@Galuchat @bert1 @Wayfarer@Harry Hindu
The hard problem also has to do with the fact that we are trying to understand the very thing we are using to understand anything in the first place. Consciousness is the very platform for our awareness, perception, and understanding, so this creates a twisted knot of epistemology. Indeed, the map gets mixed into the terrain too easily and people start thinking they know the hard problem when they keep looking at the map again!

We cannot help it, as a species with language. Language itself is a form of secondary representation on the terrain. We largely think in and with language, so to get outside of that and then reintegrate it into a theory using language is damn near impossible. For example, let's take a computer. The very end result is some "use" we get out of a computer. The use is subjective though. Someone can use the computer as a walnut cracker, and it would still get use out of it. The users experience and use of the computer is what makes the computer the computer. Otherwise it is raw existence of a thing. A computer is nothing otherwise outside of its use to the user.

Then, let's go down to the other end to its components. Computers are essentially electrical signals/waves moving through electrical wires- moving on/off signals. These electrical signals are just impulses of electricity through a wire. That is it. However, because we quantized and represented things into a MAP of 0 and 1, and further into logic gates that move information to make more quantified information, we now have a way of translating raw existing metaphysical "stuff" into epistemically represented information. Every time we look at any piece of raw stuff, we are always gleaning it informationally.

Some ways that try to answer the hard problem is to call consciousness raw "stuff" rather than information (panpsychism or some sort of psychism). It is a place holder for simply metaphysical "existing thing" that we then represent as "mind stuff" or "mentality" or "quale". Other than panpsychism, which is just a broad view of "mind stuff", there is not much else one can do to answer the hard problem, because it will ALWAYS have a MAP explanation of the terrain. What is an electrical signal if not simply represented as a mathematical equation, an on/off piece of data, a diagram, an output of usefulness (the use of a computer discussed earlier)? The raw stuff of existence can never be mined. The terrain is always hidden by the map.

Is this a language can't express everything? More of a Witty what we can't speak of we must pass over in a silence, and the beetle in the box isn't a something but not nothing either? Also, it's not the things in the world that are mysterious, but the world itself.

Or to paraphrase that last thing in terms of your post, it's the essence of things themselves that we can't get at it and remains unspeakable.

For those who prefer to conflate mystery (a form of ignorance) and incommensurability, consciousness is a hard problem.

I view the "Hard Problem of Consciousness" as a conceptual mystification, and consciousness (mass noun) as a set of sensitivity-awareness (body-mind) conditions which vary.

For example, human beings may be:
1) Conscious: uninhibited (physiologically unconstrained) and actively aware,
2) Semi-Conscious: inhibited (physiologically constrained) and passively aware, or
3) Non-Conscious: inhibited (physiologically constrained) and unaware.

The hard problem also has to do with the fact that we are trying to understand the very thing we are using to understand anything in the first place. Consciousness is the very platform for our awareness, perception, and understanding, so this creates a twisted knot of epistemology. Indeed, the map gets mixed into the terrain too easily and people start thinking they know the hard problem when they keep looking at the map again! — schopenhauer1

:cheer:

The hard problem also has to do with the fact that we are trying to understand the very thing we are using to understand anything in the first place. Consciousness is the very platform for our awareness, perception, and understanding, so this creates a twisted knot of epistemology. Indeed, the map gets mixed into the terrain too easily and people start thinking they know the hard problem when they keep looking at the map again! — schopenhauer1

It isn't so surprising that the hard problem is unsolvable when the capacity to give an account attempting to solve it apparently undermines any account.

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. — Terrapin Station

Just as in the other thread I have no idea what point you are trying to make here.

I think the clue to the problem lies in Sellar's distinction between the spaces of reasons and causes. Physicalist accounts in terms of quantities and efficient causation cannot explain or capture qualitative experience and human behavior which is motivated by reasons. So, the so-called "hard problem" can be seen to have its genesis in the attempt to apply a category error of reasoning.

Just as in the other thread I have no idea what point you are trying to make here. — Janus

For once--well, twice really--we agree.

It isn't so surprising that the hard problem is unsolvable when the capacity to give an account attempting to solve it apparently undermines any account. — fdrake

Exactly.

Is this a language can't express everything? More of a Witty what we can't speak of we must pass over in a silence, and the beetle in the box isn't a something but not nothing either? Also, it's not the things in the world that are mysterious, but the world itself.

