@Olivier5@ChatteringMonkey@frank@magritte
Okay looks like you have the book already! What page are you all on? I would like to discuss his cogent understanding of Cartesian Theater. Does anyone want to reference that and provide some of his examples?

Structural strength: for an emerging form to perdure at all, the form must be structurally cohesive and/or self-sustaining. Otherwise the slightest perturbation in the environment would erase the form. A structure that emerges and then vanishes (like the waves in the OP) is not building up any emerging property over the long term. It emerges and then goes back to zero, and so does the next wave.

Cumulative: for emergence to go anywhere over the long run, it needs to build upon past emergence. So to qualify as real emergence, a structure or form has to maintain some of its structural gains over time (criteria of structural strength), long enough for another emerging form to happen, AND this new emerging form has to build upon the previous one (i.e. be cumulative).

Self-maintainance: because of entropy, an emerging form is generally subject to degenerescence and destruction. In order to satisfay criteria of structural strength and cumulativeness, an emerging form must therefore be able to repair itself, otherwise it is not going to last long enough for cumulative emergence to happen. — Olivier5

What is the nature of a new property to inhere in something? Solidity of an object let's say. At what level is solidification happening? To what? Where?

I'm up for it as long as the book isn't super expensive. — frank

I don't think it is. Not sure how to set these up though. People would have to let me know when they get the book I guess.

I have to start reading again, Terrence Deacon's Incomplete Nature. He does start discussing this. I am not far enough along to comment on his actual theory. I do like his discussion of Cartesian Theater and Homunculus fallacy. Reading group anyone? He does try to tackle the problem of emergence I believe, via the idea of "abstential states". I am not sure I will buy it, but it is an attempt. Even Dennett said this may have changed his view on things. That is indeed pretty good praise.

"If we were pressed to give a definition of emergence, we could say that a property is emergent if it is a novel property of a system or an entity that arises when that system or entity has reached a certain level of complexity and that, even though it exists only insofar as the system or entity exists, it is distinct from the properties of the parts of the system from which it emerges. However, as will become apparent, things are not so simple because “emergence” is a term used in different ways both in science and in philosophy, and how it is to be defined is a substantive question in itself." — frank

So I'd even go further as to break down what the term "arises" means here. What does that entail. Our brains probably process this term similarly, but the term on its own might have issues. It is a fiat epistemic change. Arises, like many terms creates a new epistemic leap but without explanation other than, this happens.

Alright, what is a level disconnected from our cognition and use? What do you exactly mean with the word 'to exist' entirely separated from any kind of viewer?

I'm also not saying nothing exists before we discovered it, i'm saying our descriptions and the languages we use (which includes words like exist) are (partly) influenced by us and our needs. — ChatteringMonkey

I believe in some circles, the term "view from nowhere" and "view from everywhere" is discussed. Now discuss haha.

If we were omniscient, with unlimited cognitive powers, there doesn't seem to be a reason why we would use higher level emergent descriptions. Everything in a fluid could in theory be described in terms of particles moving (and probably more complete), we just prefer using fluid dynamics because it is to complex 'for us' to describe it in terms of moving particles. — ChatteringMonkey

Yes good example.

There's a difference in reports or accounts of what's happening at different levels. If there were no accounting happening, would the difference still be there? — frank

Right.

... and why would levels necessitate a viewer? — magritte

Because what is a property without something that knows the property? How do properties arise from simpler properties without just assuming that property already there?

Sorry to interject but I think this is a concept that may require some attention, as well as the reverse concept of "bottom-up causation".

When I hit on a nail with a hammer, and the nail is driven down a plank of wood, can I say that the hammer head is accumulating kinetic energy, and that it transmits this energy to the nail? Or should I rather think that the atoms of the hammer head are accumulating kinetic energy and transmitting this energy to the nail atoms? Or should I instead say that the wave function of the hammer head elementary particles is interacting with that of the nail elementary particles? And at a smaller level, what about the quarks of my hammer? Are they the ones doing all the work or what?

I think that scale is in the eye of the beholder. We should avoid the assumption that there is a privileged scale at which causation happens. Causation happens at all levels at once because all levels coexist in one reality. Up and down in this context are best understood as metaphors for scale of observation, not for causation channels. — Olivier5

Yes, but all of this (and I am going to include your folding and feedback loops from other thread here, are things observed at some level (our conscious one). What atoms and elementary particles are the most basic "simples" (as the term is used in philosophy circles).. and how they bootstraps themselves to other epistemic levels is at question. You can say feedback loops, but that seems like a shoehorn phrase, similar to the Cartesian Theater, as we are observing the feedback loops at this level already. What are feedback loops without this already-observed top-down level?

