That’s an ad hominem. The argument does not depend on ignorance of neuroscience. It depends on a principle of reason: reorganisation cannot create a new kind. If you deny that, explain why. Otherwise, the point stands.

reorganisation cannot create a new kind. — Clarendon

It was not an ad hominem. What goes on in a human brain is not "reorganization."

It was.
Call it whatever you want, the point does not alter. Unless a new kind of property is already in the base, no amount of complexity - or whatever - will conjure it. That is the point you haven't grasped.

Unless a new kind of property is already in the base, no amount of complexity - or whatever - will conjure it. That is the point you haven't grasped. — Clarendon

I grasped it, and rejected it. To ascribe a special property to atoms in the human brain, but not in all atoms, flies in the face of rational thinking. Consciousness is not conjured, but produced by the action of the neurons in the human brain. I suggest you do some reading about it.

First, I take it that 'problems' of consciousness only arise if you assume that physical things are what ultimately exist, such that consciousness has to be found a home in that picture (a project that is then problematic).

This is already problematic - for if making a particular assumption generates problems that would not have arisen otherwise, then the sensible thing to do is to give up the assumption, not double-down on it!

But anyway, let's make that assumption and try and figure out exactly how this generates a 'problem of consciousness'.

It seems to me that a lot of what is represented to be problematic isn't at all. For example, that consciousness is strange and that we have unique access to our own conscious states. All kinds of state are strange. Shape is nothing like colour. But that in no way implies that such states cannot be states of one and the same thing. Physical things have shape and colour despite those qualities being nothing remotely like each other. Similarly, no matter how peculiar consciousness may be, and no matter how unlike other physical properties, this is no obstacle in itself to it being a state of a physical thing. — Clarendon

Your original post is tantalisingly close to being correct, but it misses the point in a profound way. The simple reason that consciousness was not considered part of the composition of the physical world at the beginning of early modern science, was because of the Galielian-Cartesian division. This is, first, the division between the 'primary attributes of bodies' - mass, velocity, extension, number etc = and the 'secondary attributes' - appearance, smell, colour, and so on. Added to that is Descartes' division between extended matter and the 'thinking subject' (res cogitans) said to have none of the attributes of matter.

That is why what comes to be called 'consciousness' was left out of the reckonings of physics. And as physics was taken to be paradigmatic for science generally, a so-called 'universal science', then when it came to accounting for the nature of mind, it was found to be impossible to re-insert it into a scientific paradigm which was created around the assumption that it was not included.

This is the point behind David Chalmer's original paper, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness.' 'Experience' or 'what it is like to be...' refers to the subjective domain of being, which had been excluded from the reckoning by the assumption of objectivity.

Clearly you haven't as you persist in thinking further information about the arrangement of the brain will supply an answer. Until you can see why this isn't going to work, you haven't grasped the point

the arrangement — Clarendon

But it is not about the arrangement. See? You are the one who is not grasping the point.

Again: call it what you want. You're getting out what was not put in. End of story.

If there's no rabbit in the hat, you can't get one out. that's true even if it's not a hat, but a cap. it's not about understanding more about how hats work. It's about not being able to get out what wasn't put in. It's painfully simple.

Ironically given the science envy that so many seem to have, you are being fantastically unscientific. Science would never have progressed at all if scientists just proposed magical newe property generating laws - for if that is genuinely a satisfying explanation nothing further would need to be investigated.

It is scientific to recognize that you can't get something for free. Which is precisely the principle I am appealing to. And it entails that consciousness is either a property of something non-physical, or it is a property of atoms.

It's painfully simple. — Clarendon

There is nothing simple about the functioning of the human brain.

that you can't get something for free. — Clarendon

Actually, our brains are the biggest consumers of energy in our body.

You're giving a historical diagnosis, not raising an objection or highlighting some flaw in the reasoning.

The historical diagnosis is incorrect. Consciousness has been considered a property of a non-physical thing for time immemorial. Consciousness was already understood as something that could not be accounted for in purely material terms, which is precisely why it was excluded from physics in the first place.

You mention Chalmers - but as I made clear in the OP, the genuinely hard problem I am drawing attention to is not the one that he is labelling the 'hard problem of consciousness'. Chalmers is a physicalist and what he's doing is raising a pseudo problem and just ignoring the real one (for the real one seems decisively to refute his view and establish either panpsychism or dualism.

Further demonstration that you haven't grasped the point. Life's too short for our exchange to continue.

Further demonstration that you haven't grasped the point. — Clarendon

The point being that "you can't get out what you don't put in?"

Then, explain to me the function of the following neurotransmitters -

• Dopamine
• Serotonin
• Norepinephrine
• GABA
• Glutamate
• Endorphins
• Cortisol


The point being that atoms must have consciousness?

then, explain to me why I cannot ask a rock how it is feeling?

You're giving a historical diagnosis, not raising an objection or highlighting some flaw in the reasoning. — Clarendon

The question has a clear historical provenance. Your argument proceeds on a number of dubious and unsupported statements.

No one claims that consciousness is puzzling merely because it is “strange” or unlike other properties. The issue isn’t that consciousness is different from shape or colour; it’s that consciousness has a first-person, qualitative character that is not captured by third-person descriptions at all. Shape and colour are both publicly observable, structurally describable properties. Conscious experience is not.

The analogy with shape and colour therefore doesn’t carry the weight you want it to. Shape and colour differ in kind, but both are describable entirely in objective terms. Consciousness is not just another objective property alongside them; it is the very condition under which anything is experienced as having properties in the first place.