Or to paraphrase that last thing in terms of your post, it's the essence of things themselves that we can't get at it and remains unspeakable. — Marchesk

Yes. The things-themselves, the terrain. Panpsychism is simply a broad term for "that" when talking of terrain..that darn mysterious beetle that we know but cannot describe. I don't know which is more odd, panpsychism or neuropsychism. Panpsychism has the oddity of all processes or matter having some sort of experientialness. Neuropsychism becomes some sort of property dualism related to the neurochemistry/physiology interacting with the environment of an organism that begs the question of where and why the psychism aspect of the neurology arises, or what is the nature of this psychism that is arising.

Much of your post seems to be mischaracterization of the problem and/or a poor choice of terms.

Take your first sentence for instance:

The hard problem also has to do with the fact that we are trying to understand the very thing we are using to understand anything in the first place. — schopenhauer1

What do you mean by "understand"? How do you understand something you use, if not by using it?

Consciousness is the very platform for our awareness, perception, and understanding, so this creates a twisted knot of epistemology. Indeed, the map gets mixed into the terrain too easily and people start thinking they know the hard problem when they keep looking at the map again! — schopenhauer1

What do you mean by "map"? I can use the map to get around the world because the map is about the world. Also, the map is part of the world!

We cannot help it, as a species with language. Language itself is a form of secondary representation on the terrain. We largely think in and with language, so to get outside of that and then reintegrate it into a theory using language is damn near impossible. For example, let's take a computer. The very end result is some "use" we get out of a computer. The use is subjective though. Someone can use the computer as a walnut cracker, and it would still get use out of it. The users experience and use of the computer is what makes the computer the computer. Otherwise it is raw existence of a thing. A computer is nothing otherwise outside of its use to the user. — schopenhauer1

What do you mean by "use"? How can you use something without knowing, or understanding, anything about it? Could you use a pillow as a walnut cracker? Using a computer instead of a pillow for cracking walnuts says something about the nature of walnuts, pillows and computers, no?

Then, let's go down to the other end to its components. Computers are essentially electrical signals/waves moving through electrical wires- moving on/off signals. These electrical signals are just impulses of electricity through a wire. That is it. However, because we quantized and represented things into a MAP of 0 and 1, and further into logic gates that move information to make more quantified information, we now have a way of translating raw existing metaphysical "stuff" into epistemically represented information. Every time we look at any piece of raw stuff, we are always gleaning it informationally. — schopenhauer1

An analogy would be digitizing an analog signal. Our brains seem to compartmentalize the stream of information from the environment. The mental objectification of "external" processes and relationships makes it easier to think about the world to survive in it.

Some ways that try to answer the hard problem is to call consciousness raw "stuff" rather than information (panpsychism or some sort of psychism). It is a place holder for simply metaphysical "existing thing" that we then represent as "mind stuff" or "mentality" or "quale". Other than panpsychism, which is just a broad view of "mind stuff", there is not much else one can do to answer the hard problem, because it will ALWAYS have a MAP explanation of the terrain. What is an electrical signal if not simply represented as a mathematical equation, an on/off piece of data, a diagram, an output of usefulness (the use of a computer discussed earlier)? The raw stuff of existence can never be mined. The terrain is always hidden by the map. — schopenhauer1

This is kind of what I was wanting to get at when talking about the monistic solutions. If the rest of reality is really made of the same "stuff" as the mind, then I don't see a mind-body problem. I don't see a reason to be using terms like "physical" and "mental" to refer to different kinds of "stuff", rather than different kinds of arrangements, processes, or states, of that "stuff". This is also saying that the experiential property isn't necessarily a defining property of the "stuff", rather a particular arrangement of that "stuff". So you can have objects without any experiential aspect to them. In other words, realism can still be the case and the world and mind still be made of the same "stuff".

Physicalism and Panpsychism aren't really saying anything different. They are both saying that the mind and world are made of the same "stuff" that can interact. There are simply different kinds of arrangements, processes, or states of this "stuff". The only difference is what they call the "stuff" - "physical" or "mental".

