Do you understand why they think the mereological fallacy is important? — Daemon

I think I do - the very short answer is, that it's reductionist. As the Wittgenstein quote mentioned in the passage I provided says, human beings are agents. Humans make judgements, see, think, remember and so on. 'The brain' doesn't. The brain is embodied and en-cultured - it is the fulcrum of a network of interacting causes and effects, but taking it to be the origin or the terminus, the be-all and end-all, is neural reductionism.

One does not unsee the mysterious figure. — Joshs

Sure you can. Out of the corner of my eye, I think I see my black cat lurking in the shadows. Then I turn and see it is a black shopping bag. One global state of interpretance is completely replaced by its other.

That speaks to a top-down driven, selective attention and object recognition based neurocognitive explanation of the phenomenology. I can go immediately to right kind of neuro-causal account of my experience.

But the Mach bands are quite different. Once my attention has been drawn to the fact that the contrast line between the sky and the building has a glimmering edge - that "can't really be there" - I can't just wish it away with the same kind of conceptual shift in point of view. And that sends me towards a different neuro-causal account - one based on preconscious or habitual neurocognitive routines.

This is an important reverse engineering distinction. Stephen Grossberg made much of it in his pioneering neural network models of perceptual processes. The step from phenomenology to a computational simulation could follow...

One has now constituted a different phenomenon, but idealizes the changes by dubbing this process of perceptual transformation as my seeing the ‘ same’ object correctly now but incorrectly before. — Joshs

You are just talking right past the crucial distinction I highlighted.

As realists, our belief in persisting real objects makes our conformity to the ‘ facts’ of the real external thing the arbiter of correctness. But from a phenomenological vantage , the difference between illusion and correctness is a function of the inferential compatibility between one moment of perception and the next, which is relatively stable over time but never self -identical. — Joshs

Now you simply state something any neurocognitive account would take as obvious. And is certainly part of a semiotic approach.

So again, what special thing does Husserlian intentionality tell us about the mysterious shadow/Mach band distinction I have highlighted here?

It is a psychological fact in need of an explanation. In neurocognition, it leads to talk about the difference between habitual and attentional processes - the combination of upwards and downwards "computations". The question can lead somewhere enlightening.

I simply ask what specifically does Husserlian intentionality add here that we don't already know?

I simply ask what specifically does Husserlian intentionality add here that we don't already know? — apokrisis

It doesn’t add anything to an account grounded in naturalism. It reveals the conditions of possibility of that naturalism. One could trace the irreducible primitives of
your naturalism to Pierce’s Firstness. One cannot get to phenomenology from naturalism if one begins from a concept of pre-relational intrinsicality and tries to add phenomenological intentionality on top of it. One has to instead open up Firstness and reveal it as a derived abstraction.

I know. Nerurologists know. We're right. — Philosophim

:ok:

Perhaps, 'describing conscious experience'? — Wayfarer

Right, consciousness per se is a kind of abstraction because actual consciousnesses is always consciousness of something; that is, conscious experience. So yes, it can only be described in terms of its ways of being conscious of its objects.

Do we want to "describe" or do we want to model the causality?

And which do you think has the better hope of engaging with the causality? — apokrisis

We want to do both; I would say and it seems trivially obvious that modeling the causality has "the better hope of engaging the causality", since phenomenological description is not concerned with that.

And don't actual neuroscientists on the whole only claim to be studying brain function or cognition - as "consciousness" is such a vague term loaded with cultural baggage? — apokrisis

Right, and that is precisely why I've been pointing out that neuroscience studies only brain function and has no substantive warrant to make dogmatic claims (as opposed to educated conjectures) about the origins of consciousness. Neuroscience studies cognition only insofar as it takes account of first person reports and correlates those with observations of brain function which are taken to be correlated.

First off, I should say that science’s conception of itself, including such things as what it does, how it differs from philosophy and what an object is, has undergone and will continue to undergo change alongside historical changes in philosophical wordviews. — Joshs

Sure, but basically science is a "third person" investigation. The various epistemological theories you cite are examples of philosophy of science, which is a kind of phenomenology, bot a kind of science.