What do you mean by epistemic levels? — frank

This was in the context of the debate on experiential states vs. physical states. When new phenomenon come about, it is usually already cognized from an experiencer. When you see the results of physical forces arising, you are already viewing it. However, mental states are the very thing viewing the emergence, and is itself supposed to be emergent. What exactly is "emerging" if we are talking about mental states? And from "what" is it emerging? What perspective is going on here? Is everything from a localized perspective? Water has properties of fluidity. What is fluidity at a level of atomic structure? You need the top-down perspective for fluidity to even make sense. Otherwise it is turtles all the way down. There is no separation of this or that phenomena. It just is in itself. It's actually really hard for me to explain. Some days I can explain these thoughts better than others. Struggling right now.

In three sentences you've gone from being open to the neurological phenomena being identically consciousness, to being merely the cause of consciousness, to being merely a correlate of consciousness again. All I can say is to repeat: if you are aware that, in Dennett's view, they are not merely correlates but the thing itself, it doesn't make any sense to expect him to answer a question on the separate question of the thing itself that is not meaningful in that view, or to pretend he hasn't addressed the question because he doesn't treat it as a separable problem. — Kenosha Kid

If it was panpsychist, it certainly could be the phenomena is identical with mental states. The same goes for causation. How is it the thing itself has a subjective what it's like aspect is not explained, so that is still the question at hand that is being ignored. If it's not a separable problem, he still didn't answer the question. It's okay if he doesn't want to. Stick to the easier problems. It is safe. You can say that your philosophy is more empirical therefore clearly more legitimate and all that. It looks like @javra, @Marchesk and @Wayfarer are also explaining similar ideas. But, you open yourself up if you are writing books like Consciousness Explained and you aren't even approaching that question. It should be something more like.. "Rehash of cognitive neuroscience with some thought experiments for why the term qualia is not quite right".

Is that a metaphysical question? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes.

So in the case of the living being, the bio-structure must have emerged somehow. — Olivier5

But what is emerging into what? How? Similar to the hard problem, you can tell me that these atoms and those atoms come together, but if the whole is greater than the parts, how is it that downward causation or top-down causation works without a viewer? To say it does it just does once things are combined is to beg the question of how the parts that created the whole created a new phenomenon. Certainly a viewer cognizes the results of combinations of parts to whole. What is that on its own without the viewer though? Before you answer this, keep in mind there is no viewer here. What is happening is not like what a human perceives happening just without humans. Rather it is the thing-itself, It is happening outside cognition. How is it this new epistemic event occurred. I remember @apokrisis used to refer to this as the "epistemic cut". And then he would go on a whole tangent on Peircean semiotics. Without invoking that particular philosophy, I think the term is useful so I'm going to use it.

That's not a definition of the hard problem I have heard of before. The formulation I've always come across is the one that might admit correlates of consciousness in neurology, but never consciousness itself. — Kenosha Kid

I believe something like panpsychism would be perfectly okay with neurological phenomena equating with experience. However, they jettison the dualism of only neurons doing in their arrangements and composition being equated with experience. However, whether pansychists are correct, you can have hard problemers who see the physical phenomena as the thing itself, but they try to solve it by saying it is there from the beginning rather than something from nothing. However, if we start debating this, then we are actually debating the hard problem, and no longer waving it away. I am fine with that, but I didn't want to shift the conversation to panpsychism, rather that the question at hand is how it is certain physical phenomena can be equivalent to experience, or rather why experience in the first place, not what mechanisms are responsible for what experience.

Neurology is a physical discipline. It is not its job to satisfy metaphysicists any more than it's its job to satisfy creationists or dualists. — Kenosha Kid

True but Dennett is a philosopher to be fair, and not a strict neuroscientist. It would not be out of the realm of possibility for other philosophers to engage him in these kind of (philosophical) questions. And I recognize this might be a legitimate neuroscience question, it is a legitimate philosophical question.

ne. It is not its job to satisfy metaphysicists any more than it's its job to satisfy creationists or dualists. If you're in principle satisfied that the science can isolate what consciousness is, not just correlates (including causal) of consciousness, but want a deeper understanding of why a thing that is something is that thing, which is not a question specific to consciousness at all, you ought to look to other metaphysicists, surely? Is there a specific aspect to consciousness that makes this special? — Kenosha Kid

I am not sure what you are asking. I think we are agreeing that the hard problem question is probably not a strict neuroscience answer. But philosophers never expected it to be. It's when a philosopher handwaves it and then narrowly focuses on the correlates when clearly the question is not about the mechanisms of how the correlates integrate, but how it is that this correlation exists in the first place, that's when there is the continual ignoring of question or talking past each other.