What do you mean by "understand"? How do you understand something you use, if not by using it? — Harry Hindu

Unlike everything else we try to understand, with consciousness, it is investigating the phenomena that allows for other things to have understanding. A computer is only in relation to how the use perceives it- or what the user is conscious of about the computer. A computer may not be a computer in and of itself without a consciousness. The thing itself is perhaps unknowable outside of a human consciousness and is certainly defined by it epistemically.

What do you mean by "map"? I can use the map to get around the world because the map is about the world. Also, the map is part of the world! — Harry Hindu

The map is the secondary layer we create to make meaning of the world, it is not necessarily the world as it is in itself. It is a representation of what's going on, but not what is going on. We conceptualize and quantize what is going on, but it would be a mistake to say the conceptualization and the quantization is the metaphysical thing itself. It is just something we do to make epistemic sense to us, perhaps because we are a natural linguistic species. It is was also my claim that we can never get past an epistemic sense.

I don't see a reason to be using terms like "physical" and "mental" to refer to different kinds of "stuff", rather than different kinds of arrangements, processes, or states, of that "stuff". This is also saying that the experiential property isn't necessarily a defining property of the "stuff", rather a particular arrangement of that "stuff". So you can have objects without any experiential aspect to them. In other words, realism can still be the case and the world and mind still be made of the same "stuff". — Harry Hindu

The question is why it is experience comes out of a particular arrangement of stuff. We know that it is does, but why this particular characteristic of experientialness comes out of it is the question that is begged to be answered here. By saying that this happens, there is now some sort of metaphysical dualism: arrangement of stuff/experientialness. This presents a bifurcation like any dualism.

The only difference is what they call the "stuff" - "physical" or "mental". — Harry Hindu

That makes a major difference though. It is a pretty big philosophical leap to suggest that most forms of matter or processes have an experiential aspect to it. That is what panpsychism believes.

Neuroscientist Anil Seth discusses what he calls the real problem of consciousness in this Philosophy Bites podcast: https://philosophybites.com/2017/07/anil-seth-on-the-real-problem-of-consciousness.html

He defines the real problem as building explanatory bridges between brain mechanisms and phenemonal descriptions. 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

Mappings are useful. But no amount of Mapping gets us any closer to solving the Hard Problem. More Mapping does not chip away at the Hard Problem. This is all just more Neural Correlates of Consciousness. Science has known for a hundred years that Neural Activity leads to Conscious Activity. This is nothing new. The question is: How is Neural Activity Mapped to the Conscious Experience? There is a huge Explanatory Gap involved in any kind of Mapping or measurement of Neural Correlates.

The question is: How is Neural Activity Mapped to the Conscious Experience? There is a huge Explanatory Gap involved in any kind of Mapping or measurement of Neural Correlates. — SteveKlinko

There is, but better mapping/measurements could lead us to clues and reduce the explanatory gap. Assuming this is impossible is assuming that our a priori arguments for the hard problem are bullet proof. And history isn't kind to that sort of certainty.

There has always been epistemic solutions to consciousness in psychology and neurology. Top-down descriptions exist over any good neurobiology text book.
The "conscious problem" in philosophy has always been more ontological, how something that exists as neurons firing (or let's go further to their atomic and subatomic substitutes) appears as a unified phenomenal experience. A revolution like that is probably not going to appear in neuroscience.

There is, but better mapping/measurements could lead us to clues and reduce the explanatory gap. — Marchesk

As it is, over the last few decades we have a wealth of mapping a la, for example, fMRI correlations with mental events and general mental status (it can help predict mental future mental health issues, for example). Has that helped anyone who buys into the "hard problem" and who thinks there's an explanatory gap come any closer to believing that that's not the case? I don't think so.

The "hard problem" arises due to a combination of (a) a bias against seeing mentality as something physical and (b) bad analysis of what explanations are and what they can and can't do in the first place, and (c) sundry other ontological misconceptions.

The "hard problem" arises due to a combination of (a) a bias against seeing mentality as something physical and (b) bad analysis of what explanations are and what they can and can't do in the first place, and (c) sundry other ontological misconceptions. — Terrapin Station

Mentality cannot be seen as "something physical", so it's not a matter of bias. Bias would be to say that mentality simply cannot be something physical.

And again with your red herring about "explanations". Explanations must explain, that is all. If you want to say that mentality definitely is something physical, then the burden is on you to explain that in such a way that any unbiased interlocutor would be able to see that, oh yes, mentality really is something physical after all. And part of that explanation would be to address the question as to why it does not appear to be something physical. Without such an explanation the claim that mentality must be physical is itself merely an expression of bias.

