another 'hard problem of consciousness' thread? That discussion was with me, and that is what was being discussed. If I will still a mod I'd merge it, this topic sprouts endless threads.

As for others, it's a safe bet that they are beings just as I am - that everyone is 'me' but from their own unique perspective. Hence the maxim to 'treat others as you yourself would be treated'.

Think back to your first memory; the very first and earliest memory you can remember.

Do you remember much about your thoughts and sense of consciousness (or self/awareness) at the time, or do you mostly remember yourself just being there, almost as if you were an observer?

I reckon it's the latter. So that means, different beings capable of consciousness can have varying states of consciousness. Compare a young child capable of basic conversation and decision making and a full grown intellect such as yourself. You're both conscious, but your depth or recognition of your own consciousness is simply far greater almost to the point of it being an entirely unrecognizable or distinct depth and level of existence. Same with someone mentally handicapped versus someone "neurotypical." It's also possible they may be able to experience the same things you do but for whatever physical or other reason are unable to express or share that they do.

As for others, it's a safe bet that they are beings just as I am - that everyone is 'me' but from their own unique perspective. Hence the maxim to 'treat others as you yourself would be treated'. — Wayfarer

Only humans? Or all conscious creatures?

No not only humans, although I'll never know what it's like to be a bat.

As mad as it may sound the only 'reasonable' conclusion I can come to is something about consciousness is atemporal. That or it is one helluva temporal trick!

There is nothing it is like to be conscious per se, unless, perhaps, there is something it is like to be conscious of consciousness. Consciousness is the property of a system whereby there is something it is like to be that system when it undergoes a change.

As mad as it may sound the only 'reasonable' conclusion I can come to is something about consciousness is atemporal. — I like sushi

Why do you say that?

Thanks, we always have to remember that animals belong within our circle of identification and compassion.

I have a friend who's coined the term "The Impossible Problem" to describe this wrinkle in the Hard Problem. (And yes, @Wayfarer, this is the very same question we're examining from different angles in the other thread.) My friend means the problem of actually experiencing another person's consciousness. Why does this seem impossible? It creates a dilemma: If I experience your consciousness as myself doing so, that is clearly not what it's like for you -- there's no observer or alien presence for you. But if I don't do this, and instead simply have your experience (how? but that's a different question), then I haven't experienced it -- my "I" is not present to do any experiencing. Either way, it doesn't seem possible that I can ever know what it is to be you (leaving aside the somewhat ambiguous "what it's like".)

This doesn't mean, of course, that it's unreasonable to suppose that being someone else resembles being me. The resemblance gets less and less close as we move through the animal kingdom.

I have a friend who's coined the term "The Impossible Problem" to describe this wrinkle in the Hard Problem. (And yes, Wayfarer, this is the very same question we're examining from different angles in the other thread.) My friend means the problem of actually experiencing another person's consciousness. Why does this seem impossible? It creates a dilemma: If I experience your consciousness as myself doing so, that is clearly not what it's like for you -- there's no observer or alien presence for you. But if I don't do this, and instead simply have your experience (how? but that's a different question), then I haven't experienced it -- my "I" is not present to do any experiencing. Either way, it doesn't seem possible that I can ever know what it is to be you (leaving aside the somewhat ambiguous "what it's like".) — J

We're talking about the most simple, center of everything sort of experience, like the ITT theory graphic:
check it out.

Let's call it the intrinsic perspective (for lack of another name?). Schopenhauer speculated that there is only one of these, and it's universal, each person thinks they own it. So Schopenhauer would agree with your friend, not because I don't have access to that most basic level of consciousness, but because if I could "download" your experiences, I might balk at the parts I'm not prepared to deal with. You don't balk because you're use to it. So right there, I'm not experiencing you as you. So here, the definition of self is about a certain history rather than raw intrinsic perspective, right?

I have more questions about how you think this relates to the hard problem.

We're talking about the most simple, center of everything sort of experience, like the ITT theory graphic:
check it out. — frank

This is a great graphic, thanks.

So right there, I'm not experiencing you as you. — frank

Yes, yet another aspect of the impossibility -- not only do we have our experiences, but we have our attitudes toward our experiences, our "experience of experience," and that would presumably be different for you and me, even if we somehow shared the 1st-level experiences.

I have more questions about how you think this relates to the hard problem. — frank

So do I! And if you've been following my discussion with @Wayfarer, you see that not everyone agrees on exactly how to characterize the hard problem. I read Chalmers as saying it's a scientific problem, hard but potentially solvable through scientific inquiry. Whereas I think Wayfarer sees Chalmers as being closer to the New Mysterian position of McGinn and others.

What are your questions about hard versus impossible?

And if you've been following my discussion with Wayfarer, you see that not everyone agrees on exactly how to characterize the hard problem. I read Chalmers as saying it's a scientific problem, hard but potentially solvable through scientific inquiry. Whereas I think Wayfarer sees Chalmers as being closer to the New Mysterian position of McGinn and others. — J

Wayfarer is mistaken. Chalmers is non-mysterian. He thinks that in order to create a scientific theory of consciousness, we need to posit first-person data as an explicandum, in much the same way gravity was posited by Newton without any accompanying theory. A mysterian would say any such project is hopeless from the start.

Chalmers has talked about pan-psychism as exemplifying the kind of theory we might start with: just accepting that consciousness is a property of our little universe, and go from there.

Our worldview tends to say that intrinsic perspective (or subjective experience), is located in isolated pockets, inside skulls? Mine is separated from yours by a region of air. Could you see yourself questioning that assumption?

@Wayfarer is mistaken. — frank

This is me speculating about his position. He may not think this at all.

Our worldview tends to say that intrinsic perspective (or subjective experience), is located in isolated pockets, inside skulls? Mine is separated from yours by a region of air. Could you see yourself questioning that assumption? — frank

Yes. Do you know Galen Strawson's book, Consciousness and Its Place in Nature? A very good argument for the plausibility of panpsychism.

Yes. Do you know Galen Strawson's book, Consciousness and Its Place in Nature? A very good argument for the plausibility of panpsychism. — J

I haven't. Does he talk about the problem of other minds?

Does he talk about the problem of other minds? — frank

Can't remember. I took a quick look through the book but couldn't find anything. Not to say it isn't there -- the book has an unusual set-up -- a long target paper by Strawson, then replies by about 16 philosophers, then a long response to all of them from Strawson. So it's hard to find stuff, and the index didn't help. But an excellent book nonetheless.

Cool. I see he quotes Schopenhauer, so I approve.

I cannot seem to fathom how we can appreciate time without partially transcending it.

Time is something we frame in time. It seems so inherent to the human condition that we tend to think of it as inflexible.

Even taking into account our conscious subjective appreciation of time -- a narrow window of attention -- relative to the semi-conscious and unconscious 'appreciation,' there is still something of a covering-over going on in terms of the homunculi account of time.

At the very least it seems to me that conscious subjectivity is distributed in a specular sense from multiple temporal instances. How else could anything be apprehended without having a fundamental atemporal aspect?

Even if we view consciousness ar large as a simulation -- meaning representation of -- how would it be possible to hold such appreciation of in a distilled instant? We are not photons, yet we live in a finite respect like photons, able to experience change firsthand.

I said it was a bit mad :)

I think Wayfarer sees Chalmers as being closer to the New Mysterian position of McGinn and others. — J

Never took to Colin McGinn, although enjoyed his scathing review of Paula Churchlands materialist baloney. Besides, 'New Mysterian' sounds like a band name. I simply reference the original paper (Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness) as a stepping-off point. Chalmers wants to redefine science to accomodate the first-person perspective.

One reaction this provoked was Daniel Dennett’s essay The Fantasy of First-Person Science. Dennett argued that the very idea of a “science” based on private, first-person data is incoherent (ridiculous, even!) Science, in his view, can only proceed on the basis of what is publicly observable and intersubjectively testable. Strictly objective, right? He was wary of granting privileged epistemic authority to introspection, which he regarded as unreliable and uncheckable. To resolve this, he proposed “heterophenomenology,” a method in which the researcher treats subjects’ reports of their experiences not as direct windows onto consciousness, but as neutral data to be interpreted. If a subject says “I see a red afterimage,” the scientific claim is not that an afterimage exists as described, but simply that the subject reported seeing one, a fact which can be combined with other behavioural and neurological evidence. For Dennett, this move rescues science from what he saw as the illusion that first-person testimony could form a scientific foundation.

Dan Zahavi responded in Killing the Straw Man that Dennett’s picture of phenomenology is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. Dennett assumes that phenomenology is a species of naïve introspection, committed to the incorrigibility of private reports and the construction of a “first-person science” in that sense. Zahavi insists that this is precisely not what phenomenology is. For Husserl and those who followed him, phenomenology is not a catalogue of inner episodes, but a disciplined investigation of the structures of experience itself—intentionality, temporality, embodiment, and above all, intersubjectivity. Phenomenologists have long recognised that introspection can be fallible and misleading; their project is not to defend subjective reports as infallible data, but to uncover the fundamental patterns through which experience arises, which are themselves shared and already presupposed in any science. In that light, Zahavi argues, Dennett is fighting an enemy that doesn’t exist. His “heterophenomenology” might be a corrective to old-fashioned Willhelm Wundt-style introspective psychology, but it is not a correction of phenomenology, which never claimed what he attributes to it.

Although, that said, I think the nature of mind is mysterious, but not in the way Chalmers, or McGinn, are suggesting. It's not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be faced.

A genuine problem is subject to an appropriate technique by which it can be attacked and reduced. A mystery, by contrast, transcends any conceivable technique; it is not reducible, because it is a situation in which the inquirer is him- or herself a participant. — Paraphrased from Marcel’s The Mystery of Being

Which I think is much nearer the mark.

I cannot seem to fathom how we can appreciate time without partially transcending it. — I like sushi

I understand what you're saying. My theory is that the conception of time is related to anticipation. Agriculture creates anticipation throughout the year: farmers plant around the spring equinox, they wait all summer to see how the crop will do, they harvest around the fall equinox, and then wait all winter for the next spring.

All of that requires being relatively stationary. You can't be nomadic and farm, and being stationary is how people were first able to mark out the solar calendar.

As you say, if you're looking at the whole calendar, your vantage point seems to be outside of the passage of time, in some eternal spot.

Thanks for this clarification. (And yes, Owen Flanagan coined "New Mysterians" as a deliberate reference to the 60s band "? and the Mysterians".) If we agree that consciousness is, for now, a mystery, the question becomes, Are there structural or even transcendental arguments that show it must remain so? McGinn thinks so. Chalmers can be read either way, but I continue to see his description of the hard problem as meaning it can be solved, with important changes in scientific method.

Do you think consciousness has to remain a mystery in Marcel's sense -- that the presence of the inquirer makes the phenomenon irreducible to explanatory language, to "technique"?

Julian Jaynes has an interesting part in his book that you may find interesting towards your question.

Metaphor and Language

Let us speak of metaphor. The most fascinating property of language is its capacity to make metaphors. But what an understatement! For metaphor is not a mere extra trick of language, as it is so often slighted in the old schoolbooks on composition; it is the very constitutive ground of language. I am using metaphor here in its most general sense: the use of a term for one thing to describe another because of some kind of similarity between them or between their relations to other things. There are thus always two terms in a metaphor, the thing to be described, which I shall call the metaphrand, and the thing or relation used to elucidate it, which I shall call the metaphier. A metaphor is always a known metaphier operating on a less known metaphrand. I have coined these hybrid terms simply to echo multiplication where a multiplier operates on a multiplicand.

It is by metaphor that language grows. The common reply to the question “what is it?” is, when the reply is difficult or the experience unique, “well, it is like—.” In laboratory studies, both children and adults describing nonsense objects (or metaphrands) to others who cannot see them use extended metaphiers that with repetition become contracted into labels.2 This is the major way in which the vocabulary of language is formed. The grand and vigorous function of metaphor is the generation of new language as it is needed, as human culture becomes more and more complex.

A random glance at the etymologies of common words in a dictionary will demonstrate this assertion. Or take the naming of various fauna and flora in their Latin indicants, or even in their wonderful common English names, such as stag beetle, lady’s-slipper, darning needle, Queen Anne’s lace, or buttercup. The human body is a particularly generative metaphier, creating previously unspeakable distinctions in a throng of areas. The head of an army, table, page, bed, ship, household, or nail, or of steam or water; the face of a clock, cliff, card, or crystal; the eyes of needles, winds, storms, targets, flowers, or potatoes; the brow of a hill; the cheeks of a vise; the teeth of cogs or combs; the lips of pitchers, craters, augers; the tongues of shoes, board joints, or railway switches; the arm of a chair or the sea; the leg of a table, compass, sailor’s voyage, or cricket field; and so on and on. Or the foot of this page. Or the leaf you will soon turn. All of these concrete metaphors increase enormously our powers of perception of the world about us and our understanding of it, and literally create new objects. Indeed, language is an organ of perception, not simply a means of communication....

If I will still a mod I'd merge it, this topic sprouts endless threads. — Wayfarer

Your... aggressive, willful approach to interfering with other people's threads used to infuriate me.

It is a first-person phenomenon, so-called experience, that anything with the ability to experience knows what it is like to have such a certain experience rather than other experiences, given what you are, where you are, etc.

It is a first-person phenomenon, so-called experience, that anything with the ability to experience knows what it is like to have such a certain experience rather than other experiences, given what you are, where you are, etc. — MoK

I came the same conclusion. If you tried to say anything about what's unique about your own experience, it would be a description of your history and present location.

Interesting quote

Correct! :wink:

It left me pondering how I know what it's like to be conscious if I can't know what it's like for other people. Wouldn't I need something to compare or contrast it with? I wasn't thinking about the ineffability issue. It would be closer to a private language problem, where I wouldn't be able to speak confidently about continuity of consciousness. I wouldn't be able to say it's this and not that. Maybe I have to assume other people experience things differently so I can say pinpoint something unique about me? Is it my POV that's unique — frank

It's the other way around. We assume that other people have consciousness "like me". Based on what they do or say, I can understand what they're saying based on my own experience. In other words, it's as if I am putting on the shoes of the other person and seeing things from their perspective, except it's my own.

That's why it's not particularly puzzling why - when someone has a broken leg, or even a cut and say, "it hurts", we understand what they mean, because that's what we would say if we were in a similar situation.

There are exceptions of course, some people are born feeling no physical pain (rare exceptions) and there are psychopaths, people lacking in empathy - but they're a small fraction of the whole human species. So, I'd argue you already know what it's like to be in the consciousness of someone else. Also, reading a good novel also helps.

That's why it's not particularly puzzling why - when someone has a broken leg, or even a cut and say, "it hurts", we understand what they mean, because that's what we would say if we were in a similar situation. — Manuel

Just thinking it through, but what if you say "it hurts" in certain situations because you're a natural born mimic? Over time, you learn to associate certain actions with certain feelings, but you have no language for the feelings other than what you learned from copying? Like this:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8wTmSIbGsIA

I think the example is way simpler. Yes, babies do what the video is showing, but that's not the same thing.

It's very common, as in you are walking on the street a fellow civilian gets hit by a rock or bitten by a dog - whatever. Or you find him injured and he says his leg hurts, you may either see an injury or assume the pain is not visible to the eye. You don't doubt he is in pain.

But you are not puzzled as to why he is saying his leg hurts, you would do the same thing in his position if your leg hurt too.

Or even migraines, they are very hard to detect, but if a person says, "I have a massive headache", you immediately understand and empathize, because you've head headaches before.

It's very common, as in you are walking on the street a fellow civilian gets hit by a rock or bitten by a dog - whatever. Or you find him injured and he says his leg hurts, you may either see an injury or assume the pain is not visible to the eye. You don't doubt he is in pain. — Manuel

Right. I think my point might be too obscure. Let me tell a story.

I was once sitting in a cafe and I found myself becoming agitated and angry. I couldn't pinpoint why. But I eventually realized what it was: without consciously registering it, I was looking at a man with an angry look on his face. I realized I'd experienced empathy that wasn't mediated at all by the intellect. There was just: anger, and I thought it was mine, but it wasn't. I was experiencing this other guy's feelings as if they were my own.

My point is, all this about distinguishing my feelings from someone's else's: that's all higher level intellectual functioning which attends to identifying threats, and so manages things like motive and my feelings versus yours.

Without the intellect setting out borders and providing explanations, there is just emotion. It doesn't belong to anybody. It's just there. Does that make sense?