I guess what I meant is that all explanations are reductive in that they tell one story, where others might also be told, analyze things in terms of their components (causal processes, reasons or rules) and none of them go anywhere near to capturing the whole picture or covering all the bases. — Janus

I'm fine with the "one story" aspect -- an explanation that allows for other explanations isn't complete. But we have to be careful with "components." If consciousness supervenes upon brain activity, rather than relates as an effect to a cause, then it's not clear if we should describe the physical strata as "components" or not. I guess, as long as components aren't understood to be necessarily both causal and completely explanatory, we can use that term, but then the associated explanation isn't reductive.

I cannot imagine what any other non-reductive kind of explanation could possibly look like. Could not a reductive explanation of consciousness possibly show why (if such were the case) it is not identical to its physical components. For that matter are there any explanations at all which are not given in terms of components? Would understanding consciousness even conceivably be possible if it could not be analyzed in terms of components? — Janus

The supervenience model is meant to address these concerns. And again, it depends on your understanding of "reductive." I would say that an explanation of consciousness that shows why it is the case that it is not identical to its physical components, is ergo non-reductive.

If we are undertaking a [scientific] investigation into consciousness, what could we be doing if not looking at behavior and neural activity (anything else you can think of?) using observation and reasoned analysis? — Janus

OK to add "scientific" above? I assume you don't mean a phenomenological or other 1st person investigation.

I think the answer to your question is, "Science doesn't know, at this point." Behavior and brain activity are certainly on the table as places to investigate, but the problem of consciousness is so poorly understood and apparently intransigent that I wouldn't be surprised if an entirely new area of inquiry opens up. Who know, maybe Penrose was right (in "The Emperor's New Mind") when he postulated quantum effects as responsible for consciousness.

Being a ten cent coin isn't an emergent property... — Banno

A coin is a weak emergence since its property/shape is a function of the properties/positions of its parts.

...maybe not. — Banno

They for sure exist, and they are the only ones.

Yeah, we can always just make shit up. — Banno

And everyone does. Some made-up stuff works better than others, but it's all made up. There are no givens, apart from perhaps ordinary language.

A coin is a weak emergence since its property/shape is a function of the properties/positions of its parts. — MoK

That a coin is worth ten cents has nothing to do with it's composition. It does not emerge from some combination of the material properties of the coin, but consists in the way the coin is used.

Credulity is a powerful force.

I really can't tell from your post if you want to understand my position. If not, no worries.

If you are, you have a lot of it wrong. — Patterner

I said as much in my post, that I knew I was getting it wrong.

I think a photon is conscious. But it is not subjectively aware of any kind of mental activity. It is not subjectively aware of anything that would allow it to act intentionally.
— Patterner
In what way do you mean a photon to be conscious if it lacks all that? — noAxioms

Consciousness is simply subjective experience. It doesn't have anything to do with thinking, or any mental activity.

Calling it experience is just a synonym. It does tell me what a photon experiences despite lack of mental activity, awareness, thinking, or process.
There is discussion between others where Nagel defines consciousness/experience in quite different terms, but I don't think any of them are using panpsychist definitions of any of the terms.

I guess I'm asking how you know you're conscious, that you have this 'raw' experience? The question must be answered without reference to anything that constitutes a mental activity, awareness, time, or anything else that a photon doesn't have, because to me, it is pretty much through mental activity that I would conclude such a thing (or conclude anything).

Better to say;Consciousness of atoms may conceivably be, for example, a stream of instantaneous memory-less moments of experience.

A photon cannot have a 'stream' of anything since it has not proper time in which to do so.

An atom is a small arbitrary collection of particles. Is any subset of particles conscious in a way that they are not as just individual particles? In other words, I have a neutrino, electron, and some quark, all within a km of each other. Is that collection conscious as a unit? If not, what is lacking? I (an arbitrary collection of particles) am probably conscious as a unit. What do I have that the three particles mentioned do not, that I constitute a 'unit'?

The whole essence of anything organic is memory. It stores memories of what happened so as to better cope with what's coming up. — Wayfarer

I believe that only organisms are capable of experience, not atoms. So, no, an atom does none of those things. — Wayfarer

OK, but Patterner's panpsychism asserts otherwise. Fair enough. I'm chipping in here because being organic is not a requirement to have memory, nor to be a thing that attempts to cope with what's coming up.
I do think that you believe that only organic things can be conscious, but I'm not sure if you preclude non-orgainc things from having memory or from reacting to predicted events.

1) Then why are you seemingly asking me to think of something without making a mental representation? — noAxioms

No, I am not asking that. I am asking you to think of a "cup" without making an image of it that has a shape. — MoK

People born blind imagine cups all the time sans any 'image'. Not sure the relevance of that to your point.
What do you think is illustrated by the point that my imagining of a cup being likely accompanied by an image? Do you consider that to be evidence that the cup idea is irreducible? Quite the contrary, since the blind guy can hold the idea of the cup completely without the image part. It shows that the cup can be reduced to the image and to other parts that are in addition to the image.

being organic is not a requirement to have memory, nor to be a thing that attempts to cope with what's coming up. — noAxioms

Examples?

When it comes to consciousness, we may have a special case -- and I think that's the deeper subject of this discussion. Is there something about consciousness, and about being conscious, that calls into question this division between knowing and experiencing? We need consciousness to do any sort of seeing or knowing, including the strictest of scientific projects. A blind person can understand how the eye works, because understanding is not a true visual seeing, but a way of grasping intellectually. But can the blind person (from birth, we'd have to stipulate) know what the experience of seeing is? Probably not. — J

Now you're getting it! And yes, that is the subject of the discussion. And here, I suppose you realise that you've restated a version of the well-known 'Mary's room' thought-experiment?

We devise a powerful explanatory method that abstracts away consciousness while forgetting that the method remains fundamentally dependent on consciousness.
— The Blind Spot - Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, Evan Thompson

Is this in fact a flaw? Does this dependence vitiate whatever explanation may result? — J

It's not a flaw, when it comes to the data of the objective sciences. The blind spot is blind with respect to the subject to whom the data means something, the subject, the observer. This, again, is what the whole argument is about!

I have to paste this in, I beg the moderator's indulgence as it is entirely relevant to the subject being discussed. It is the exact point being made by the young and charismatic (as distinct from the older and careworn) David Chalmers:

you've restated a version of the well-known 'Mary's room' thought-experiment? — Wayfarer

Yes, I thought about referencing poor Mary! (Or is she poor? :wink:)

The blind spot is blind with respect to the subject to whom the data means something, the subject, the observer. — Wayfarer

Yes, at the moment. But I think you're suggesting that the blind spot is methodologically structural, that it can't be overcome in terms of objective science. I think this remains to be "seen" (sorry!). As Chalmers says at 2:20, "It may be that the methods of science have to be expanded." This is a recurring theme, for me: We understand consciousness so poorly that it makes anything we say about it, including how it can be studied, provisional at best. Must we assume that the phenomenon of subjectivity cannot be studied from the 3rd person? Must we assume that, because an investigative method depends upon consciousness, it cannot give a complete account of consciousness itself?

Again, as we've been saying, there's a fine, often indistinct, line between consciousness as phenomenon and consciousness as experience. If we take the question "What is it like to conscious?" as actually answerable, would the answer be phrased in terms that are opaque from the point of objective knowledge? Does the experience of consciousness -- the experience of being me, or you -- forever elude being known in terms other than descriptive?

I think both of us should be uncertain about this.

That a coin is worth ten cents has nothing to do with it's composition. — Banno

I am not talking about currency but a coin.

It does not emerge from some combination of the material properties of the coin, but consists in the way the coin is used. — Banno

As I mentioned, the shape of the coin is a function of the position of the parts.

Do you consider that to be evidence that the cup idea is irreducible? — noAxioms

Yes, to me and many others here, the idea of a cup is irreducible. Have you ever been in a condition in which you want to write something, while you don't remember the word that is needed for your writing, but you know what word you are looking for? In such cases, you simply have access to the idea that the word refers to, but not the word.

Consciousness is simply subjective experience. It doesn't have anything to do with thinking, or any mental activity.
— Patterner

Calling it experience is just a synonym. — noAxioms

No, it's clarification. It seems to me most people think consciousness means a lot more than subjective experience. Cognition, thinking, awareness, self-awareness, and whatever other mental activity people can think of, are usually part of someone's definition, i'm saying none of that is consciousness.

I realize my definition is at least as vague as most, because how can we imagine what subjective experience is without any of that. Nevertheless, I think it's necessary. I do not see any hope of physical processes giving rise to consciousness. Nobody can even suggest how consciousness can emerge from the physical. There is no apparent similarity. Also, it seems bizarre that there is nothing other than the physical, and evolution is a purely physical process, leading to purely physical arrangements for purely physical reasons. Yet somehow, for no reason whatsoever, consciousness just happens to emerge from particular arrangements.

I think we need something that can explain what we experience that is present right from the beginning.

I guess I'm asking how you know you're conscious, that you have this 'raw' experience? — noAxioms

For the first part, as they say, that I am conscious is the only thing I do know. For the second part, all consciousness is "raw". (I would like a better word than "raw" here. Chalmers used it, so I figure there's precedent. But it's doesn't say what I want. Problem being probably no single word does, so maybe just as well to keep it.) It's just experiencing whatever is there. I recently tried an analogy. Think of consciousness like vision. I can look at a blank sheet of paper. I can look at the Grand Canyon. I can look at my wife. I can look at a Monet painting. I can look at a bolt of lightning racing across the sky. I can look at a blade of grass. My vision does not change depending on what I'm looking at. The things being looked at are what's different.

I think consciousness is simply the experience of whatever it is we're talking about. In the case of humans, the experience is of neutral activity that is experienced as cognition, thinking, awareness, self-awareness, and whatever other mental activity people can think of.

The nature of particles, bacteria, plants, and any number of other things, is very different from the nature of humans. Therefore, the experience of any of those things is quite different from what we experience. But it's not because consciousness, itself, is different. No more than the vision in my analogy.

I am not talking about currency but a coin. — MoK

Yep. Hence

The only available properties are the properties of parts though. — MoK

The properties of the coin include it's monetary value. But this is not a properties of it's parts.

Reductionism defeated.

I think you're suggesting that the blind spot is methodologically structural, that it can't be overcome in terms of objective science. — J

Scientific objectivity has customarily been grounded in the notion of the 'mind-independent object' without taking into account the Kantian insight into the mind's constitution of the object. Phenomenology does take that into account. That is one of the main points of The Blind Spot of Science.

Cognition, thinking, awareness, self-awareness, and whatever other mental activity people can think of, are usually part of someone's definition, i'm saying none of that is consciousness.
... — Patterner

Nevertheless, I think it's necessary. I do not see any hope of physical processes giving rise to consciousness.

You seem to have left nothing to rise to. It becomes a phrase without meaning.

Nobody can even suggest how consciousness can emerge from the physical. — Patterner

Well, I see all that stuff you exclude emerging from physical, but it's rather trivial, the easy problem perhaps. I don't see what's left to be explained.

Also, it seems bizarre that there is nothing other than the physical, and evolution is a purely physical process, leading to purely physical arrangements for purely physical reasons.

Well, mental is part of those reasons, but a physicalist would have mental supervening on the physical.

Yet somehow, for no reason whatsoever, consciousness just happens to emerge from particular arrangements.

Not for no reason whatsoever. Your biases really show here. Consciousness gives a distinct advantage, many of which are listed in this topic, with the exception of epiphenomenal consciousness, which nobody seems to be pushing.

I think we need something that can explain what we experience that is present right from the beginning.

Panpsychism might assert that it's present from the beginning, but it doesn't constitute an explanation of it any more than does any other black box.

For the first part, as they say, that I am conscious is the only thing I do know. — Patterner

Then 'they' need to give the same evidence, not including anything on your list of not-counting mental activity.

You quote Chalmers, but Chalmers seems not a panpsychist, asserting that a photon experiences.
"It's just experiencing whatever is there": There isn't any 'there', and there is no duration during which any present participle tense is meaningful.

Think of consciousness like vision. I can look at a blank sheet of paper. I can look at the Grand Canyon. I can look at my wife. I can look at a Monet painting. I can look at a bolt of lightning racing across the sky. I can look at a blade of grass. My vision does not change depending on what I'm looking at. The things being looked at are what's different.

Those are all examples of awareness and cognition, mental activity, processing of sensory input, all of which seems to be excluded by your list of what experience isn't. Sure, you (and not the photon) have experience of such things, but per your posts, those things are not what experience is, despite your opening of 'thinking of it like' it is.

We're not discussing what I may be conscious of, we're discussing what consciousness is, and I'm unfortunately still not understanding your stance.

being organic is not a requirement to have memory, nor to be a thing that attempts to cope with what's coming up. — noAxioms
Examples? — Wayfarer

You should know my typical examples by now. A canyon reveals fossil memory of the distant past. The Atlantic floor has wonderful memory of the history of Earth's magnetic pole shifts (the latest of which is going on now, way overdue). Those are examples of memory without information processing.

As for coping, I suppose a chess program, one that learns from scratch say, retains memory of what works best so as to better cope with the tournament at hand.

The properties of the coin include it's monetary value. But this is not a properties of it's parts. — Banno

This seems fallacious. The value of a coin is not a property of the coin. It's value is not intrinsic, but is rather a relationship between the coin and that which values it. It might have some value to a bird due to it being a shiny bauble. Not sure exactly how reductionism would spin that relationship, a similar relationship to it having monetary value to some humans.

Do you consider that to be evidence that the cup idea is irreducible? — noAxioms

Yes, to me and many others here, the idea of a cup is irreducible. — MoK

Despite my example of the image being just a part of the idea of cup, and a clearly nonessential part at that. You didn't refute this example.

Have you ever been in a condition in which you want to write something, while you don't remember the word that is needed for your writing, but you know what word you are looking for? In such cases, you simply have access to the idea that the word refers to, but not the word.

Nice example. The word and the meaning are separate parts of the idea.

The value of a coin is not a property of the coin. — noAxioms

Ok.

Aristotle again.


:roll:

Aristotle again. — Banno

Your rebuttal is valid. Above me head, perhaps.

But it doesn't change the fact that it's possible the person you're replying to is introducing a concept or argument not specifically addressed by the argument or belief system you refer by name of one person.

You pass it off as if it were so simple, something so casual, like a child commenting on how something far beyond his capability yet is enjoying such, soon to be taken away due to lack of appreciation, would make. Why? Why do this? Why not just explain it in adequate and sufficient detail? You're clearly capable of such. This low IQ frat-boy type of response of "No duh you should know it" is beneath you. I know it and so do you. So why not just explain it properly.

A canyon reveals fossil memory of the distant past. The Atlantic floor has wonder memory of the history of Earth's magnetic pole shifts. — noAxioms

I don't rate that as memory. A rational observer such as ourselves can intepret it, but it is not information that is conserved for the sake of maintaining homeostasis as memory is for an organism.

So why not just explain it properly. — Outlander

My Will To Power forbids me doing so.

Sure, you (and not the photon) have experience of such things, but per your posts, those things are not what experience is — noAxioms

Correct. There are the things, and there are the experiences of the things. I don't understand how this is controversial.

"Yet somehow, for no reason whatsoever, consciousness just happens to emerge from particular arrangements."

Not for no reason whatsoever. Your biases really show here. Consciousness gives a distinct advantage, many of which are listed in this topic, with the exception of epiphenomenal consciousness, which nobody seems to be pushing. — noAxioms

Of course consciousness gives an advantage. That's not what I'm getting at. Let me try this way.

1) If consciousness is not present from the beginning, then there is nothing but physical. Physical things and processes, and evolution that occurs through purely physical mechanisms, and selects for arrangements that are advantageous only in physical ways.

2) Somewhere down the line, consciousness emerges.

Does it not seem like amazing happenstance that physical arrangements having nothing to do with nonexistent consciousness are selected for, and consciousness, which did not exist and was not selected for, just happens to emerge from those arrangements?

Panpsychism might assert that it's present from the beginning, but it doesn't constitute an explanation of it any more than does any other black box. — noAxioms

True. But if it correct, then pursuing it might lead to an explanation. Whereas pursuing a, for example, physicalist explanation never will.

Scientific objectivity has customarily been grounded in the notion of the 'mind-independent object' without taking into account the Kantian insight into the mind's constitution of the object. — Wayfarer

This is an interesting observation; I think it's both true and not. A scientist doing science is not going to worry about whether an atom of hydrogen is "really out there" or not. As you say, the working assumption is that, if we act as if the atom is mind-independent, we can learn what we need to learn about it.

Some scientists, to be sure, have reflected on the Kantian insight. Let's add that insight to scientific practice. What do you think would change? Are the findings of science any different? Or rather, is it the philosophy of science -- the bedrock and framework beliefs about what is real -- that will change?

I'm suggesting that the particular brand of objectivity that we call scientific objectivity -- essentially an intersubjectivity, a faith in a shared point of view -- will be unchanged. Now suppose the object of scientific investigation is the phenomenon of consciousness; not the experience, but the fact. What we want to know is, Can there be a shared, 3rd-person object of study here that is mind-independent in the same way, and not any more or less, than any other object of study? Or is mind-independence structurally impossible, given that we require minds in order to study anything? But isn't that the same kind of mind-dependence that Kant has alerted us to? How has making consciousness the object of study changed anything?