Yes. Knowing how tornadoes work requires more than understanding the mechanics of moving dust, and we can understand tornadoes without knowing anything about quantum physics. — frank

I think we are agreeing.. My point was sort of the epistemological paradox of emergence. We know of all other emergence through the process of cognizing it. At what epistemic level do tornados exist? Everything we know about emergence happens within the epistemic framework of a "viewer". Without the viewer, what is it from something to move from one level to another? What does that even look like? There is always a sort of hidden viewer in the equation. I guess I hear key words from types trying to answer this like "top-down causation" but it seems like a modern way of positing Descartes' God that is a necessity for everything else to exist.

The sort of viewpoint I gather you're espousing is that, no, these will always be interpreted as merely correlates of the thing, but never the thing itself, god forbid. So while all of the content of an experience might be accounted for neurological correlates, and the start of an experience might be preceded by neurological correlates, these correlates cannot constitute the having an experience itself, they can only be little helpers. — Kenosha Kid

In other words, hard problemers have it back to front. Dennett agrees with the above: there's no separable hard problem to answer. NCCs aren't correlates but the thing itself, not individually but as a messy whole. The likes of Strawson misrepresent this as a claim that 'consciousness does not exist', but in fact it's an affirmative claim that consciousness is real, not an added sprinkle of magic on top of real stuff. — Kenosha Kid

So this is as I thought, again, talking past each other. Hard problemers wouldn't even discount that the neurological correlate is the thing itself. Rather, it would be why this metaphysical case exists that the neurological underpinnings is experiential. Yep it "causes" experience. Not debated. How is it metaphysically the same as experience is the question.

If a property is emergent, it has characteristics that are not seen in its building blocks. A tornado is an emergent entity. If I'm reductionist regarding tornadoes, I would claim that the concept of a tornado is misleading. There are no tornadoes and to the extent people believe otherwise, they have bought into an illusion. — frank

You're point there seems close to the point I am making here:

We can also add in the odd understanding of how is it something can "emerge" in the first place. Emergence implies some sort of epistemic leap from one stage into another. I'll just leave it at that. — schopenhauer1

Would you agree that is similar to what you are getting at?

I contend that a lot of this really is a debate about whether consciousness is sort of an immediate (instant) "gestalt" of experience or if it is a construction of micro-processes of neurons. I don't know if any modern philosopher would doubt that it is the latter. But to say that hard problemers don't recognize this would be running towards windmills. You cut the corpus collusum, you take away this or that part of the brain and, who would have thunk it, a cognitive capacity disappears! Also, the electro-chemical firings of neurons, and their networks happen in certain parameters like microseconds, etc. This is all recognized. That is not moving closer to the hard question though. It's playing in the same well-trodden sandbox. You can move the Cartesian theater anywhere you like, but its always set up somewhere.

No I'm not. Human beings are made of the same stuff as other animals and the medium-sized dry goods in our environment — Srap Tasmaner

Who said we weren't? Not me.

we are the sort of animals we are because of exactly the same processes of evolution that result in other animals being the way they are. — Srap Tasmaner

Agreed there in terms of underlying evolutionary mechanisms, though I will add that each animal has contingently a unique combination of those underlying mechanisms that can result in novelty and then usually reuse later. So its a combination of novelty and exaptations perhaps. But this doesn't mean I disagree that the basic underlying mechanisms are the same.

And when we're not unconscious, we're conscious. — Srap Tasmaner

Ok.

That fact doesn't trouble me in the least. Why on earth should it? It's exactly as interesting as the rest of natural science, but it's not shocking or troubling in some way. I honestly have no idea why people think it is. — Srap Tasmaner

The troubling thing is that there is a "What it feels like" component going on (read as mental states). How mental states exist, what it is as compared to the physical mechanisms that are correlated with it, is why it is such a perplexing question. We can also add in the odd understanding of how is it something can "emerge" in the first place. Emergence implies some sort of epistemic leap from one stage into another. I'll just leave it at that.

