, C++, etc. When you look at the code directly, you won't see any graphic images. Likewise, when you study neuron synaptic firing rates, electric current and voltage levels in active parts of the brain, etc., you won't see any graphic images replicating the natural world. There's no analog simulation of the natural world within the databases of computers, and there's no analog simulation of the natural world within the brain.

To continue the parallel, consider the visual field of your eyes. As you scan the natural world around you within the visual field of your eyes, you're not seeing directly the actions of the rods and cones of your eyes, nor are you seeing the neural processing of your brain's visual cortex or other subsequent visual processing parts of your brain. Instead, you're seeing a composite simulation which is a product of the processing. In other words, the experience of seeing red, like all other experiences, compiles a construction that is a simulation of the natural world.

The translation from sensory processing to compiled-construction-as-experience raises gnarly questions about physico-material boundaries. This specific type of question is why we're participating in this conversation.

Consciousness is the spinner that enters the fray and sets the natural world spinning furiously through whirlpools of complex mysteries.

When you dream of red suns in galaxies light years away from you, are you lying entirely within your bed?

The hard problem is more about trying to explain how color "arises" from non-colored things, like neurons and wavelengths. — Harry Hindu

You're drawing a bead on the center of the HPoC. As I understand you, the central issue is the question: How is the subjective experience connected to the physics presumed to be the ground for it?

My first thought (for an answer to your specific question about the experience of the color red in relation to a specific wavelength within the EM visible light spectrum) says "like the experience of
motion, the experience of color is due to a relativistic effect."

Einstein tells us that we only experience motion relative to other material objects either stationary, or moving at a velocity different from ours. If we're in a spaceship traveling very fast between planetary systems, inside the ship we don't known we're moving at all. Only when we look out through a window and see our motion relative to other material objects do we perceive motion.

Likewise, when we experience seeing red, it's because that specific wavelength stands in contrast to other wavelengths of visible light. Therefore, within the neuronal circuits of the brain wherein we interpret the specific wavelength for red, there's nothing therein that's red because the relativistic effect that supports our experience of red exists within the context of the visual field of our eyes, not within the neuronal circuits of the visual cortex of our brain.

The locality of the context of the relativistic effect of experiencing the color red, being separate from the neuronal circuits interior to the visual cortex, like the interior of the spaceship being separate from the external planets it whizzes past, raises the question of the connection between the physics of the brain and the cognition of the mind.

Grab your right hand with your right hand and report back. — Wayfarer

Report: RH ≡ RH. — ucarr

This is picturing for literal sight of the ultimate self-referential grabbing. — ucarr

I’m afraid that is word salad. — Wayfarer

I'm not going to let myself confuse incomprehension with unintelligibility. I think I understand the logical connections linking grab right hand with right hand_self-reference_identity operator.* This triad might be unorthodox, but the attempt to express a logical sequence is intelligible even if incorrect.

*The three parts of the triad mirror each other as parallels.

The fact that a hand cannot grasp itself is apodictic. — Wayfarer

I think the apodicsis of your claim is context specific. Since our focus is consciousness, grab becomes "grab." Following from this, I can counter-claim that in the context of consciousness:

Grab your right hand with your right hand and report back. — Wayfarer

posits the physical dexterity of a body part into a false parallel with the cognitive dexterity of the mind.

Using your own mind, you conceive the command: "Grab your right hand with your right hand and report back." Then, you command me to carry out the command, not with my mind, as you did in conceiving the command, but instead with the body part which is my physical hand. This is a gross mis-match.

When I carried out your command with my mind, as you did in configuring the command, my cognitive dexterity easily matched your cognitive dexterity.

Furthermore, the bifurcation of: "Grab your right hand with your right hand and report back." is a feature of the mindscape, not of the landscape. You challenge me to treat one unified whole as if it's two independent wholes. In leveling your challenge, you were confident I would fail in the task. But the cheat you enacted took recourse to a feature of the mindscape not found in the landscape.

I've pointed out the false-paralleling of the two modes (mindscape vs landscape). What also needs to be pointed out is the fact you utilized your cognitive dexterity to conceptualize one unified whole as if it's two independent wholes. Your doing this is evidence you yourself don't really believe in the impossibility of reconceptualizing one unity as two independent wholes. This evidence casts doubt on any suggestion you don't understand: grab right hand with right hand_self-reference_identity operator.

Well, if you understand as well as I that the cognitive dexterity of the mind easily bifurcates hands towards word games of context-specific impossibility, then it follows your mind easily bifurcates itself into itself as subject looking at itself as object.

