The above is my launch into the spine of my OP. — ucarr
And you start by making an obvious error. All questions are "what?" questions.
How does ice melt? = What are the processes/mechanisms that cause ice to melt?
With his paper, "The Hard Problem," David Chalmers shows in stark fashion what science, so far, cannot do: it cannot objectify the personal point of view of an enduring, individual self with personal history attached. It can technologize the self via computation, but the result isn't an authentic self. Instead, it's just a simulation of the self without an autonomous self-awareness. This technical self is just a machine awaiting additional source code from humans. — ucarr
There are many questions that science struggles to address. How consciousness works (what are the processes of consciousness) and what it is (what it does) are scientific questions.
Any question is potentially a scientific one - scientific method can be applied to SOME degree.
Expressing emotions and blind opinions are not scientific, but we can investigate the cognitive science behind why some people do this and explore how it can be useful (in a scientific manner NOT an emotional one instilled with blind opinions).
If there's a grain of truth in what I've written above, then Tarskian is correct in the characterization of the Incompleteness Theorem being the cause of a crisis in science and math. Jeffrey Kaplan compounds the reality of this crisis with his exegesis of Russell's Paradox. — ucarr
I think Husserl started to address this by pointing out that psychology does not deal with subjectivity - because it takes on a material objective measurement of non-material subjective content. The whole point of his phenomenology was to create a new 'science of consciousness' that explored primal concepts and better ground underlying principles for the physical sciences.
Science is defined by hard and fast rules/laws that are accurate enough to surpass mere blind opinion or singular subjective perspectives.
The Arts do not do this:
- History does not, whereas the science of Archeology does.
- Literature does not do this, whereas the science of Linguistics does.
I have a feeling you are confusing yourself by interchanging Why, How and What without appreciating that they are ALL What questions. This then lead to you holding to How for one line of questioning where it suits you whilst holding to Why for another (even though - to repeat - they are BOTH What questions).
Experiencing is experiencing. Consciousness is consciousness of ... not simply some floating item - Husserlian 'intentionality'.
Maybe you wish to ask 'What would we mean by saying Consciousnessing?' rather than relying on the term "thinking"?
As of yet, I am still unsure what you are saying and starting to think that you do not really have a clear idea of what you mean due to misapplication of terms and heuristic bias.