I was just saying this same thing. Worldview comes into play in the assumptions people make about it. — frank

Which renders the 'hard problem' meaningless. Why would empirical objects like neurons match some use of a word embedded in a certain culture? If we're not describing some.empirical object (or event) then it would be weird if some empirical objects matched up with it exactly. The 'hard problem' would emerge if there was a one-to-one correspondence. Then we'd have something odd to explain. That it doesn't is exactly what we'd expect. It's not even an easy problem, its not a problem at all.

it is incoherent to doubt consciousness. Because doubting itself (arguably, I guess) entails consciousness. — bert1

This only works if you define consciousness circularly as 'that without which its impossible to do things like doubt'.

The thing is, consciousness, in this sense, is not an empirical object which means we're not 'discovering' facts about it, were determining them. We don't 'find out' consciousness is required for doubting, we declare it to be so.

If we define consciousness as a physical function, for example, the hard problem disappears. That's why definitions are absolutely crucial. — bert1

Yeah, which we can, of course. Hence my invoking the Glasgow coma scale earlier. We can (and do) use the term sometimes in a perfectly 'physical function' kind of way. There's no one thing 'consciousness' is. It's just a word. Like most words, it's used in all sorts of ways with all sorts of degrees of success.

It's just a name for something we know exists, namely whatever it is in us by virtue of which we can have experiences. — bert1

Do we know there's something by virtue of which we have experiences? Can't we just have them, does some additional factor need to 'allow' it?

unless you want to deny that we have experiences, which you might. — bert1

I wouldn't want to deny we have experiences, but this doesn't touch on the 'hard problem'. The hard problem has, as a foundational axiom, the notion that the things we talk about - experiences, awareness,... - ought to be causally connected to the objects of empirical sciences. That it's in some way odd that there's no direct connection. I reject that premise. It seems to me that we can talk of all sorts of things from consciousness, to god, to pixie dust... We all know what each other is talking about to some extent in each case (enough to get by) but it doesn't require any of those objects to correlate with something empirical science might reify.

Like 'Orange'. It's definitely a colour, and it's constrained in some ways by the actions of photons (objects of empirical science), but nothing in empirical science could ever say where orange ends and red begins, not because of some deficiency on empirical science, but because 'orange' just isn't that kind of a thing.

a neuroscientist who believes that neuroscience is giving a representation of consciousness, such that the neurological activity being studied is equivalent (or something like that) to consciousness — Metaphysician Undercover

Can you give me an example of a neuroscientist you think is committing this error?

The people in Ukraine who are fighting Russians are fighting because they were attacked by Russians. — Paine

How on earth would you know that? Weren't you earlier berating @Manuel for...

you are willing to explain to the one's fighting why they are dying. — Paine

How are you not doing exactly the same here. Maybe some are staunch nationalists. Maybe some want to expunge all Russian influence from Eastern Ukraine and welcome the chance. Maybe some don't give a fuck who's in charge but Ukraine has conscription and has banned men from leaving the country...

Nationalism is poison, be it Russian, Ukrainian, American or whatever. — Manuel

Exactly. The reason why so many in this discussion cannot seem to get their heads around viewing this in any other grouping than by nationality. As if Zelensky (net worth $20 million), Putin (net worth $70 Billion), and Biden (net worth $9 Million) were not all in the same group, and far more separate from the working classes of Russia, Ukraine and America who each have far more in common with each other than with any of their ruling classes.

As if a flag carried more significance than being able to afford a roof, food, or medical care.

The first is trans identity. I think broadly construed that applies to people who've transitioned surgically, people who live as the opposite gender otherwise, and I'd guess people like the Nádleehi. To me this is a binary concept - someone has trans identity or they don't. People are cis or trans. — fdrake

Unlike your definition of gender dysphoria, this definition still seems too vague to work with. It's seems no more than saying people who are trans, are trans. What is it to be trans? Is it wanting to act like another gender to the one assigned to you at birth, or is it wanting a different sexual phenotype to the one you have? Or is it both?

If the former, then gender dysphoria must be construed as a solution, not a motive - it's something the mind has 'come up with' to pin it's hopes on. Like (in your sugar craving example) saying that the lack of cookie is the problem. It's not - the lack of sugar is the problem, the cookie was a solution, the lack of which now seems traumatic, but if offered a cake, the trauma of cookie-less-ness would go away.

If the latter, then why sexual characteristics? Why not arm length, or head size, or hair colour?

If both, then why would they be connected at all if gender is a social construct. If we want to say there's no such thing as a female brain, then the association between female body parts and female gender roles is nothing but coincidence (biologically), we'd expect a pathological desire for female body parts and a natural desire to play a woman's gender role to be completely unrelated.

Societal attitudes to gender roles seems to be essential (to come back to this later).

The proximal cause of the trauma seems to be having a tendency towards gender incongruous expression and people treating you like shit for not abiding to norms which forbid that expression. Compound event of what looks like an innate tendency with a social construction. — fdrake

I think this is a good broad assessment. So with regards to treatment -

How would you feel about skin-whitening being offered to black kids in neighbourhoods suffering from systemic racism in the police?

How would you feel about chemical castration of homosexuals in Islamic regimes?

If both of those make you feel a little icky, then what's the difference between them and gender re-assignment for people suffering the sort of trauma Fred Martinez experienced?

We mustn't lose sight here of the pro-trans movement's agenda. The campaign slogan is not "we must reluctantly use sex-change surgery, until society finally accepts us for who we are (which we're working on)", nor is it "the medical barriers ensuring sex-changes are only considered in cases where the level of trauma is sever enough to justify the risk - let's keep things just as they are". Organisations like Mermaids and Stonewall are campaigning for easier access to sex-change drugs, and more encouragement of trans children to seek out that option.

having a trans identity is biologically predisposed, but that gender expression is socially constructed, administering hormones would change the biology but also the interaction effect. To put it another way. body properties are gendered, gendering works through societal expectation, if you change the body to better fit the societal expectation of the body, you'd be making a social and bodily intervention at the same time. — fdrake

I think that works as far as avoiding the 'female brain' problem, but it lands us straight back into the idea that medication is only needed to better meet societal expectations. Again, would skin-whitening for black kids in racists communities be a good solution, something to promote? If not, then why sex changes for trans kids in gender-strict communities?

gender dysphoria isn't determinative of trans identity. — fdrake

Yes, I think we agree there, that's where I'd end up too. I can see a situation where there could be sufficient biological tendencies (through behaviours like imprinting) to explain universal gender preferences without resorting to notions like a 'female brain'.

There's a sub issue here about distinguishing NHS time for treatment (a resource question) and whether it's permissible to treat some body issues with surgical/drug interventions in a moral sense. — fdrake

Yes, that's the direction I was going in. There's all sorts of clashes between one's body and society's acceptance of it, between one's body and one's own desires for it. Why privilege sexual characteristics?

Well, some bombs are better than others, apparently. Putin's bombs hurt more. — Manuel

Yes, and also, we mustn't forget that people who die in wars die more than people who die from starvation, or air pollution, or lack of medical investment... so it's so much more important to prevent those deaths (obviously by selling them weapons) than it is to prevent deaths by any other cause (which, coincidentally, is also achieved by selling them weapons).

The difference between National Socialists and plain socialists appears to be pretty tenuous. — SophistiCat

Here, let me help.

Socialists recently at Spandau...


National Socialists when they were last at Spandau...


Spot the difference?

Hint - count the number of brutally murdered members of ethnic minorities in each photo.

These friends are all evil incarnate until a few bombs brings them freedom and democracy.... — Manuel

Abso-fucking-lutely!

Here, for example, are some people enjoying some of the freedom and democracy brought by US bombing campaigns in Yemen ...



They do look pleased, don't they?

And after the stirling work done by US military support in Afghanistan... some of the grateful population enjoying the freedom and democracy thereby brought about...



We can only look forward to the roaring successes their involvement in Ukraine will no doubt secure...

It's good that they don't care about nearly as much about those other countries you mention. With friends like these, who needs enemies? — Manuel

The US 'befriending' Libya...

I wish the world cares about Syria, Afghanistan or Africa as much as with Ukraine. — javi2541997

We've done caring about Africa, did you not see Band Aid? Africa should be all sorted now. It's Ukraine's turn. I shouldn't wonder a lot of flag-waiving and social media posts will have that problem knocked into shape with no lesser a lasting success.

These are all abiguous though, they can be construed in a way that avoids the concept. — bert1

If so, then in what sense is the concept necessarily so?

You seem quite adamant that the concept is there, but some are 'missing' it, yet you don't seem to be able to provide the necessity that would set it apart from, say, ether, or humours, or phlem...loads of concepts which we made use of at one time, but turned out just not to refer to anything at all.

we know everything of their properties, since unlike physical objects their properties exactly match what is subjectively disclosed. — hypericin

Disclosed to whom, from where? This terminology is obtuse. If we are making up the properties, then in what way can they possibly be 'disclosed'. They were never 'closed' in the first place.

They are yellow and blue — hypericin

They aren't. If they were yellow and blue they would make either green or black when passed over one another (depending on additive or subtractive mixing). Since they don't, they aren't blue and yellow.

Can we? — Isaac


Can't we? — hypericin

The article is about neural correlates of consciousness. You were referring to awareness.

Awareness is only "observed" directly by an aware subject of itself, all other observations of it are inferred. — hypericin

What? So we're aware of being aware? Are we aware of being aware of being aware?

If there are, as you say, neural correlates of awareness, then what system is involved in being aware of our being aware?

there is no observation that can conclusively disprove awareness, anything in principle might be aware. But, lacking any compelling evidence that they are aware — hypericin

But the compelling evidence that you're aware is only that you think you are. So if I think the camera is aware, that's exactly the same quality of evidence.

I don't mind how things must be, I care for how they are. — Olivier5

You said...

A doubt implies a person having it, a "mind" rejecting a belief. It can't be an independent doubt, free-floating in the universe. — Olivier5

That's a claim about how things must be (or this this case, must not be). It uses the term 'can't'.

If all you're interested in is how things are then the the claim is "A doubt implies a person having it, a "mind" rejecting a belief. It isn't an independent doubt, free-floating in the universe.

"We" means a collection of "I"... It's telling that you couldn't express your idea here without using a personnal pronoun.

If one doubts that there is a self, who is doing the doubting? A doubt implies a person having it, a "mind" rejecting a belief. It can't be an independent doubt, free-floating in the universe. — Olivier5

Just because our language is a certain way, doesn't provide cause to believe the world must conform to it. The fact that we use words like "I" and "we" means that we have these concepts as foundational parts of our communication. It doesn't tell us anything about the way things 'must be', only how things are.

You've no grounds to say "It can't be an independent doubt, free-floating in the universe", just because we don't use words that way. We could. We just don't.

Ukraine does not have its own history, language and culture — SophistiCat

Of course Ukraine does not have its own history, language and culture. It's an arbitrary line on a map, it's absurd to think it somehow contains a natural grouping of language, history and culture.

Tell me, how did the people who determined where the line should be ensure that it encompassed such a natural grouping? Were studies done, where polls taken? Because as I recall learning it, it was some politicians in a negotiating room that drew the line. Did Lenin consult ethnographers in 1922? Did Krushchev cede Crimea because his anthropologists insisted the 'culture' there belonged to Ukraine?

No country's boundaries are carefully drawn around natural breaks in culture and language. It's one of the reasons we have so many fucking wars.

In this case, you'd be blind to ignore the fact that the Russian-speaking population in the east of Ukraine have a different language to the rest, the suppression of which was instrumental in the pre-2022 war.

I'm not sure I immediately see the problem, but I'm aware that I don't have as exhaustive a knowledge of the field as you do. The first thing I'd want to know, if such statistics are available, is what kind of proportions we're talking about in terms of who has a 'vivid' NDE and who doesn't. I ask because the degree to which I'd find it surprising would depend on how prevalent it is. It's surprising to win the lottery, but chance dictates that someone will.

If (big if) our brains are collecting piecemeal data from the environment during anoxia, then it would indeed be surprising if the majority of people roused from anoxia were then able to reconstruct, from that drip-feed of data, an accurate and vivid account.

It would not, however, be all that surprising to find a very rare, very low frequency occurrence of people just happening to strike gold and construct a vivid account from the barest crumbs. It's not impossible, just improbable, so the numbers matter.

If you have numbers to hand (vivid NDE frequency over all patients spending time in anoxia), that would be interesting.