Again, it's crucial to remember that we're not asking our scientist to study 1st-person phenomenology as such -- that's what I'm calling "the experience, not the fact." We're asking them to investigate the fact of consciousness, the state of affairs that allow consciousness to be part of the world. It's very true that, without our 1st-person experience of consciousness, we wouldn't know what it is that we want to understand. Here, if anywhere, we can perhaps find that special confusion that studying consciousness creates. But I don't think it's obvious in principle that there can be no methodological separation.

The properties of the coin include it's monetary value. But this is not a properties of it's parts.

Reductionism defeated. — Banno

If you are talking about ideas, then I have to say that they are forms of strong emergence. I have discussed this here.

Nice example. The word and the meaning are separate parts of the idea. — noAxioms

So you agree that the idea exists as an irreducible mental event?

I was unable to follow that - you seem to think an idea emerges from a sentence, rather then a sentence expressing an idea.

And no, I wasn't talking about ideas, but about how the value of a currency does not emerge from the material from which the coins are made but is a result of how we treat those coins.

A scientist doing science is not going to worry about whether an atom of hydrogen is "really out there" or not. As you say, the working assumption is that, if we act as if the atom is mind-independent, we can learn what we need to learn about it. ...I'm suggesting that the particular brand of objectivity that we call scientific objectivity -- essentially an intersubjectivity, a faith in a shared point of view -- will be unchanged. — J

That couldn't be more wrong. Surely you know of the many controversies over the interpretation of quantum physics. The question of whether the objects of analysis really exist, or in what sense they exist, is central to that. Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein debated it over a period of four decades. Einstein was a convinced scientific realist, he believed that reality was fundamenally 'out there' and it was the scientists' job to discern it. Bohr, on the other hand, introduced ideas such as wave-particle complementarity to account for the fact that sub-atomic particles could act as wave structures in some contexts and particles in others. You can't say whether they're really waves or really particles - it depended on which experimental setup you ran.

The dependence on what is observed upon the choice of experimental arrangement made Einstein uhappy. It conflicts with the view that the universe exists "out there", independent of all acts on observation. In contrast Bohr stressed that we confront here an inescapable new feature of nature, to be welcomed because of the understanding it givs us. Bohr found himself forced to introduce the word “phenomenon”. In today's words Bohr’s point – and the central point of quantum theory – can be put into a single, simple sentence. "No elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered (observed ) phenomenon”. — John Wheeler, Law without Law

This is the basic stance of the 'Copenhagen Interpretation', named retrospectively by Werner Heisenberg to denote the philosophical views of quantum physics developed by Bohr, Heisenberg, andt the other Copenhagen figures who devised quantum theory. To this day, notable public intellectuals including Sir Roger Penrose are convinced quantum theory is wrong - you can find any number of video interviews with Sir Roger proclaiming this in no uncertain terms. Why? Because he's convinced that a proper theory 'should describe what the Universe is doing'. The indeterminate nature of sub-atomic particles, and the ontological status of the wave function described by the Schrodinger equation, remain outstanding questions in philosophy of science. Furthermore, what role, if any, mind or consciousness is assigned in all of this, is another central question. So all of this is far from settled, and is still right at the forefront of philosophy and science.

See my The Timeless Wave of Quantum Physics if interested.

Also Kumar, Manjit. Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality. London: Icon Books, 2008.

Now suppose the object of scientific investigation is the phenomenon of consciousness; not the experience, but the fact. — J

Please notice the strong presumption of “mind-independence” in the way this is framed. The very word phenomenon means “what appears,” and appearance is always to a subject. As John Stuart Mill put it, facts are “permanent possibilities of sensation.” That’s not a weakness of our epistemic situation; it’s a structural condition of knowledge itself. We can’t disentangle this or parcel it neatly into independent boxes. If even in quantum physics the notion of an observer-independent reality is problematic, then this holds all the more for consciousness — which is even less tractable to purely objective analysis.

I was unable to follow that - you seem to think an idea emerges from a sentence, rather then a sentence expressing an idea. — Banno

In you, an idea emerges when you read a sentence. Ideas to me are irreducible mental events.

That couldn't be more wrong. — Wayfarer

I beg to differ. You're talking about interpretation, not about what (non-theoretical) physicists actually do. One of my friends is a physicist, and delights in discussing the issues you name. And, he freely admits that it makes no difference whatsoever to his daily pursuits in the lab. "Shut up and calculate."