But that again is merely your insistence that the hard problem is separable and distinct. You're not demonstrating that Dennett isn't answering the question; you're disputing the grounds on which he answers it, just as he disputes the grounds on which you ask it. — Kenosha Kid

Yep. That does seem to be more the divide here. Not recognizing the legitimacy of the other side.

Now, yes. But the answers that cognitive neuroscience yields were once thought to be inseparable aspects of that hard problem. Now they're not, hence: hard problem of the gaps. — Kenosha Kid

I would not say that the are really. I would give you neuroscience has answered questions about processes that would not be known if we didn't know about the behavior of neurons or experimentation. Again, you have to at least recognize that "hard problmers" are recognizing this too. They are just not recognizing that it is answering the hard problem. It is tangential and near it, but not the question. No one is disputing that processes correlate with certain phenomenal experiences. No problems there.

It's not a distinct question, so it's not some unrelated line of thought either. It's what people who are actually interested in the phenomenon are doing while people who are interested in their own belief systems wet themselves. — Kenosha Kid

Again, as I explain. I don't think hard problmers have any problems with scientific research into cognitive neuroscience. It is the attachment that this is answering the question that they have a problem with. You again, do not recognize this. This is exactly why I said several posts ago that you have to at least be charitable that they recognize cognitive neuroscience findings.

That word, "irreducible", has a very particular connotation for a lot of us, and it's not a nice one. — Srap Tasmaner

A lot of this goes down to whether you want there to be a dualism in your scheme. Anytime you have "rises out of" "emerges from" and it is some subjective state that adds the very "feeling" of the world that you are using to analyze it, you are in trouble. Now you are a (hidden) dualist.. That's not going to jive well if you wanted to be a materialist/physicalist of some kind.

The premise is patently not coming close to answering the hard problem at hand. The claim is that by describing the easier problems, the hard problem will little if nothing left. However, the easier questions aren't even approaching the answer, so how can it "close off" the hard problem when it never ventured the realm of answering it? Let me deconstruct what I mean based on one of your examples:

For instance, seeing a car as a car rather than some generic smudge of colour in a background of smudges of colour is an important aspect of the disputed qualia of 'this car'. As Isaac described, we already know much about how the brain recognises objects, so the hard aspect of this is pushed back to purely the subjective appraisal of the quale and not the derivation of any of its properties: a hard problem of the gaps. Likewise other shapes, colour, orientation, distance, name, and everything else that makes up the contents of our subjective experiences. What we're left with is a question of how a particular part of the brain does one particular thing, out of all the almost countless other things the brain is doing to construct our subjective experience that are becoming clear. — Kenosha Kid

Here we are describing processes that have some "what it feels like" aspect to it. Yet, instead of getting to the "what it feels like" aspect WHY this is in the first place, we go back to cognitive processes and the correlates. Now YOU have to be charitable enough to realize that hard questioners AREN'T denying the science of the findings of cognitive neuroscience. Rather, they are asking why it is that the processes even have a "What it's like" aspect. Just pointing back to the processes isn't an answer to that particular question. So it isn't a hard problem of the gaps. It's all gaps because the divide is not even being recognized. It's like someone asking you a clear question and then you rambling on about a bunch of findings that don't answer it. It's ignoring it and then pointing to some other line of thought. It's having a one way conversation with someone who does not recognize there is a conversation.

If there's no question to answer, it would be odd to answer it. — Kenosha Kid

So, we can debate all day about the hard problem. The smaller claim I am making here is regarding the methodology of what is going on in this "debate". People like Strawson seem to be saying, "Look! There is this hard problem!". People like Dennett seem to be saying, "Yes, let me explain this by moving to things like qualia being subjectively illusionary as to their "realness" the person experiencing them". That's two different conversations. I would like to know Dennett's straight-ahead answer to it. It's like if we were talking about one subject and you went on a tangent in the same field but not really answering the question at hand. If I remember, all I can see is just some condescending string of sentences, some getting worked up for being asked the question and going back to qualia and the like. I'd like to see his direct views on the hard problem, even if it is just to dismantle it. But yet, when I read him trying to do this, he does the same SLEIGHT OF HAND. He keeps drowning out the problem with things that are not really the problem. Here is a perfect example:

Why the hard question is seldom asked
One explanation for the neglect of the hard question is that science in this area proceeds from the peripheries towards the interior, analysing the operation of transducers and following their effects inwards. Start with the low hanging fruit; it is a matter of proximity, non-invasiveness and more reliable manipulability—we can measure and control the stimulation of the peripheral transducers with great precision. Research on the efferent periphery, the innervation of muscles and the organization of higher-level neural motor structures, can be done, but is more difficult for a related reason, which has more general implications: controlled experiments are designed to isolate, to the extent possible, one or a few of the variable sources of input to the phenomenon—clamping the system, in short—and then measuring the dependent variables of output. Accomplishing this requires either invasive techniques (e.g. stimulation in vivo of motor areas) or indirect manipulation of subjects' motivation (e.g. ‘press button A when you hear the tone; press button B when you hear the click; try not to move otherwise’). In the latter case, researchers just assume, plausibly, that conscious subjects will understand the briefing, and be motivated to cooperate, and avoid interfering activities, mental or skeletal, with the result that they will assist the researcher in setting up a transient virtual machine in the cortex that restricts input to their motor systems to quite specific commands.

Similarly, working on the afferent side of the mountain, researchers brief subjects to attend to specific aspects of their sensory manifold, and to perform readily understood simple tasks (usually, as quickly as possible), with many repetitions and variations, all counterbalanced and timed. The result, on both the afferent and efferent fronts, is that subjects are systematically constrained—for the sake of science—to a tiny subset of the things they can do with their consciousness. Contrast this with non-scientific investigation of consciousness: ‘A penny for your thoughts’, ‘What are you looking at now?’, ‘What's up?’

This is all obvious, but it has a non-obvious side effect on the science of consciousness: it deflects attention from what is perhaps the most wonderful feature of human consciousness: the general answer to the hard question, ‘And then what happens?’ is ‘Almost anything can happen!’ Our conscious minds are amazingly free-wheeling, open-ended, protean, untrammelled, unconstrained, variable, unpredictable, … . Omni-representational. Not only can we think about anything that can occur to us, and not only can almost anything (anything ‘imaginable’, anything ‘conceivable’) occur to us, but once something has occurred to us, we can respond to it in an apparently unlimited variety of ways, and then respond to those responses in another Vast [11, p. 109] variety of ways, and so forth, an expanding set of possibilities that outruns even the productivity of natural languages (words fail me). Of course, on any particular occasion, the momentary states of the various component neural systems constrain the ‘adjacent possible’ [12] to a limited selection of ‘nearby’ contents, but this changes from moment to moment, and is not directly in anybody's control. It is this background of omnipotentiality that we take for granted, and cordon off accordingly in our experimental explorations. It is worth noting that we have scant reason to think that simpler nervous systems have a similar productivity. Most are likely to be ‘cognitively closed’ [13] systems, lacking the representational wherewithal to imagine a century or a continent, or poetry, or democracy, … or God. The famous four Fs (feed, fight, flee and mate) may, with a few supplements (e.g. explore, sleep) and minor suboptions, exhaust the degrees of freedom of invertebrates.

Probably even our closest relatives, the chimpanzees and bonobos, have severely constricted repertoires of representation, compared with us. Here is a simple example: close your eyes right now and imagine, in whatever detail you like, putting a plastic wastebasket over your head and climbing hand-over-hand up a stout rope. Easy? Not difficult, even if you are not strong and agile enough—most of us are not—to actually perform the stunt yourself. Could a chimpanzee engage in the same ‘imagining’ or ‘mental time travel’ or ‘daydreaming’? I chose the action and the furnishings to be items deeply familiar to a captive chimp; there is no doubt such a chimp could recognize, manipulate, play with the basket, and swing or climb up the rope, but does its mind have the sort of self-manipulability to put together these familiar elements in novel ways? Maybe, but maybe not. The abilities of clever animals—primates, corvids, cephalopods, cetaceans—to come up with inventive solutions to problems have been vigorously studied recently (e.g. [14–16]), and this research sometimes suggests that they are capable of trying out their solutions ‘off line’ in their imaginations before venturing them in the cruel world, but we should not jump to the conclusion that their combinatorial freedom is as wide open as ours. For every ‘romantic’ finding, there are ‘killjoy’ findings [17] in which clever species prove to be (apparently) quite stupid in the face of not so difficult challenges.