And then your little hand waving gesture about "sundry other ontological misconceptions". But by all means carry on with your vapid unargued assertions.

Mentality cannot be seen as "something physical", — Janus

You're not being an Aspie about the word "seen" there, are you?

The "hard problem" arises due to a combination of (a) a bias against seeing mentality as something physical and (b) — Terrapin Station

The problem is that identifying the mental with the physical is a category error, since they are are two different domains. And it doesn't explain why there would be an identify for some brain states and not others, nor does it tell us whether other physical systems different from our own would be conscious.

The domain of mental is: belief, desire, pleasure, cold, taste, color, sound, emotion, dreams, hallucinations, etc.

The domain of the physical is: physics, chemistry, biology, function, structure, brain states, etc.

The problem is that identifying the mental with the physical is a category error, since they are are two different domains. — Marchesk

The problem is that it's not a category error. The mistake is thinking that they're "two different domains." That's very addled thinking that has no justification aside from ancient confusions that should have long been abandoned.

If you're talking about different conventional ways to talk about things, surely you're not suggesting that ontology (or more importantly what ontology is about) in some way hinges on how people normally talk about things, are you?

it doesn't explain — Marchesk

"bad analysis of what explanations are and what they can and can't do in the first place"

If you're talking about different conventional ways to talk about things, surely you're not suggesting that ontology (or more importantly what ontology is about) in some way hinges on how people normally talk about things, are you? — Terrapin Station

I'm saying our making ontological arguments does.

The problem is that it's not a category error. The mistake is thinking that they're "two different domains." — Terrapin Station

They're not conceptually the same sort of "things" at all. On the one hand you have abstracted, objective descriptions, and on the other, you have experiences.

"bad analysis of what explanations are and what they can and can't do in the first place" — Terrapin Station

Maybe, but then we're still stuck with the limits of what physicalism can explain, and not being able to say whether some physical system different from our biology is conscious.

I'm saying our making ontological arguments does. — Marchesk

You're saying that what ontology is about, what it's addressing, somehow hinges on the conventional language used in the ontological arguments we make?

They're not conceptually the same sort of "things" at all. — Marchesk

They're not conceptually the same things when your concepts on this issue are confused or based on confusions, incorrect and incoherent beliefs, etc. Sure. And plenty of people have confused concepts about it. The solution to that is to make those people no longer confused.

not being able to say whether some physical system different from our biology is conscious. — Marchesk

We can and do say that for plenty of things. Do you mean with certainty or something?

How do you understand something you use, if not by using it? — Harry Hindu

I think that you must reach that understanding first, then you are able to use that understanding.

How do you "reach an understanding"?

You're saying that what ontology is about, what it's addressing, somehow hinges on the conventional language used in the ontological arguments we make? — Terrapin Station

I'm saying that your ability to make an identity claim of consciousness to brain states is based on ontological talk. But I'm criticizing that on the grounds of a category error. Obviously, reality doesn't care what we say about it.

I'm saying that your ability to make an identity claim of consciousness to brain states is based on ontological talk. — Marchesk

Ability to make a claim is "based on talk" in the sense that it's talk and one has to use recognizable language to make an intelligible claim.

What's being claimed, however, is in no way based on talk. It's based on what the world is like. Talk is secondary to that.

Category errors are not about conventional language usage. The idea that anything should conform to conventional language usage rather than conforming to what the world is like is ridiculous.

What's being claimed, however, is in no way based on talk. It's based on what the world is like. Talk is secondary to that. — Terrapin Station

I can say the world is like a square circle, and you can rightfully tell me that's a contradiction.

I can say the world is like a square circle, and you can rightfully tell me that's a contradiction. — Marchesk

Ohhhhkay . . . and?

(That trope is typically a misunderstanding of something, by the way--it's not actually about the words "square" and "circle" as in the definitions of the shapes. It's about a geometry problem re area instead.)

Ohhhhkay . . . and? — Terrapin Station

You're making a claim about the world that's problematic for several reasons. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be a hard problem, for all the reasons that have been stated many times before.

If it wasn't, there wouldn't be a hard problem, — Marchesk

Goddammit man, I just explained why there's a "hard problem."