Now we proceed to understand your argument about the subjective self always seeing but never seen makes the same mistake of false-parallelism argued above: the physical self cannot look directly at itself; the cognitive self of the mindscape, on the other hand, has no problem doing so. Since our focus is consciousness, we're contextually concerned with the cognitive self, not the physical self.*

*This distinction is not intended to imply the cognitive self is not also physical. It is true, however, as made obvious in these arguments, that the two modes are not identical.

The subject/object duo cannot be broken apart. Each always implies the other. That's the bi-conditional, isn't it? — ucarr

I agree that subjects and objects are ‘co-arising’. This is a fundamental principle in Buddhist philosophy. Schopenhauer uses it to great effect in his arguments. — Wayfarer

Here's evidence in your own words of your belief that upon the mindscape, the subject/object duo cannot be broken apart.

Report: RH = RH. — ucarr

I’ll need photographic evidence in this case ;-) — Wayfarer

Write the math onto a marking board, put your right hand alongside the math and then take a picture. The math represents the right hand with bifurcation of its identity; this is a two-in-one of identity elaborated. This is picturing for literal sight of the ultimate self-referential grabbing.

We could say of someone, ‘she has a brilliant mind’. In that case her mind is indeed an object of conversation. — Wayfarer

You can also use ‘see’ metaphorically, as in ‘I see what you mean’. — Wayfarer

But in both cases the metaphorical sense is different to the physical sense. — Wayfarer

The radical nature of QM resides in the fact the resolution of Schrödinger's cat paradox is effected literally, not metaphorically. The observational property of consciousness as a) measurement; b) resolution of superposition to simple position is literal, not metaphorical.

These objectified claims about consciousness are not limited to an individual's subjective experience of Schrödinger's cat paradox. QM physics claims it for everyone.

Furthermore, regarding the mind's eye, since our focus is consciousness, within this context even the mind's eye is literal. We're literally talking about the observational property of consciousness and it's mathematical and experimental verification in physics: public, measurable, repeatable.

The stunning revelations of QM arise from it having already objectified consciousness.

In order to deny this objectification, you must defeat both: a) The Copenhagen Interpretation and b) The Many Worlds Interpretation of QM with counter-examples. That means doing science, not philosophy.

Since thought, language and mind do not occur apart from brain, how can you claim brain and mind are parallel?

Regarding emergent properties of the brain, they exemplify the differential circularity of the higher-orders of thermo-dynamics: morphodynamics, teleodynamics.

...the subjective elements of experience were assigned to the 'secondary qualities' of objects in the early days of modern science. — Wayfarer

It seems to me that here you're tipping into phenomenology.

But I cannot see the act of seeing (or for that matter grasp the act of grasping) as that act requires a seen object and the perceiving subject (or grasping and grasped). It is in that sense that eyes and hands may only see and grasp, respectively, what is other to them. — Wayfarer

As I claim, brain is integral to thought, language and mind, not parallel.. So, again, the mind's eye in our focus upon consciousness is literal, not figurative. You exemplify this with your prescription for perception: "eyes and hands may only see and grasp, respectively, what is other to them."

You could not deliver this prescription with authority if your perceptual eyesight were not literal. In the context of consciousness, perceptual eyesight is just as literal as optical eyesight. Were this not the case, you would not be writing declarative sentences about what perceptual eyesight can and cannot do: "...I cannot see the act of seeing." This clause, like the sentence: "This sentence is false." simultaneously declares what it denies. (At the level of perception, in order to make a declaration that you cannot see the act of seeing, you must see it.)

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos

That is the background, if you like, that the 'hard problem' is set against. If you don't see that, you're not seeing the problem. — Wayfarer

You're trying to set boundaries for the context of the HPoC debate.

The central question of the HPoC goes as follows: How is it the case that subjective experience is associated with the physical processes of the brain?

Apparently, you accept the Galileo_Descartes binary of brain/mind as the proper structure and scope of the HPoC debate. Modern physics, with the backing of QM and the measurement problem, rejects the binary as falsity. If you want to defend immaterialism via the binary, then I think you must firstly defend it scientifically. I don't think facile references to emergent properties will be enough.

...processing that information without consciously experiencing it. — Wolfgang

Some of the earlier levels of machine learning are supposed to be examples of what you describe above, but machine data processing is connected to the conscious thinking of the human programmer.

The machine utilizes electric and mechanical power to rotely follow cyclical patterns consciously configured in terms of beginning, middle and end states by the programmer. So, when you connect the programmer to the machine, there is no processing of information without consciously experiencing it.