One of the recurrent difficulties of research in this area is that in order to conduct proper, controlled scientific experiments, the researchers typically have to impose severe restrictions on their animals' freedom of movement and exploration, and also submit them to regimes of training that may involve hundreds or even thousands of repetitions in order to ensure that they attend to the right stimuli at the right time and are motivated to respond in the right manner (the manner intended by the researcher). Human subjects, by contrast, can be uniformly briefed (in a language they all understand) and given a few practice trials, and then be reliably motivated to perform as requested for quite long periods of time [18]. The tasks are as simple as possible, in order to be accurately measured, and the interference of ‘mind-wandering’ can be minimized by suitable motivations, intervals of relaxation, etc.

The effect, in both speaking human subjects and languageless animal subjects, is to minimize the degrees of freedom that are being exploited by the subjects, in order to get clean data. So, huge differences in the available degrees of freedom are systematically screened off, neither measured nor investigated.

This explains the relative paucity of empirical research on language production in contrast with language perception, on speaking in contrast with perceiving, parsing, comprehending. What are the inputs to a controlled experiment on speaking? It is easy to induce subjects to read passages aloud, of course, or answer ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ to questions displayed, but if the experimenter were to pose a task along the lines of ‘tell me something of interest about your life’ or ‘what do you think of Thai cuisine?’ or ‘say something funny’, the channel of possible responses is hopelessly broad for experimental purposes.

Amir et al. [19] attempted to find an fMRI signature for humour in an experiment that showed subjects simple ‘Droodle’ drawings [20–22] that could be simply described or given amusing interpretations (figure 1).
— Facing up to the hard question of consciousnessbDaniel C. Dennett Published:30 July 2018

Okay, well Dennett's view is that we don't need to understand the hard problem, i.e. it's not a separate problem that will remain once all the easy problems are solved, but rather a conceptual problem arising from ignorance. — Kenosha Kid

But you know that is a stance he (you) are taking on this, not necessarily the case, right? I mean it isn't a forgone conclusion that there is not a hard problem. But my main point further, is certainly Dennett isn't even coming close to answering it by criticizing certain theories on the physical mechanisms and their subjective equivalent "illusionary" aspects, as they are reported by individuals.

So as long as we agree on at least that much- that Dennett is not even approaching the hard problem, then fine. In other words, in order to discount it, you have to actually grapple with it. He has not.

In case you needed a definition, this Wikipedia introduction isn't bad:

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why and how we have qualia[note 1] or phenomenal experiences. That is to say, why do we have personal, first-person experiences, often described as experiences that feel "like something." In comparison, we assume there are no such experiences for inanimate things like, for instance, a thermostat, toaster, computer or, theoretically, a sophisticated form of artificial intelligence.[2] The philosopher David Chalmers, who introduced the term "hard problem of consciousness,"[3] contrasts this with the "easy problems" of explaining the physical systems that give us and other animals the ability to discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, focus attention, and so forth.[4] Easy problems are (relatively) easy because all that is required for their solution is to specify a mechanism that can perform the function.[4] That is, even though we have yet to solve most of the easy problems (our understanding of the brain is still preliminary), these questions can probably eventually be understood by relying entirely on standard scientific methods.[4] Chalmers claims that even once we have solved such problems about the brain and experience, the hard problem will "persist even when the performance of all the relevant functions is explained".[4] — Wikipedia article on the Hard Problem of Conscioiusness

What is your point here? That anyone who researches anything to do with mind must answer one question and nothing else? That's not how research works. You cannot dismiss the work of, say, all physicists who do not have a Theory of Everything. — Kenosha Kid

No, Dennett is fine doing what he is doing. As long as we can say that he doesn't have an answer for the hard problem, cool. But what I don't think is right is to say that his project necessarily explains what is being debated in circles that do believe there is the hard problem of consciousness.

Strawson is responding to Dennett, not vice versa. — Kenosha Kid

But what is Dennett's response to the hard problem, if not to retreat to easier ones?

This is a case of philosophers talking past each other. Strawson for example, seems to be asking for answers to the hard problem. Dennett keeps reaching for easier ones in response. That is the variance going on here. Thus, Dennett is going to be the favored theory for people who want to really just how neuroscience relates to cognitive psychology and the like. However, that isn't really the metaphysical question at hand.

Dennett is saying that the theoretical description of qualia is wrong (and, furthermore, that qualia themselves, while real enough, are not scientifically useful). — Kenosha Kid

Yes, I find this the problem with Dennett. He doesn't seem to approach the hard problem. He keeps trying to hack away at easier problems. The question that people keep throwing back at him, is so what about the hard problem. And in answering this, he keeps going back to people's misconception about qualia which is confusing because that is not the hard problem. I'd rather Dennett just admit, "Fuck it if I know, but here are problems that are easier to possibly get an answer."

