The problem for neutral monism would be explaining how the material and mental arise for whatever the neutral substance is. Since we don't know what that could be, we wouldn't be able to say how mind and matter emerge. I guess Chalmers is saying that neutral monism wouldn't preclude consciousness in the way that materialism (arguably) does.

But I don't understand what the fundamental difference between materialism and neutral monism would be in order for the latter to be able to give rise to consciousness since they both lack consciosuness as fundamental. So why is matter incapable to give birth to consciousness, but another substance (whatever that would be) is?

Let's assume for the sake of the argument that materialism is false because of the hard problem. — Eugen

The Hard Problem just says science will have to come up with new ideas and new strategies to make a theory of consciousness that addresses more than function.

Chalmers is open ended about it. His approach is in keeping with a flexible materialism.

So why is matter incapable to give birth to consciousness, but another substance (whatever that would be) is? — Eugen

The argument is that materialism has no subjective sensations as part of its explanation for the world. Colors, sounds, tastes, etc are not part of the conceptual framework. It's all math, function, structure, fields, etc. Prothero has mentioned Whitehead's commentary (criticism) on this in another thread I recently started.

Let's assume for the sake of the argument that materialism is false — Eugen

Does materialism have a particular handicap compared to other types of metaphysics — Eugen

Yes. It's false.

↪Marchesk But I don't understand what the fundamental difference between materialism and neutral monism would be in order for the latter to be able to give rise to consciousness since they both lack consciosuness as fundamental. So why is matter incapable to give birth to consciousness, but another substance (whatever that would be) is? — Eugen

Depends on the particular type of "neutral monism" one might ascribe to. I favor the process philosophy view that the fundamental unit of nature is "an actual occasion (basically an event)". Such events are dipolar (netural) in the sense that all events have both physical and experiential (mental) poles. Thus mind and consciousness are higher forms of integrated and unified experience but this is not a leap from completely non experiential matter to experiential process. So called matter is experiential as well as physical at is fundamental ontological level. Thus the various degrees of experience in the world are matters of degree, integration and unificiation not matters of ontology.

Wouldn't that be a form of panpsychism? Process panpsychism or whatever it's called?

Yes, it is the form often called panexperientialism but it arises from process philosophy notion of process (becoming) as the essential feature of the world not being. The events of process are necessarily unifed (physical and experiential) events. Has to do with relationships, interactions and continuity with the past and creative advance into the future.

So before life forms evolved, what sort of experiences existed? Was color still a kind of proto-experience of lighted events?

↪prothero So before life forms evolved, what sort of experiences existed? Was color still a kind of proto-experience of lighted events? — Marchesk

There is the notion that most of the worlds experience is not "conscious" and the confusion engendered by the anthropomorphic nature of language. Most of human mental processing is not "conscious" say the chain of causal efficacy in vision or other senses. So on reflection the notion of primitive forms of non-conscious experience should not be too hard to entertain.

You can be a materialist like Strawson and then the "hard problem" can't be posed.

Alternatively, one can agree with Chomsky who provides extensive documentation, that the "hard problem" is very misleading.

Or like McGinn, one can say that there are many mysteries, consciousness being one of them.

Consciousness is hard not because of materialism, but because of the way we think about ordinary matter, which is fine for everyday living, but extremely inadequate when looked at in detail.

Consciousness is hard not because of materialism, but because of the way we think about ordinary matter, which is fine for everyday living, but extremely inadequate when looked at in detail. — Manuel

Yes, what is the nature of ordinary "matter" when looked at in detail. Quantum events, Quantum fields?

So on reflection the notion of primitive forms of non-conscious experience should not be too hard to entertain. — prothero

As you know my views are somewhat similar to yours in some ways. I know you like to reserve the word 'conscious' for creatures with brains, and use some other term 'experiential' perhaps, to refer to the fact that, perhaps, there is something it is like to be a molecule, or some kind of simple system or process. You think this is more consistent with typical usage and is less confusing. Is that right? I think the exact opposite. In philosophy 'conscious' is typically used to refer to that faculty (whatever it is) the possession of which is necessary and sufficient for that thing to have an experience. So I object to your usage as not being consistent with standard usage in the literature. You have adopted a more typically scientific/medical usage which obscures the relevant philosophy.

A. Does materialism have a particular handicap compared to other types of metaphysics that do not consider fundamental consciousness, and if so, what is this handicap? — Eugen

Materialism is very poorly defined. As a theory of mind, what people mostly seem to mean is nothing other than emergentism. Emergentism is more clearly defined and informative a word. All materialists, I suggest, think that consciousness only came into being relatively late in the universe, perhaps with the development of brains. And the hard problem applies very much to emergentists: how do we get consciousness from interactions of severally non-conscious systems exactly?

B. Are there rational arguments to circumvent the hard problem in other types of metaphysics, or does neutral monism / panprotopsychism collapse into mysterianism?

I don't see how neutral monism helps - as other posters have pointed out. The natural antithesis of emergentism is panpsychism. And I don't think panpsychism is a form of mysterianism at all. Mysterianism is, perhaps, sometimes even a form of emergentism - "We'll never know how consciousness emerges from brain activity, but somehow it does - all the evidence suggests so."

Yes. Matter turns out to be rather insubstantial and abstract even, so our ordinary intuitions lead us quite astray.

NB: "The hard problem" (re: qualia) is experimentally^ dismissed with respect to methodological materialism (e.g. eliminativism, emergentism, embodied cognition) and can only be coherently addressed to some version philosophical materialism (i.e. monistic "nothing but"-ism), which has nothing to do with cognitive neuroscientific^ studies of 'consciousness'.