Likewise, the point about explaining behaviour without reference to consciousness isn’t that this logically excludes consciousness from being physical. The problem is explanatory, not logical. If a complete physical explanation of behaviour makes no reference to experience, then it remains unclear what role experience plays, or why it exists at all. That is the explanatory gap.

The key/door and colour analogy also misses this point. Colour explanations are omitted in some causal accounts because colour is explanatorily irrelevant in those contexts, not because colour is invisible to physical description. By contrast, consciousness is not merely explanatorily idle in some cases; it appears to be explanatorily idle in principle within a purely physical account, despite being the most certain datum we have.

So the problem of consciousness is not that consciousness is odd, private, or unnecessary for explaining behaviour in some cases. It is that subjective experience resists being identified with, or derived from, objective descriptions at all, even in principle. That is the problem these analogies slide past rather than dissolve.

And all of that goes directly back to the way physical science was framed in the early modern period.

Life is only getting shorter. You haven't grasped the point never mind addressed it. So really this isn't worth continuing.

Life is only getting shorter. You haven't grasped the point never mind addressed it. So really this isn't worth continuing. — Clarendon

Spoken like someone who knows their argument does not hold water

Oscar Wilde has nothing to fear

Answer my questions, if you are so firm in your convictions

You are simply restating Chalmers’s explanatory gap and treating it as if it were the problem I am raising. It simply isn't.

I am not arguing that consciousness is puzzling because it is private, first-personal, or resistant to third-person description. I made it abundantly clear in the OP that I consider all of those pseudo problems.

If you think consciousness can be generated from a base that entirely lacks it, then you are committed to getting out what was never put in. Everything else you’ve said is irrelevant to the issue at hand.

No, I'm afraid you used up whatever store of good will I may have had for you. Sorry about that.

No, I'm afraid you used up whatever store of good will I may have had for you. Sorry about that. — Clarendon

Lol! I win

I am not arguing that consciousness is puzzling because it is private, first-personal, or resistant to third-person description. I made it abundantly clear in the OP that I consider all of those pseudo problems. — Clarendon

That’s because you’ve defined the problem away. The very features you call “pseudo-problems” are precisely what make consciousness philosophically distinctive in the first place. Over and out.

That really makes no sense at all. I'm afraid your good will account is empty now too. Have a lovely day.

Are you for real? — Questioner

Yes, and I suggest your immediate dismissal of literally every objection to your points speaks to perhaps needing to reflect a little.

Review your grade 9 notes about the types of chemical equations. Now multiply that by a thousand and you'll have maybe a smidgeon of the chemistry that goes on in a human brain. — Questioner

This has absolutely nothing to do with the claim. More of the same thing is still the same thing. This is why I suggest you are having an emotional reaction, because you sure are not presenting anything which operates as an argument for your claims.

You are talking structure, not function — Questioner

You argued that the brain is not merely a "combination". That is exactly what it is. You need to get from structure to function with an argument or narrative of how that occurs. You are not doing so, and therefore are not making an argument in support of your claim. You are dodging all the objections to your discreet points.

God, no. It's chemistry to electrical circuitry. it's on and off switches, and a whole lot of other things. — Questioner

That is, in fact, combination. It is no different that other biochemistry. You have not explained how this results in consciousness, against the logic of that not being a follow-on from neural structures. This is explicitly understood among philosophers of mind and indeed, is what indicates the problem we're discussing. I would be helpful if you could stay on one track. You have described combinatory activity in the brain. You need to explain how this, all of it non-conscious, results in first-person phenomenal experience and you are not doing that.

Like where? — Questioner

Other animals. Where else would "neuro" apply? Human brains are simply more complex - more of the same. So, if you like, we can ignore humans entirely and ask you to tell me how Cats are conscious, given they have extremely less complexity than humans, but are still conscious and have first-person phenomenal experience.

No, the brain is not mechanical. — Questioner

Then you need to tell me what it is, and how it works. Every single piece of information we have about hte brain is biomechanics. Please.. tell your story.

then, explain to me why I cannot ask a rock how it is feeling? — Questioner

This has an obvious answer: Not enough consciousness.

I suggest you are unaware of any popular theory about this issue. Look into Panpsychism and explore hte interplay between David Chalmers, Jaegwon Kim and Christof Koch. Lots to be understood before we can have a worth while conversation about this. Clarendon is right. You are not being intellectually honest here.

So, you believe that atoms have consciousness?

Please answer at least one question put to you first.

That is a paradigm example of weak emergence. — Clarendon

OK, so you really have no idea of what you are talking about.

For anyone who is actually interested in the subject, here is Mark Bedeau's influential paper where he introduces and defends the term: Weak emergence (1997)

That really makes no sense at all. I'm afraid your good will account is empty now too. Have a lovely day. — Clarendon

You defended your thesis this whole time without ever looking up the definition of weak emergence? :confused:

And for those interested in my actual argument, weak emergence is where the whole has a feature not found in the parts but that is not of a different kind from that found in the parts, whereas strong emergence is where you have a feature emerging in the whole that is different in kind from the parts.

Those totally uninterested in the argument are free to use the terms however they wish.

To ascribe a special property to atoms in the human brain, but not in all atoms, flies in the face of rational thinking. — Questioner

The property is in all particles, not just those in the human brain.

then, explain to me why I cannot ask a rock how it is feeling? — Questioner

Consciousness doesn't mean intelligence or the ability to communicate. Ask a mouse how it is feeling.