We are aware of an imaginary yellow and blue disks — hypericin

Then it's unclear what 'aware of' could possibly mean here. We know nothing of their properties, but are 'aware of' them?

We can measure neural activity that correlates with reported states of awareness, and which are absent when the subject is not aware. — hypericin

Can we?

We don't definitely know that the camera is not aware, just as we don't know the camera is not inhabited by a malignant spirit. We just have no evidence pointing to either case. — hypericin

Then why did you say that the camera wasn't aware. We're trying to pin down the meaning of 'aware' here. So if a camera might be aware, is there anything which definitely isn't? Or is 'awareness' a property literally anything might have, or might not have?

This is not just "some theory" this is central to human experience and self-understanding — Janus

So? Again, I'm not seeing how that prevents us from being mistaken about it. Deities (of various sorts) were equally central at one point, we're clearly wrong about (at least some of) them.

Humans generally experience themselves as being aware — Janus

I don't even know what that means. What kind of experience is 'experiencing myself as being aware'. What would experiencing myself as being unaware consist of?

If you are not able to be conscious of your own awareness, then that says something about you, not about others or humans in general. — Janus

Ah. Back to the "If you disagree with Chalmers you must have a brain defect" argument. I appreciate your concern, rest assured I will get the possibility checked out forthwith.

What is generally disagreeable hereabouts is the thinking that begins with subject or introspection or private sensations. — Banno

Yes. The same people who consider their qualia to be private and ineffable seem to be no less adamant that neuroscience's failure to 'eff' them in a public unitary theory is a mortal blow to the field.

All discourse is just stories; so what? — Janus

It's not about discourse. The 'story-telling' is a mental event prior to rendering it into any discourse. The point I'm making is that your own understanding of what's happening in your mental world is...

a) constructed after the event and so no less prone to error than any other third party trying to reconstruct it.

b) constructed from socially mediated concepts, a joint effort between you and the rest of your language community, not private, not fixed.

c) therefore not something which one would ever expect any physical science to show a one-to-one causal correspondence with the objects of that field. Neuronal activity and 'objects of conversation' are in two different worlds. The latter is constrained by the former, but not dictated by it.

So you have a special definition of consciousness for blind folks. Good for them I guess... — Olivier5

Same definition - maximum score on the Glasgow coma scale. The scale already takes blindness into account. If you tested pupillary response in a fully blind person you'd be doing it wrong. You'd be doing some other test.

But regardless, you're speaking as if you don't understand the concept of family resemblance. Perhaps a little reading might help. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/wittgenstein/wittgenstein-on-family-resemblance/831CEAF5C3B78D4CA94927F367979B0C

None of the computers I know have eyes. Can I conclude that they are definitely not self-aware? — Olivier5

You asked about consciousness (my definition of), not self-awareness.

What about people without eyes? — Olivier5

The pupillary reaction score is just left off in blind people, and those with potential eye damage.

I think the correct term for...

*more like a family resemblance of neuronal happenings, there's no one-to-one correspondence. — Isaac

...is Anomalous Monism. @Banno taught me the term, so will kindly correct me if I'm wrong.

'Experience' is a word we use to describe a set of happenings we learn through our culture belong to that word. Because our culture is embedded in a real world which science studies, there'll be some overlap with the objects of science (neurons in this case), but the overlap isn't necessarily direct because the concept 'experience' is constrained by the world science studies, it's not defined by it.

By the same token, there's no proper one-to-one causal relationship because 'experience' is just a word we have, used in a variety of social contexts. It doesn't necessarily describe any object of science, nor is the fact that there's no direct causal link surprising or 'a problem' (hard or not). We simply wouldn't expect there to be.

Why can't all the neuronal stuff happen without me thinking I'm having an experience? — bert1

Because some of the neuronal stuff is you thinking you're having an experience. 'Having an experience' is the term we use to describe that particular set of neuronal stuff*.


*more like a family resemblance of neuronal happenings, there's no one-to-one correspondence.

Maybe I didn't have an experience three milliseconds ago, but I am now. — bert1

Ok, so if 'experience' is the word we're using to describe the post hoc storytelling, then neuroscience has a few quite good models for that. There doesn't seem to be a hard problem there.