Does objective realism simply take objects ‘as they are given’ , as you say? If that were the case , there would seem to be no need for Husserl’s famous dictum countering the Kantian unknowable noumena, ‘to the things themselves’.
Objective realism doesn’t take objects as they are perceived, it takes them as preconceived according to presuppositions about objects, such as that an object is identical with itself over a certain duration. You say that science makes no necessary assumptions about the independent existence of its objects, but it does indeed do this in that it requires that objects be mathematizable. — Joshs

Science takes its objects as they present themselves to our investigations. "To the things themselves" is an injunction to examine the ways in which things are experienced by us; a different investigation altogether, where it is our experience of the objects, and not the objects themselves, that are in view.

I don't agree with you about science being concerned with identity over time. For example when geologists study rock strata, they observe and describe what they find, compare that with past observations, and then hypothesize about the imaginable causes that gave rise to the observed strata.

You say that science makes no necessary assumptions about the independent existence of its objects, but it does indeed do this in that it requires that objects be mathematizable. — Joshs

The existence of objects, as they present themselves to us, is taken for granted, sure, but no metaphysical assumptions concerning their absolute or independent existence are necessary in order to do science. We mathematize objects because we can; the implications of that ability is a philosophical, not a scientific matter. This is not to say that no scientists are concerned with such questions, but they are not empirical questions, and so are not necessary to the practice of science.

basically science is a "third person" investigation. The various epistemological theories you cite are examples of philosophy of science, which is a kind of phenomenology, bot a kind of science. — Janus

These are not just ideas on one side of a divide between philosophy and science. There is no such divide. Newer ideas in quantum physics , in neuroscience and in numerous other scientific fields are implicitly , and in some cases explicitly (see predictive processing , for example) based on different philosophical preconceptions than previous scientific approaches. Their theories would be impossible without tacit recognition of such shifts in perspective. Already, we have contributors to cognitive science that reject the idea that science should be ‘third person’ based. I suggest eventually all scientists will abandon. such a notion of the third -personal
stance , just as many of them now have abandoned the myth of the given or the gods-eye view.

"To the things themselves" is an injunction to examine the ways in which things are experienced by us; a different investigation altogether, where it is our experience of the objects, and not the objects themselves, that are in view. — Janus

How do we know what an object is in itself? What happens when we try to describe the characteristics of this so-called object in itself? You might respond that that is exactly what the natural sciences do. Well, yes, they do that now, but in order for them to make progress in their own fields, they will eventually have to
catch up with where enactivists and phenomenologists have arrived.

“ Knowledge is taken to consist in a faithful mirroring of a mind-independent reality. It is taken to be of a reality which exists independently of that knowledge, and indeed independently of any thought and experience (Williams 2005, 48). If we want to know true reality, we should aim at describing the way the world is, not just independently of its being believed to be that way, but independently of all the ways in which it happens to present itself to us human beings. An absolute conception would be a dehumanized conception, a conception from which all traces of ourselves had been removed. Nothing would remain that would indicate whose conception it is, how those who form or possess that conception experience the world, and when or where they find themselves in it. It would be as impersonal, impartial, and objective a picture of the world as we could possibly achieve (Stroud 2000, 30). How are we supposed to reach this conception? Metaphysical realism assumes that everyday experience combines subjective and objective features and that we can reach an objective picture of what the world is really like by stripping away the subjective. It consequently argues that there is a clear distinction to be drawn between the properties things have “in themselves” and the properties which are “projected by us”. Whereas the world of appearance, the world as it is for us in daily life, combines subjective and objective features, science captures the objective world, the world as it is in itself. But to think that science can provide us with an absolute description of reality, that is, a description from a view from nowhere; to think that science is the only road to metaphysical truth, and that science simply mirrors the way in which Nature classifies itself, is – according to Putnam – illusory. It is an illusion to think that the notions of “object” or “reality” or “world” have any sense outside of and independently of our conceptual schemes” ( Zahavi)

Science is concerned with the features of perceptible objects which are publicly available to observation and which are measurable. That is what I mean by "third person". The fact that, for example, Dennett's neurophenomenology incorporates first person reports, making it a kind of hybrid, does not change the fact that most of the so-called "hard sciences" are as I described.

I suggest eventually all scientists will abandon. such a notion of the third -personal
stance , just as many of them now have abandoned the myth of the given or the gods-eye view. — Joshs

They may or may not abandon those ideas; but whether or not they do will have no impact on their ability to do science. As is said in the context of QM: "Shut up and calculate"; that is the methodology. We have practicing scientists who are Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, nihilists or whatever: no metaphysical belief or faith precludes them from doing science as well as the next person.

One cannot get to phenomenology from naturalism if one begins from a concept of pre-relational intrinsicality and tries to add phenomenological intentionality on top of it. One has to instead open up Firstness and reveal it as a derived abstraction. — Joshs

Sounds like an elaborate excuse for not having an answer. If Husserlian intentionality is worth a damn, it would have something to say about Mach bands versus misfires in object recognition.

Science can take the phenomenology and run with it. Seems you can't. Worse yet, you seem to think one needs to make the move from naturalism to phenomenology when it is the other way around. The naturalism of neurosemiosis and social constructionism is how we explain the way folk might tend to view their "conscious experience" the way they do.

since phenomenological description is not concerned with that. — Janus

Jeez, I must have missed that restriction back when I started out on the phenomenological side of things.

Right, and that is precisely why I've been pointing out that neuroscience studies only brain function and has no substantive warrant to make dogmatic claims (as opposed to educated conjectures) about the origins of consciousness. — Janus

But in what sense does consciousness actually exist? After you actually study mind science, you find that talk about habitual and attentional processes makes simple sense. But "consciousness" is just a vague term that disappears up its own arse in helpless expressions like "the feeling of what it is like to be aware".

It is not a diss to say science studies function. It is instead a crucial point that the conscious brain is completely rooted in the biological need to be functional. There is no explaining consciousness if it doesn't in fact serve a natural purpose but is instead regarded as some kind of epiphenomenal glow or accidental ghostly extra. So telling the world that you are studying brain function means you are not dicking around but dealing with the real causes that have produced it in evolutionary terms.

The sense of self is an example of consciousness. It seems to me that the sense of self cannot be epiphenomenal, since it most certainly has real world effects. You might say there is a neural correlate to the sense of self, but, as experienced, the sense of self is not a neural correlate.

My understanding of phenomenology is that it is concerned with describing and gaining a better understanding of the "as experienced". Science cannot do this because the " as experienced" is given subjectively. Is it so hard to understand that there are different kinds of investigations, each with their own methodologies, and each valid within their own ambits?

The sense of self is an example of consciousness. It seems to me that the sense of self cannot be epiphenomenal, since it most certainly has real world effects. You might say there is a neural correlate to the sense of self, but, as experienced, the sense of self is not a neural correlate. — Janus

There are neural correlates, biological correlates, social correlates, philosophical correlates ... correlates to reflect each and every level of semiosis involved in being a "conscious brain".

Or to put it another way, consciousness is not a thing, any more than the brain is a thing - an entity with some singular account that might explain it.

So what aspect of selfhood do you want to discuss? Autonomy as a general organismic concept - the Bayesian mechanics view? Biological embodiment - as in how I know how to chew my food without at the same time eating my tongue? Socially constructed identity - such as what anthropology says about the difference in conceptions of selfhood when comparing Ifaluk islanders and a Wall St options trader?

The sense of self is no mystery. It is the obvious and necessary corollary to having a sense of the world. The self~other distinction is primary at all levels of the sciences of life and mind. It is the epistemic cut that defines the boundary between bios and abios.

So you don't experience a sense of self. You can only experience a sense of the self as being "other" to the world. Or as semiotics would correct, to "the world". An umwelt. The world you construct for yourself so as to be the self at the centre of your world.

In modelling terms, consciousness is your brain's model of the world with you in it.

But to find that answer, you have to drop the idea that the "sense of self" can make sense as some kind of mysterious standalone entity that flits about like an inhabiting spirit. The self only appears to the degree it is set in semiotic opposition to the world it wishes to control.

My understanding of phenomenology is that it is concerned with describing and gaining a better understanding of the "as experienced". Science cannot do this because the " as experienced" is given subjectively. Is it so hard to understand that there are different kinds of investigations, each with their own methodologies, and each valid within their own ambits? — Janus

Cross cultural anthropology tells us all about the many myths and scripts that folk concoct to encode their "way of life". The way you think you are must match the world as you mean to live in it.

So the sense of self is not a free creation. It is evolutionary, embodied and functional. It is tied to the business of living and thriving. And it has to be analysed in that ecological/naturalistic framework.

This means there are any number of invalid "investigations". To be precise, absolutely all investigations that don't start from a naturalistic, life science, point of view.

You are treating "as experienced" as if it were something pre-existing to be discovered by an inquiry. But an experiencing human mind is structured by language and culture. Those are the causes of its design. And the detail has been shaped by the pragmatics of the communities, tribes and peoples living in whatever kind of world they have managed to make for themselves by learning to think and feel in certain prescribed ways.

This is social constructionism 101. Every self experiences the world as precisely the kind of world that would naturally find just such a self in it.

Well, that was up until modern times when it also became possible to find the self as very much alienated from the world it found itself thrust into. :smile:

They may or may not abandon those ideas; but whether or not they do will have no impact on their ability to do science. As is said in the context of QM: "Shut up and calculate"; that is the methodology. We have practicing scientists who are Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, nihilists or whatever: no metaphysical belief or faith precludes them from doing science as well as the next person. — Janus

This is like saying that whether one is a Kantian, Hegelian or phenomenologist will have no impact
on one’s ability to do philosophy.’Shut up and philosophize!’ That’s right, these different notions of philosophy dont preclude someone from doing philosophy. But one will do philosophy as a Kantian or Hegelian or phenomenologist, which understand the very meaning and method of philosophy differently from each other. Like philosophy , Science isn't one thing. Only scientism believes that. It is a changing history of approaches to method and practice. (Check out Joseph Rouse. There are as many notions of science as there are philosophical systems. It’s just more difficult to discern these differences because they are not emphasized by scientists so we end up with the illusion of ‘a’ scientific method. If there is anything common to different eras and approaches to science it isn’t attention to the object but to our construct of the object.

You are treating "as experienced" as if it were something pre-existing to be discovered by an inquiry. But an experiencing human mind is structured by language and culture. Those are the causes of its design. — apokrisis

What, how, why (etc.) the mind experiences may be "structured by language and culture."

That a mind experiences - is not.

:100: I would however observe that in the tradition of philosophy, the capacity to 'see things as they truly are' is the mark of wisdom or sagacity. However that generally connotes a moral or ethical dimension which is conspicuously absent from the almost-purely quantitative outlook of modern naturalism. I'm referring to (for example) early Greek (pre-Socratic) and Buddhist philosophies and perhaps the German idealist philosophies.

But, as I think Zahavi rightly points out, that purely quantitative 'view from nowhere' is already on the wane, due to the work of phenomenology, philosophers of science and because of the implications of philosophy of physics which have had to admit the reality of the observer into their reckonings. But expect that to be furiously resisted, as the main motivation of idealising this 'view from nowhere' is precisely to insulate yourself. You're a bystander, apart from the world, but subject like everyone to the implacable laws of science (or fate) from which you best protect yourself by the mastery of physical forces.

an experiencing human mind is structured by language and culture — apokrisis

However there is an acknowledgement of 'the unconditioned' in the perennial philosophies. It's a subject of dispute whether this is ever a real object of experience. (I don't expect to solve that here.)

However there is an acknowledgement of 'the unconditioned' in the perennial philosophies. It's a subject of dispute whether this is ever a real object of experience. (I don't expect to solve that here.) — Wayfarer

As I said, there are Mach contrast bands that highlight the boundaries of shapes in object perception. They are unconditioned in the sense that consciousness - that is, attentional effort - cannot alter their givenness. Like all the Gestalt phenomena and familiar library of visual illusions, they are in a sense hardwired into the brain and operate at the level of pre-conscious - that is sub-attentional - habit.

So yes. All humans share the same neurology and will find a givenness that seems to contrast significantly with all that is willed, imagined, subject to point of view, or otherwise amenable to attentional control.

And this is another way of deflating the Hard Problem. What is good for the givenness - the unconditionedness - of the experience of Mach bands is good for the experience of seeing red. We should think about both examples in the same way as they are the result of the same neurocognitive principles.

So for example, I said Mach bands are designed not to be noticed. And unless you have been alerted to them by Gestalt psychology, you likely never would. You are not meant to as they are part of the sensory habits that construct a state of meaningful attentional perception. To then attend to them as “features of the world” is to wrongly assign them to the world model part of the self-world modelling equation. The Mach bands are really the self part of the neural model - a structure imposed on the world to reflect a self-interested point of view.

And all the classic examples meant to motivate the Hard Problem - the lament about the unconditioned nature of primary experience - are the same. The redness of red is only a problem because we get together in a little community of philosophers of mind and say, well what about Locke, Berkeley, Descartes and Kant? How are we going to solve this riddle that there is something ineffable and fundamental about these qualia thingies?

But that is placing the redness out in the world as something now grabbing our attention and not seeing it - as enactive neuroscience would see it - as something that is part of our own active imposing of meaningful felt structure on the world. I mean, on our “world”.

Folk are so in love with the Hard Problem that they will still boggle at the “experience of red” even if they accept it is not meant to be “experienced” in the attentional sense. But what is good enough for Mach bands ought to be good enough for hue perception. It ought to deflate the over-inflated place the Hard Problem has had in philosophy of mind.

The redness of red is only a problem because we get together in a little community of philosophers of mind and say, well what about Locke, Berkeley, Descartes and Kant? — apokrisis

I don't think you see the point. The point of the hard problem argument is simply that the first-person nature of being (or experience) can never be reduced to (or explained in terms of) a third-person description. It's an extremely simple point which nevertheless eludes the advocates of physicalist reductionism, who insist that 'there is a straightforward, conservative extension of objective science that handsomely covers the ground — all the ground — of human consciousness, doing justice to all the data without ever having to abandon the rules and constraints of the experimental method that have worked so well in the rest of science'. (Dennett)

No boggling required.

And all the classic examples meant to motivate the Hard Problem - the lament about the unconditioned nature of primary experience - are the same. The redness of red is only a problem because we get together in a little community of philosophers of mind and say, well what about Locke, Berkeley, Descartes and Kant? How are we going to solve this riddle that there is something ineffable and fundamental about these qualia thingies? — apokrisis

There is more emotionality than love of wisdom in this paragraph. Mind your king.

That many, many minds far greater than our own have grappled with this riddle is evidence that - there is no riddle?

Like philosophy , Science isn't one thing. — Joshs

True, it has many fields, each one of which deals with investigating the empirical. Of course there are disciplines which cannot be unequivocally counted as sciences. like psychology and economics; and those are not what I have in mind. Anyway different notions of science are not a matter of science, in the sense that they are not investigated by scientists; they are matters for philosophy.

So, no I don't think it is at all

like saying that whether one is a Kantian, Hegelian or phenomenologist will have no impact on one’s ability to do philosophy.’Shut up and philosophize!’ — Joshs

That said, a Kantian can do good Kantian philosophy, a Hegelian Hegelian philosophy and so on, much like a physicist can do good physics, but not geology, and so on. I'm sure you get the picture by now.

So you don't experience a sense of self. You can only experience a sense of the self as being "other" to the world. — apokrisis

I don't agree with that. I think the sense of self is the most immediately given experience of all. Other than that I don't disagree with what you've written in that post, but I don't see its relevance to anything I've said.

I don't think you see the point. The point of the hard problem argument is simply that the first-person nature of being (or experience) can never be reduced to (or explained in terms of) a third-person description. It's an extremely simple point which nevertheless eludes the advocates of physicalist reductionism, who insist that 'there is a straightforward, conservative extension of objective science that handsomely covers the ground — all the ground — of human consciousness, doing justice to all the data without ever having to abandon the rules and constraints of the experimental method that have worked so well in the rest of science'. (Dennett)

No boggling required. — Wayfarer

Yup. That's a good Dennett quote.

A recent exchange with 180 shocked me a bit as it demonstrated, or appeared to demonstrate, that he actually lacked the concept of consciousness that you and I, and many others on and off the forum, have. It's shocking because in other ways 180 is very insightful. Now this has me wondering about Apo. When dismissing the hard problem, I'm not sure Apo has grasped what it is. I say this tentatively, because I find it incredible. I feel bad saying this, because it is exclusionary. It's almost disqualifying people from the conversation, which feels bad.

EDIT: Pattee (yes, I am interested in Apo's stuff) in his paper on cell phenomenology, the first experience, says lots of very interesting things, and then completely spoils it by defining, by fiat, the phenomenal in functional terms. Thereby removing himself from the conversation. It was very interesting. His paper was about something interesting, but it wasn't about consciousness. It's phonomenology, but not as we know it, Jim.

In fact it’s the very taken-for-grantedness of first-person experience that is at issue here. We don’t see the meaning of it because it’s supposedly excluded by 'the scientific perspective' as a matter of course. But

The fundamental absurdity of materialism is that it starts from the objective, and takes as the ultimate ground of explanation something objective, whether it be matter in the abstract, simply as it is thought, or after it has taken form, is empirically given — that is to say, is substance, the chemical element with its primary relations. Some such thing it takes, as existing absolutely and in itself, in order that it may evolve organic nature and finally the knowing subject from it, and explain them adequately by means of it ; whereas in truth all that is objective is already determined as such in manifold ways by the knowing subject through its forms of knowing, and presupposes them; and consequently it entirely disappears if we think the subject away. Thus materialism is the attempt to explain what is immediately given us by what is given us indirectly.

All that is objective, extended, active— that is to say, all that is material — is regarded by materialism as affording so solid a basis for its explanation, that a reduction of everything to this can leave nothing to be desired (especially, if in ultimate analysis, this reduction should resolve itself into action and reaction). But we have shown that all this is given indirectly and in the highest degree determined, and is therefore merely a relatively present object, for it has passed through the machinery and manufactory of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and ever active in time. — Schop. WWI

Very true. One must learn to disagree courteously, if possible.

I think it would be a greater problem if there wasn't binding. Not sure about what unity you talk though.

And this is another way of deflating the Hard Problem. What is good for the givenness - the unconditionedness - of the experience of Mach bands is good for the experience of seeing red. — apokrisis

The conscious experience of color, shape, motion, velocity (some people can see motion while seeing black only), pain, sound, smell, love, hate, etc. can be described by neural structured currents (that's all what's going on), but not explained.

Not sure about what unity you talk though. — EugeneW

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-unity/

Thanx for the link! I still don't understand the unity they talk about. Is it the mind not having parts? I read:

Descartes then asserts that if the mind is not made of parts, it cannot be made of matter because anything material has parts. He adds that this by itself would be enough to prove dualism, had he not already proven it elsewhere. Notice where it is that I cannot distinguish any parts. It is in “myself inasmuch as I am only a thinking thing” (ibid.); that is, in myself as a whole—which requires unified consciousness of myself as a whole. The claim is that this subject, the target of this unified consciousness, is not a composite of parts.

Then I disagree. The mind is just as composite as the parts in the world. Left I hear sounds, I see my moving fingers, feel burning in my right eye, direct attention to my right foot, hear a voice outside, and smell the coffee in front of me. Right now music sounds. If I would put on headphones I even hear it inside my skull, a proof that it originates in my brain (outside sounds involve the body). The Cartesian argument doesn't hold. Though mind is not matter. But this is no proof of that.

The mind is just as composite as the parts in the world. Left I hear sounds, I see my moving fingers, feel burning in my right eye, direct attention to my right foot, hear a voice outside, and smell the coffee in front of me. Right now music sounds. If I would put on headphones I even hear it inside my skull, a proof that it originates in my brain (outside sounds involve the body). — EugeneW

The I that us subject of all of those is still nevertheless one. None of those sensations or experiences arises in the second person.

The I that us subject of all of those is still nevertheless one. None of those sensations or experiences arises in the second person. — Wayfarer

I could say though: EugeneW is typing this message to you. Is it the unity of the I? Then there is no unified I.

I still don't understand the unity they talk about. — EugeneW

“....For the empirical consciousness which accompanies different representations is in itself fragmentary and disunited, and without relation to the identity of the subject. This relation, then, does not exist because I accompany every representation with consciousness, but because I join one representation to another, and am conscious of the synthesis of them. Consequently, only because I can connect a variety of given representations in one consciousness, is it possible that I can represent to myself the identity of consciousness in these representations. The thought, "These representations given in intuition belong all of them to me," is accordingly just the same as, "I unite them in one self-consciousness, or can at least so unite them"; and although this thought is not itself the consciousness of the synthesis of representations, it presupposes the possibility of it; that is to say, for the reason alone that I can comprehend the variety of my representations in one consciousness, do I call them my representations, for otherwise I must have as many-coloured and various a self as are the representations of which I am conscious....”

Unity here is the identity of the thinking subject in time, in juxtaposition to that of which the subject is conscious over all times. The problem is, psychology wants the subject to change because of his experiences, and cognitive neurosciences wants to deny there even is one, but pure metaphysics wants the subject to remain despite his experiences. In other words, it matters not what I think or what I know, I am still, and always, me and me alone.

Reification is the only reason for the hard problem; when treated metaphysically as a qualitative condition and not a thing, both the hard and the problem disappear. But then, metaphysics has its own problems, so there is that......

Anyway....one iteration of the unity they talk about, and perhaps the ground of all subsequent iterations.

This offers clarification. Maybe we are our body then.