Information does not exist outside of patterns recognized and strategically plotted by humans. In the absence of the human will, "information" is merely brownian motion.

I see no obvious reason why consciousness cannot perceive itself as an object. — ucarr

Grab your right hand with your right hand and report back. — Wayfarer

RH = Right Hand. Now, let me file my report on my right hand grabbing itself.

Report: RH = RH.

Now, it's your turn to respond to one of my things: I say that when I make a claim about something, intending by my claim to establish an objective fact, I simultaneously treat that something as an object.

You argue in your post above that: consciousness cannot treat itself as an object.

If you're right then you're wrong because in making your claim you've established an objective fact
about consciousness. Isn't that what you're trying to do? Well, what you're trying to do is straighten me out about a certain objective fact about what consciousness cannot do. How are you able to do that outside of knowing that fact?

Conclusion: a) If you're right, then you're smack in the middle of paradox a la "This sentence is false;" b) If you're wrong, as in "Consciousness cannot treat itself as an object is wrong." then you're still smack in the middle of paradox: a) if you're right, then you're wrong; b) if you're wrong, then you're right.

Conclusion The subject/object duo cannot be broken apart. Each always implies the other. That's the bi-conditional, isn't it?

Conclusion. If the previous two conclusions are correct, then the theory the conscious is a non-intersecting parallel to the material must pursue its search for support elsewhere.

...the hard problem of consciousness is...the paradox it creates when thinking of consciousness as an object in the world. — Skalidris

...the hard problem of consciousness will always remain for those who try to visualise consciousness as an object. — Skalidris

when we ask ourselves “why are these materialistic phenomena accompanied by experience?”, we trigger a self referential explanation that has no other outcome than being circular — Skalidris

...consciousness cannot be viewed solely as an object since it has to be there for the perception of objects. — Skalidris

It’s equally true that consciousness cannot be viewed solely as a subject since objects must be acknowledged in order to establish consciousness.

I see no obvious reason why consciousness cannot perceive itself as an object.

Objects are established by descriptions of what they are and what they do apart from opinions and acts of imagination.

There is a well-known counter-example to your claim:

Consciousness can only be viewed as consciousness (cannot be broken down into something else since it is always there as a whole in our reasoning). — Skalidris

This example is the Measurement Problem.

It gives us a clear example of consciousness observing itself as an object in accord with what an object is and what an object does:

Schödinger's Cat

A thought experiment called Schrödinger's cat illustrates the measurement problem. A mechanism is arranged to kill a cat if a quantum event, such as the decay of a radioactive atom, occurs. The mechanism and the cat are enclosed in a chamber so the fate of the cat is unknown until the chamber is opened. Prior to observation, according to quantum mechanics, the atom is in a quantum superposition, a linear combination of decayed and intact states.

Any future evolution of the wave function is based on the state the system was discovered to be in when the measurement was made, meaning that the measurement "did something" to the system that is not obviously a consequence of Schrödinger evolution.
--Wikipedia

What is consciousness? In our context here, it is a measurement system. This is a fact about consciousness, thus establishing its identity as an object.

What does consciousness do? In our context here, it changes the state of superposition into the state of (well-defined) position.

Perhaps it is that post hoc reflection that makes us think we are sometimes consciously aware. It is only the moments we recall that could make us believe that. — Janus

I did see something red. And I don't need post hoc reflection on such an experience. I can look at something red right now, and reflect on the experience as I'm having it. — Patterner

There is the question whether experience of direct sensory input is incomprehensible_inexpressible stimulation_perturbation of a material_physical state, with this brute force registration of a now altered state -- perhaps somewhat parallel to an electron hit by a photon and then elevated to a higher orbital shell in its now excited state -- causing a memory circularity that is the reflection Janus refers to above.

So, by this continuity, consciousness is rooted in circularity_redundancy and, like Wayfarer's point about the meaning of a printed book being inter-relational -- as in the waveform of mass, i.e., energy as distinguished from the particle form of mass, i.e., matter -- does not possess a discretely resolved position and direction; consciousness, like in the reading of a book, does not have a discrete vector measurement possible, and so it appears as if pre-QM science cannot measure consciousness.

QM, however, can and does measure the probability clouds of energetically perturbed elementary particles. Also, the whereness of vector-measurable phenomena is addressed as waveform-like probability graphs in a theater of action that allows existential ambiguities of the physical_material. It's math that currently makes the closest approach to the physical_material status of consciousness.

We must continue to mine math's ability to measure things we can't imagine experientially.