If even in quantum physics the notion of an observer-independent reality is problematic, then this holds all the more for consciousness — which is even less tractable to purely objective analysis. — Wayfarer

Well, yes, but nonetheless physicists get on with the work, even given this conceptual unclarity -- and progress is made. Couldn't the same thing apply with regard to consciousness? I'm resisting the idea that whatever issues about mind-independence might arise are such as to halt investigation in its tracks, on methodological grounds. That doesn't seem right.

Also, we're homing in on a difficult fraction of scientific practice, where the very nature of what is physical comes into question. My comments about scientific intersubjectivity address the much more common practices of the majority of science, where questions about mind-independence make no practical difference in what scientists study, and can agree on.

A scientist doing science is not going to worry about whether an atom of hydrogen is "really out there" or not. As you say, the working assumption is that, if we act as if the atom is mind-independent, we can learn what we need to learn about it. — J

Further, people from different parts of the world and cultures will agree on the details, whether or not they are "really out there". If you shoot someone who has never seen a gun, they are in trouble. People who have never seen a gun who examine the body will find the same thing we find, even if they can't imagine what it is, and their culture and history lead them to describe it in different ways than we would. And send them and me a box with something in it that neither of us has ever seen before, and ask each of us to draw or describe it, and it will be obvious that we saw the same thing.

It doesn't matter that the physical is not of the nature that people long thought it was, and what every child grows up thinking it is. Whatever it's true nature, it plays out as the physical that people long thought it was, and what every child grows up thinking it is. Knowing it's not "really" physical doesn't allow me to pass my hand through a solid object, manipulate solid objects telepathically, or treat anything in any way other than the way we've been treating it throughout history. People walk into very clean glass doors all the time. I'll bet quantum physicists aren't spared that fate because of their uncertainty. They either see the glass, or they get a swollen nose.

Now suppose the object of scientific investigation is the phenomenon of consciousness; not the experience, but the fact. What we want to know is, Can there be a shared, 3rd-person object of study here that is mind-independent in the same way, and not any more or less, than any other object of study? — J

If there is such a thing, we're sure having a difficult time finding it. Partly because it is undetectable by our senses and technology. Do you have any suggestions? Of course, so few people agree on what it is, and, therefore, on how to study it. What objective things can we say about consciousness such that everyone will agree that we should all study it?

If there is such a thing, we're sure having a difficult time finding it. Partly because it is undetectable by our senses and technology. Do you have any suggestions? — Patterner

We are indeed having a difficult time, but our quick successes with various aspects of the Easy Problem lead me to be optimistic. It's like nibbling around the edges of something, discerning it by creating its negative outline. More practically, I agree with Chalmers that we'll need to reassess our concept of "3rd person objectivity" in order to make progress with the Hard Problem. Dennett, who I find mostly off-track about this stuff, at least had the idea of "heterophenomenology," which is an attempt to fill this need.

Maybe the model here ought to be the study of life in biology and chemistry. I'm not up-to-date on the science of life, but it seems that investigators have found a way to discern and specify the object of their study without requiring that they first comprehend some incommunicable experience of "being alive."

All that said, I'll repeat what I said to @Wayfarer, above: We know so little about the subject of consciousness that my confidence in anything I'm suggesting here isn't high.

I agree with Chalmers that we'll need to reassess our concept of "3rd person objectivity" in order to make progress with the Hard Problem. — J

Does Chalmers say how this can be accomplished; what it means 'to reassess our concept of "3rd person objectivity"'?

Maybe the model here ought to be the study of life in biology and chemistry. I'm not up-to-date on the science of life, but it seems that investigators have found a way to discern and specify the object of their study without requiring that they first comprehend some incommunicable experience of "being alive." — J

If you meant this as a way to begin Chalmers' reassessment, I would say life is being studied extensively, and has been for some time. I take it you mean in a deferent way? Or with a different focus?

I agree with Chalmers that we'll need to reassess our concept of "3rd person objectivity" in order to make progress with the Hard Problem.
— J
Does Chalmers say how this can be accomplished; what it means 'to reassess our concept of "3rd person objectivity"'? — Patterner

I'm not sure. The problem seems to hinge on whether we can speak objectively about experiences that can only be had subjectively. A lot of traditional science would rule this out.

If you meant [the study of life] as a way to begin Chalmers' reassessment, I would say life is being studied extensively, and has been for some time. I take it you mean in a deferent way? Or with a different focus? — Patterner

Not so much. More that we ought to say, "If we can do that with the phenomenon of life -- which is also intensively subjective -- why not with consciousness?"