A. Does materialism have a particular handicap compared to other types of metaphysics that do not consider fundamental consciousness, and if so, what is this handicap? — Eugen

No.

B. Are there rational arguments to circumvent the hard problem in other types of metaphysics, or does neutral monism / panprotopsychism collapse into mysterianism?

No and yes.

You have adopted a more typically scientific/medical usage which obscures the relevant philosophy. — bert1

Well that might be because I come from the scientific/medical background. By your definition comatose patients would still be "conscious" and jelly fish and humans would share similar mental experience.

By your definition comatose patients would still be "conscious" and jelly fish and humans would share similar mental experience. — prothero

Only if comatose patients retain a unified identity, which arguably they don't. When, in medical terms, someone loses consciousness, how is that to be distinguished for them losing a coherent functional identity? What phenomenologically, is the difference?

And if 'conscious' just means 'capable of experience', then yes, anything that is capably of experience is, by definition, equally conscious. The difference in complexity and richness is in what they are conscious of.

s you know my views are somewhat similar to yours in some ways. I know you like to reserve the word 'conscious' for creatures with brains, and use some other term 'experiential' perhaps, to refer to the fact that, perhaps, there is something it is like to be a molecule, or some kind of simple system or process. You think this is more consistent with typical usage and is less confusing. Is that right? I think the exact opposite. In philosophy 'conscious' is typically used to refer to that faculty (whatever it is) the possession of which is necessary and sufficient for that thing to have an experience. So I object to your usage as not being consistent with standard usage in the literature. You have adopted a more typically scientific/medical usage which obscures the relevant philosophy. — bert1

I do understand your point of view. I am familiar with Nagel's "What it is like to be a bat" and with his suggested definition of consciousness "something it is like to be", something not captured in any scientific description or external observation. I do take issue with your suggestion that Nagel's definition is the one that predominates in philosophy, in fact the term "consciousness" seems used in so many different way by so many different authors that it seems in my mind to lend confusion not clarity.
Nagels definition is definitely not the one used in medicine or neuroscience.

To some extent we will probably have to agree to disagree but that should not obscure the large area of common ground we share in our approach to the metaphysics of mind.

What the hard problem really is is a problem of the primacy of direct experience (qualia) over language, which is secondary.

A hard truth for some people to accept, but very much a reality.

What I'm saying is that what is immediate is the ineffable, and what is secondary is any description of it. This matters very much.

A. Does materialism have a particular handicap compared to other types of metaphysics that do not consider fundamental consciousness, and if so, what is this handicap? — Eugen

The notion that consciousness can arise from particular arrangements of entirely non experiential matter seems a particularly difficult metaphysical barrier. One subject to the charge of "mysterianism" as much as any form of pan or proto psychism. Modern physics suggests a much different view of "matter" than traditional mechanistic determinism.

B. Are there rational arguments to circumvent the hard problem in other types of metaphysics, or does neutral monism / panprotopsychism collapse into mysterianism? — Eugen

In general the various forms of panpsychism suffer from the "combination problem" how do primitive units of experience combine to produce minds, experience, qualia and consciousness but from an ontological metaphysical point of view this seems less of a barrier or a form of "mysterianism" than A.

So it's not even restricted to "materialism," because that's a description of reality. But reality is first and foremost self-descriptive.

Matter? We don't even understand what matter is...

the real hard problem is the hard problem of matter. how can the mind justify the existence of matter when it only has evidence of consciousness

Thank you, man!

Only if comatose patients retain a unified identity, which arguably they don't. — bert1

How can you even speak of them as the same person then? Either the unconscious peron is the same as the conscious person, or it is not.

Does materialism have a particular handicap compared to other types of metaphysics that do not consider fundamental consciousness, and if so, what is this handicap?

The particular handicap when it comes to materialist theories of consciousness is that we make a substance that is antithetical to consciousness and then try to paste consciousness into this substance. I think that the hard problem is more of an epistemic gap and should not be used to try and make ontological conclusions about the place of consciousness in reality,

Are there rational arguments to circumvent the hard problem in other types of metaphysics, or does neutral monism / panprotopsychism collapse into mysterianism?

I don't think the problem can be circumvented by showing how consciousness arises from matter, but I would block any ontological conclusions made from the hard problem. I am a mysterian when it comes to consciousness so I think that the hard problem exposes a fundamental epistemic block we have to conceptualising how consciousness arises from matter, but this cannot be used to justify ontological statements about consciousness being fundamental, or in the other direction it cannot be used to justify that consciousness is an illusion. Other metaphysics would only have the hard problem if they assume that consciousness is emergent from matter. Panpsychism to me just sounds like people are moving from our epistemic limitations on understanding consciousness to an unjustified ontological conclusion about matter having protoconsciousness which we have no evidence for. Neutral monism to me makes zero sense because I cannot even conceptualise what this mystery third substance would be.

Consciousness arises from matter in the same way that light arises from combustion.

How can you even speak of them as the same person then? Either the unconscious peron is the same as the conscious person, or it is not. — Heiko

Because from the outside there is a continuity of body and legal status. But when the body is 'unconscious' it doesn't have a phenomenological unity (or not an interesting one that defined a person, anyway) because that depends on function.

Consciousness arises from matter in the same way that light arises from combustion. — Present awareness

Could you go into some more detail?

If you take a piece of wood and add a source of heat and oxygen, a chemical reaction will occur producing more heat, a flame and light as byproducts.
Organic material, such as a human, also uses oxygen for a chemical reaction and produces carbon dioxide (which is exhaled) heat and light as byproducts. This inner light being the source of consciousness.
If one tries to use consciousness to find consciousness, it’s a lot like getting into your car to go look for your car.