We're sampling from an already formed space of features introspectively rather than looking at the process of perceptual feature formation which is constructing the elements of that sample that we later sample from with another (related) process. — fdrake

Yep, this looks like we are getting somewhere towards the hard problem. That to me seems like indeed, a formal version of what is called the Cartesian Theater problem. Related is also the homunculus fallacy.

Excellent analogy with the programming exame by the way to get at Dennett's point. Quale descriptions can be considered a constructed folk psychology fiction. However, if his implication is to jump to: "Because how we describe quale is inaccurate, thus experiential "feels like" phenomena is thus a fiction..well, thats a bridge to far.

o say someone is "forced" to exist is an exercise in rhetoric. The word is used in an effort to persuade others that it's wrong to reproduce, or characterize reproduction as evil. To say someone's existence was caused doesn't have the same negative connotations. That's what I think. Perhaps, though, I was forced to think by my parents. I certainly could not think if I didn't exist. — Ciceronianus the White

I think this is a case of (most likely) double standard on things you don't like to hear. I mean someone's death could have simply been caused to happen, or it could have been forced to happen. Force implies no consent was obtained. Just because in the case of procreation, can never be obtained, doesn't mean this isn't true. You were forced to exist, because you had no say and it was not you who caused your own existence. Caused doesn't get at the notion either.

We exist where prior we did not exist. No one can ask us this, and to take ourselves out of the game is surely suicide and death. So, what does one call this scenario? I contend that force is the word that captures the meaning conveyed here. It might not be "violently" done (though maybe birth can be seen somewhat that way), but certainly it is something that is happening to someone else that is physically happening to them.

This has similar themes to what I was discussing before. If it was known someone would be 100% known to be tortured if they were born, and everyone KNEW that was going to happen to the baby, should that person that will be born not be considered? If you think yes it should be considered, then certainly in the same sense, "FORCE" is applying here to the same sentiment. In other words, it would certainly be wrong to say, "No, the baby has to be born to be tortured, so that we can then consider that the baby not be tortured". That would indeed be crazy talk.

So I propose this anti-usage of "FORCE" is a rhetorical tool, to show disdain for the idea that birth is indeed something not caused by the individual it is happening to, and without consent because it indeed does imply negative connotations. But so it is.

I can also argue at another angle that the instant, Time T that someone is born, THAT indeed is the force in question. You don't even need anything prior to that. The instant a human exists and that human had something as serious as a whole lifetime of living upon them, that indeed counts as "forced".

But they don't force a baby. There is nothing being compelled. Parents don't say "Let's force (or compel) a baby to exist" or "I want to force a baby to come into the world."

As the OP seems to acknowledge, "force" is being used in an strange manner in this case, for effect. I don't know why, and I don't think it works. — Ciceronianus the White

I'm not sure about the OP but I think I have sufficiently explained why force can be used when what is being caused is indeed an experiential being. I've seen it used in these forums in this way besides just me, so if your criteria is use (and not just Ciceronianus' hangup with this kind of use) I think it would be valid as people know what the sentiment means without the perplexity you are attaching to it. So either case, use, or just definitially (that an experiential being that is caused to exist from actions that are not from their actions) it works.

Doesn't the Bible say we were born into sin? Something akin to evil? If not why did God sacrifice his own son? Why do we need to be saved by Jesus, instead of science? — Athena

I'm not sure why, but didn't get notification for this when you mentioned me. Anyways, so you are giving me the Romanized reconstructed version of this, which was exactly as I said was not the original construction which was pretty much following a set of commandments for a group of people. How well you follow these rules, is the model you are "judged" if that is the appropriate word. There are commandments for not eating pigs, and animals that don't chew their cud, and don't have certain type of feet, etc. There is a commandment to drain as much blood as possible from meat. There is a commandment to build open air huts on a certain day of year, there is a commandment to eat unleavened bread on another day of year. There is a commandment not to murder and covet thy neighbor's ass or wife. Those are the things.. Once divorced of this context, it becomes a mish mash of whatever the storyteller wants to sell their believers. I provided the historical context.. It was mainly people like Paul who came after the actual Jesus Movement and moved outside the main Jesus Movement's influence in Jerusalem. The rest is history. See my post again for how I think that history went in a very summarized form.

