Then how can you even use the term, "physicalism" and "experiences", when you have no means of testing and all you can do is guess at what they mean and how they are related? You keep using the terms without explaing what they mean.

I agree that we've invented the hard problem. The problem arises from the incoherent terms that we are using.

Yeah. It's a hard problem (of our own invention).

It's easy.

Where do you draw the line [...]? — Beautiful Mind

Not a problem either.

I have absolutely no idea. All anyone can do, whether it's within physicalism or any alternative, is produce untestable hypotheses (guesses).

Shouldn't we have some idea, at this point? The mind-body problem has been around since Descartes' time. What progress has physicalism made in solving it?

Shouldn't we have some idea, at this point? — RogueAI

I don't see why.

So it's not a problem, nothing to see here folks, but at the same time it's unsolved and we have basically no predictive power?

OK, when does the lack of progress become a problem, in your opinion? Suppose we still don't have an explanation for how brains produce consciousness 100 years from now. Is that a problem for physicalism?

I don't think it's a problem.

Have we invented the hard problem of consciousness? — Beautiful Mind

The problem didn’t need inventing; it occurs immediately from the invention of consciousness itself. Not much doubt the problem has been made difficult, merely from disagreement with respect to the conditions under which a purely metaphysical construct can serve as a necessary human quality.

So it's not a problem, nothing to see here folks, but at the same time it's unsolved and we have basically no predictive power? — Mijin

When firings of the required kind occur in certain cells, the subject can to some extent produce, sort out, criticize, revise descriptions or pictures of a horse. The "image" and the "picture in the mind" have vanished; mythical inventions have been beneficially excised.

[...] we must construe informal talk of rotating images in some way that does not imply that there are images twirling in the head. — Nelson Goodman: Sights Unseen

Just like most people, I had to have a "penny drop" moment, where I realized that pain, color, smells etc are phenomena that occur in the brain, not in the outside world (or the body, in the case of pain), in a way we don't yet understand. — Mijin

Colors twirling in the brain?

Hundreds of years of lack of progress on something so fundamental as consciousness wouldn't be a problem for physicalism? Obviously, at some point (e.g., 10,000 years from now), lack of progress on the Hard Problem would be catastrophic for physicalism.

@bongo fury
Firstly, I find it hilarious to find someone that believes an assertion from a book is proof that qualia don't exist.

Secondly, I didn't say anything about images. I was simply saying color, pain etc are phenomena created by brains i.e. the same thing your quote is saying.

Finally yes, predictive power about the experiences themselves.
Ironically one example of subjective experience where we do have predictive power is optical illusions. I say "ironically" because this seems to support the notion of the brain constructing images.

Just interested in what you think. :smile:

I'm not at all sure if you are talking about images. :chin: