I perpetually notice that people can only see their own ideas when they read or see things. If their own ideas are not in those things then they ignore or brush over them & brush them out of the way. People only see themselves, & if any person has power then they will inevitably dismiss all people who do not think or act like themselves; or fit into their lives in some helpful manner.

A comedian on stage will tell jokes that mock & insult people's irregularities. A corrupt leader will sentence to death or imprison any citizen or person who does not think like them or act in the correct manner.

There was one person who was told by the doctor that he had terminal cancer & so he did gradually wither & die. But when the autopsy was done it was found that he didn't have cancer after all.

Another person had an incurable disease that many suffer from, but a person who did not know this tried hypnotising the ill person & telling him that the disease would heal now; which it did completely.

So an incurable disease was cured by suggestion, & a healthy man was killed by the simple suggestion that he had cancer.
This demonstrates the power that people can have over us if we believe them. Even when they are 100% wrong.

There is also the story of the girl who fell asleep by the fire & when she awoke she had a different personality entirely. She was a completely different person, to the alarm of her parents, & then a year later she fell asleep by the fire & when she woke up she was her old self again. This happened a number of times, & she was taken to a hypnotist who put her into a trance & ordered her old self to come back to her.
She went limp like a dead person & a loud voice came out of her, & all the people in the building & waiting room heard it & ran. They stated later it sounded like the voice of God. The voice told the two hypnotists to leave the girl alone or It would take the girl's soul away & leave her dead body behind.

There are countless stories like that which prove that mankind's medicine & knowledge are not very developed after all & know next to nothing about the true nature of "The Self".

Psychology & psychiatry were also something the nazis used to torture & kill people. Anyone who did not look & think like them was obviously an inferior life form with an inferior mind that must be removed etc.

If God appears to you they will say you imagined it. Because all they can perceive about God is their own imaginings & beliefs etc. And if they are atheists or nazis then that is all they will project onto others. It happens 24/7 on the entire web & world & there is no exception. So be very careful about what you allow yourself to believe. If you put your faith blindly in someone else then you are nothing more than a cult type member thing who believes the most ridiculous things.
You have to only believe in yourself & develop & expand your own mind by opening it to God. It's like a flower opening to the sun's light. You'll see things much clearer when you let God be your teacher & guide

Neurophenomenology is this mapping between rich conscious descriptions and brain processes. It allows for a chipping away at the explanatory gap between the hard problem and neuroscience, which may end up suggesting the cause and not just an in-depth correlation. — Marchesk

I think it's worth asking why are people who think that there's an "explanatory gap" likely to accept explanations that are "mapping between rich conscious descriptions and brain processes"?

I think it's worth asking why are people who think that there's an "explanatory gap" likely to accept explanations that are "mapping between rich conscious descriptions and brain processes"? — Terrapin Station

Because many of them like Chalmers want a science of consciousness where it's taken seriously, and they think there is a strong correlation between brain activity and consciousness, so it would be informative to map that out. Also, I think philosophers like Chalmers would change their mind on the hard problem if science showed them a way the gap might be explained.

Presumably, proponents of the hard problem became convinced there was a gap because of arguments in favor of a gap, so they could become unconvinced. That's how it should work. We should change our views when good arguments/evidence become available.

I have a question or two which, to me, represents why the problem of consciousness cannot be solved by a scientific consciousness-brain explanation and must instead depend on a philosophical and abstract one:

How is a person aware/conscious of their own awareness/consciousness?

How do we perceive our own perceptions?

No matter how many turns of feedback one supposes the brain has, there is still the question of how the final turn is registered into our awareness without creating another loop. And, if we claim awareness/consciousness or even perception is a mere activity within the cause-effect or action-reaction paradigm, then what is there to prevent plants from being conscious?

Because many of them like Chalmers want a science of consciousness where it's taken seriously, and they think there is a strong correlation between brain activity and consciousness, so it would be informative to map that out. — Marchesk

My impression has always been that the folks who stress that there's an "explanatory gap" would feel that way no matter what explanation is forwarded, especially because they'll give no clear criteria for what fhey require of explanations.

especially because they'll give no clear criteria for what fhey require of explanations. — Terrapin Station

That raises the question of whether the explanatory gap lies with the limitations of explanation. Does an explanation have to cause you to experience the transition from explanation to experience?

I'm not even sure what I'm saying here, but part of the problem with not knowing what it's like to be a bat is that no description is going to put you into the state of having a sonar experience. At least, I can't see how it would.

but part of the problem with not knowing what it's like to be a bat is that no description is going to put you into the state of having a sonar experience. — Marchesk

Exactly, and sometimes it seems like that's what critics are demanding.

Exactly, and sometimes it seems like that's what critics are demanding. — Terrapin Station

That is something to take into account, but it's also because we can't say why any brain process would have a conscious correlate other than some just do. Which then limits us epistemologically from knowing about other animals, machines and aliens.

Well, it's akin to asking why any physical stuff has just the properties it does.

ell, it's akin to asking why any physical stuff has just the properties it does. — Terrapin Station

Imagine though if atoms had a special property only under certain situations, and we couldn't give a scientific reason for that.

Anyway, nobody has jumped on the inferential view of perception yet. Perhaps I should have made the thread about that instead of another hard problem one.

Well, it's akin to asking why any physical stuff has just the properties it does. — Terrapin Station

No, it's not; because physical properties are generally well understood within a coherent system of causality-based theory which comprises the sciences. No one has any idea how physical processes can cause phenomenal perception as it is subjectively experienced.

Anyway, nobody has jumped on the inferential view of perception yet. Perhaps I should have made the thread about that instead of another hard problem one. — Marchesk

There doesn't seem to be a problem with the idea of inferential perception, even AIs may be able to do that. The real puzzle is as to what could give rise to experiencing oneself perceiving; the reflexive experience that probably leads to the notion of the much maligned "Cartesian Theatre".

In the attached Aeon essay, I note the following:

In my own research, a new picture is taking shape in which conscious experience is seen as deeply grounded in how brains and bodies work together to maintain physiological integrity – to stay alive. In this story, we are conscious ‘beast-machines’, and I hope to show you why. — Anil Seth

Which is an immediate red flag for me, as I don’t see humans as either. If we’re talking such crude generalisations, then I would refer to the well-known popular philosopher, Gordon Sumner, better known as Sting, who insists that ‘we are spirits in a material world’. (Just like René!)

Another question - through the natural sciences we have discovered many capabilities and powers. What capability and power could we expect to discover through this science? When Socrates stood before the portal of the Oracle of Delphi and read the inscription Gnothi Seauton, should he have declared it impossible, due the lack of the appropriate apparatus? So I can’t help but think this effort is part of the attempt to bring the question of the nature of being itself under the purview of the human sciences. I mean, they’re having a hard enough time figuring out the exact nature of the simplest thing in the Universe, namely, the atom, so good luck with that.

What this inference allows is a mapping of phenomenology onto mechanism — Marchesk

Why is there a mapping at all? Talking about mappings implies some kind of dualism.

I want to know why minds appear as brains when we look at them.

I want to know where in the television set all those people are hiding.

It's like the Tardis; bigger on the inside.

This so-called 'real problem' just is what Chalmers called one of the 'easy problems', so I'm not sure what's all that new here. And until consciousness is understood as a dynamic loop between 'outside and 'inside - rather than just reversing the direction of things, there's very little that useful here.

The basic principle of the phenomenological approach is completely/utterly absent of any differentiation between any apparent ‘outside and inside’ dualism.

All that matters in regards to the phenomenological investigation is the ‘experience’ as it is regardless of its parcelling into ‘real’ and/or ‘physical’. This is useful to anyone looking into the neurological lens of consciousness as it allows for an agenda-less perspective that can help piece together, or pry apart, relations between data gathered in the cognitive neurosciences and the phenomenological approach that is wholly unconcerned with ‘physicality’ yet never in denial of the physical sciences.

Note: I don’t believe ALL cognitive neuroscientists regard neuro-phenomenology in the same manner as some drift from Husserl’s stance (Varela is how I found Husserl and the phenomenological approach to the cognitive neurosciences).

I’ll pull up the little article Varela wrote about the cognitive neuroscience and the different ‘philosophical’ approaches later when I find the link. I think it will be very useful for this particular discussion - couldn’t be MORE fitting :)

so I'm not sure what's all that new here. — StreetlightX

The inferential part about perception where the brain is guessing at what the sensory inputs will be is different than what people arguing philosophy say perception is, and the idea that you could arrange experiments to help map that indirect computation onto experience might possibly lead to discovering a causal link, instead of just supposing that argument has determined a priori that such a thing can't exist.

Of course the arrow goes both ways as the brain updates it's guessing with new inputs it receives as it tells the body to move about. Maybe this view of perception would find some agreement from the Kantians, with the inference mechanism being part of to categorizing the sensory manifold.

Anil Seth (from the link given above):

People consciously see what they expect, rather than what violates their expectations

The Oracle (from the Matrix Reloaded movie):

We can never see past the choices we don't understand.

I think the whole "brain-predicts our reality" thing is just another way to say that our consciousness/awareness is efficient, harmonious or works along the path of least resistance (chaos). I don't think it's a new approach to understanding consciousness, just a scientific version of an idea already existing in the philosophical paradigm.

“Presumably, proponents of the hard problem became convinced there was a gap because of arguments in favor of a gap, so they could become unconvinced. That's how it should work. We should change our views when good arguments/evidence become available.”

I definitely agree with this. This is the essence of pragmatism really and pragmatism seems to be the dominant philosophy within science itself.

“So the brain combines prior expectations of what's likely to be out there in the body and world with sensory data to come up with its best guess as to what's out there, which is a form of bayesian inference. He claims there is emerging evidence the brain is doing something like this.”

An altogether terrifying prospect. This seems to imply that the real universe is different to the one that exists inside our heads. It would begin to explain why a group of people can perceive the same event and perceive and remember it quite differently. For me this really highlights the importance of the collaborative approach to understanding reality.

“My impression has always been that the folks who stress that there's an "explanatory gap" would feel that way no matter what explanation is forwarded, especially because they'll give no clear criteria for what fhey require of explanations.”

I wouldn’t be overly concerned with these critics. Seeing as how philosophy is a long term collaboration: the real test of any argument or explanation comes from repeated critique over multiple generations. If the explanation or argument has value somebody will point it out eventually. There might even be an explanation to be made about what we infer from our expectations of reality, based on a critics expectation of this explanation to be unsatisfactory.

An altogether terrifying prospect. This seems to imply that the real universe is different to the one that exists inside our heads. — Mark Dennis

But we already knew this was the case, at the very least because our senses are limited, and many things we only learned about the world after we had the technology to perform experiments and gather data to tell us how the universe was different.

Imagine though if atoms had a special property only under certain situations, and we couldn't give a scientific reason for that. — Marchesk

All materials have unique properties in certain situations. I'm not sure what makes some of those properties "special." And the scientific reason never amounts to seeming like the properties in question. We just describe the materials, their structures and relations, how those are different in particular situations, and then report the properties exhibited.

No, it's not; because physical properties are generally well understood — Janus

Yet again you don't understand what I'm saying. All we can do is talk about the physical stuff in question. Talk about it structurally, relationally etc. None of that ever seems like any of the properties we ascribe to it. Or if it does to anyone, it's simply because they're so used to making the association and not questioning it that they take it for granted.

Could it be that the qualia-type product surely indicates that the brain at some point in its progression through higher and higher modules has to generate more and more qualia-like symbols along the way, this 'symbol language' having evolved solely within the brain, this still remarkable but no longer seeming so 'magical'?

Consciousness has nothing to do with brains.

Consciousness has nothing to do with brains. — bert1

So if we replaced your brain with sawdust, you'd still be conscious?

So if we replaced your brain with sawdust, you'd still be conscious? — Marchesk

For a phenomenologically minded empiricist, the very meaning of a scientific hypothesis is the sense in which experience is said to corroborate or refute the said hypothesis and this sense cannot be transcendent of experience. Therefore this empiricist is likely to reject your question as meaningless and inapplicable in the first-person.

Nevertheless, neuro-phenomenology can potentially have sense in the first-person, in terms of an association between sensory experiences and brain-probing-experiences, as for example in an experiment in which the subject records his experiences when probing his own brain.

Nevertheless, neuro-phenomenology can potentially have sense in the first-person, in terms of an association between sensory experiences and brain-probing-experiences, as for example in an experiment in which the subject records his experiences when probing his own brain. — sime

Please provide a link to your paper when published.

My identity would be destroyed. Brains determine identity rather than consciousness, I think. Perhaps by integrating information (Tononi/Koch). I think the IIT may be a good theory of identity, but it fails as a theory of consciousness for the same reasons other reductive theories fail.

Therefore this empiricist is likely to reject your question as meaningless and inapplicable in the first-person. — sime

The OP was referring to one neuroscientist's approach to explaining consciousness, or at least providing more detailed correlation. My question would be the hard problem, I take it. That problem comes about because of the expectation that science can provide an explanatory framework for everything.