All the reasons you give can be more really about the attitudes of people who want to maintain society. You exist because at some level, people think it is okay to bring more people into the world and thus, de facto, work at maintaining the institutions to maintain society and bring about more people who will do so. It is just that over and over. Your feelings on the matter are irrelevant, unfortunately. You either get with the program, try to hack it in the wilderness and die a slow death or die a fast death through suicide. Getting with the program means using the institutions of a given society to get your deprivation needs met of survival, comfort, entertainment.

I think I have good reason to believe it makes no sense to speak of us as if we existed before we exist,. Because, I hope it doesn't surprise you to learn, we don't exist until we exist. We exist only when we exist. So there is no me, nor is there a you, pondering or deciding whether or not we should exist until we exist. Nor is there a me or a you that can be forced exist when neither you nor I exist. — Ciceronianus the White

If a being will be made that will exist if X, Y, Z actions are taken, why can that not be considered "forcing" an existence of another? In other words, can you be caught up on semantics that actually don't align with the intended meaning here? If I have parts of a chair, and intend to make one, am I not in a way, making a chair exist where there was only its potential parts? Now, when the "making X exist" outcome will be a living being, forcing does indeed become an appropriate word as there is a being that will experience that results from another person's actions. So "forced" here doesn't need to imply that the actual person born has to exist prior to the actions, but rather, that actions taken by someone else can make that experiential being come about as a result. That is the sentiment being conveyed. The "forcing" is implying an action which results in a person (an experiential being) being caused to exist by another person's action that was not their own.

You can never die. Because you never existed in the first place. — Hippyhead

The being that needs to survive, find comfort, and entertainment, lest some deprivation be felt through pain, suffering, need, and want.

I dunno read and analyse the paper and see what you think. — fdrake

I read the pumps, and ask this still to you.

If it turned out that keeping the explanatory gap open required relying on theories/intuitions which can be shown to be confused, inaccurate or false, only then would the hard problem dissolve. — fdrake

Isn't this possibly a case of a straw man then? Knockdown qualia but not the real problem (the hard problem). Call it sense-data, mental states, subjective states, qualia. Its choosing a very specific kind of idea (qualia) to (possibly?) try to eliminate all mental states from the equation. If he's not doing this, then can you explain how he is not doing this? What is Dennett's stand if not on qualia then on mental states in general? If it is something like, "It's an illusion" (not just qualia but mental states altogether), then what the heck does that mean? The illusion is still "something".

Besides and just for the heck of it, what do you say Christianity exactly is, or what it means to be a Christian? — tim wood

I think the Bible is a certain people's mythological-historical-saga story. The original Jesus Movement was one branch of this movement with emphasis on Son of Man vis a vis messiah (look at book of Enoch 1-3), a mix of mainly Essenism with Hillelite Pharisaic thought. After death, a cult of personality formed, but was still mainly about following Laws (vis a vis the interpretations of the founders of this movement). After death, it was mainly headed by Josh's (Jesus') brother Jacob (James). An interloper from Tarsus came and his own ideas. His name was Paul. Paul started a movement which combined Hellenistic Judaism (see writings of Philo for example) with his own ideas. Son of Man becomes a sacrificial god-man for sins. This idea is already popular amongst mystery cults around empire. It can be relatable to all kinds of peoples, not just one tribal identity and history. Its all about selling the heads of communities so they can convert their brethren. Then when powerful men like the Emperor take it on to help unify East and West under one idea (Constantine), make laws to stomp out any pagan remnants (Theodosius). So yeah, its an amalgam of Paul, Church Fathers (people after Paul), and infusion of all sorts of Greco-Roman thought at the time (including Neoplatonism), into a fundamental ideology (Nicene Creed and bunch of other councils after). Its highly divorced of its original context and replaces the whole notion of what is the template for that one is judged by in the first place.

In fact, I think the nebulousness of judgement is dangerous cause now its anyone's game. However, you can argue that the divisions of Judaisms at the time of Jesus already had the blueprint for comparing different judgements. Thus, the Essenes can cry "Wicked sinners!" To the the pharisees and saducees in Jerusalem who were following a lunar-solar calendar rather than just a solar calendar which they thought was the most accurate (and thus most accurate in holidays for the right time of year to follow the holidays). Essenes can say the Pharisees and Saducees in Jerusalem were impure for following laws one way and not another. However, at least they all agreed on the very laws that were the judgements.