That's consistent with not having an experience. Is that right? — bert1

Other way round 4:5:6 is good (if memory serves - not a clinician!)

Would you happen to know if some computers are able to achieve a scoring of 4:5:6 on the Glasgow coma scale, as of today? — Olivier5

Possibly. They'd need to have eyes, but I don't see any reason they couldn't.

So, take the concept of a P-zombie. It's identified as being indistinguishable externally from a person with 'experiences', right?

Now, when you reflect on your own mental events, you're not doing so real time, you're doing so milliseconds (sometimes more) after they happened. So you, in reflection, are just like the third party looking at a P-zombie. You don't know for sure what just happened and could be wrong about it. You tell a story.

I am interested in a definition of consciousness that would be aggreable by most, including you. — Olivier5

Consciousness - The property of scoring 4:5:6 on the Glasgow coma scale.

But the fact that something is happening, you are aware of something happening, whatever it turn out to be, can't be wrong, can it? — bert1

I think it can be. It could be that I receive data, respond to it, then later rationalise that whole event chain as 'an experience' which could be nothing more than a post hoc story about what happened, not an accurate account of what really happened.

Because I'm not specifying any particular content. There nothing to be wrong about. — bert1

Your claim (as I understand it) is that something is going on in (or around) you, called 'an experience' which is not just neural activity. Something else. It's possible you're wrong. That no such thing is going on.

I was not asking for some name dropping, but for a definition of consciousness that is not vague or slippery. — Olivier5

Neither of those scales are particularly vague or slippery, they're used to good effect clinically.

What I can't be wrong about is that I'm having an experience. — bert1

Why not?

These are perfectly good definitions of one sense of consciousness. but not the sense involved in the hard problem. They are two different concepts. — bert1

Understood.@Olivier5 asked so I gave them. I don't think it helps much, it is, as you say, this other sense I'm trying to pin down.

What doesn't admit of being false is that the person is experiencing something-or-other, in other words, they are having an experience. — bert1

Why not? I don't see any prima facie reason why someone ought be 'having an experience' just because they say they are.

Even people like 180 Proof and Banno, who are well educated and sophistacated thinkers in many ways, genuinely don't seem to have the concept. — bert1

You mean "Even people like @180 Proof and @Banno, who are well educated and sophistacated thinkers in many ways, genuinely don't seem to have the concept."

Nothing about me without me (@Banno's done me this courtesy a few times, so I thought I'd return it)

You mind mentioning a few of them? — Olivier5

I don't think it will progress the discussion, but...

The Grady Coma Scale is instrumental.

The Glasgow Coma Scale contains more nuanced data.

Simple pupillary patterns if you want to go really super-defined.

Why assume the those who don't 'have it' are flawed and those that 'have it' not?

Would you also assume those who hear voices to be possessed of an insight others lack?

Would you say of those who just feel strongly in their gut that they can see the future, they really can see the future?

I don't see why this 'feeling' that there's something there is treated any differently to any other folk-notion. People feel strongly about all sorts of things that have later turned out to be nothing.

Why don't you give it a try then? Make the concept less slippery, if you can. — Olivier5

There are several definitions of consciousness I'm happy with. None of them result in a 'hard problem'. It's those definitions I'm trying to pin down.

I consider it perfectly normal to lack a precise definition for a philosophical concept. — Olivier5

Indeed, but its not simultaneously considered a failing of some empirical science to not then account for this vague philosophical concept in its models. We don't consider physics to have failed because it can't capture the sense of 'nearby'. There's no 'hard problem' of maths because it can't do 'quite a bit' multiplied by 'loads'.

Isn't this just what the 'hard problem' is about? 15 pages of texts and it's back to square 1. — Wayfarer

If so, then the 'hard problem' seems to be defing what the problem is.

So far, it seems there's this 'feeling' people have that there's something there that isn't just neuronal activity, but it's not actually detectable in any way (other than this 'feeling' that it's there), and that neuroscience's failure to match its empirical models with this vague feeling is somehow a problem for neuroscience.

It's equivalent to the concept of consciousness. — Olivier5

That's of no help because 'consciousness' is an equally vague and slippery notion defined, it seems, by exactly the same list of things it definitely isn't, but nothing it actually is.