Chalmers is a dualist, recall, and the alleged puzzle arises from taking dualism for granted.

You don't get to talk about a hard problem of consciousness with people who don't take dualism for granted. — jkop

I've read Chalmer's entire book on consciousness, a couple of his papers, and seen several videos of him talking about consciousness, so I have a pretty good idea what he's arguing for and why.

He states in his book that physicalism is a very complete and satisfying account of the world, with one exception, and that's consciousness. Chalmers then provides reasoning for why he thinks every single version of physicalism fails, which is why he says he was led to endorse a form of property dualism.

You might think his arguments go wrong, or his intuition leads him astray, but I don't get the sense at all that he started out dogmatically as a dualist. Chalmers has no need to endorse dualism, other than finding physicalism to be inadequate.

Chalmers isn't like a theist arguing for God. Now Dennett and some who agree with him strike me as possibly being wedded to materialism or functionalism, and that leads them to argue the way they do.

Or maybe they simply aren't convinced by the likes of Chalmers, Nagel, McGinn, Block, Searle, etc. And that's fine, if so. I honestly can't tell who's right. No explanation for consciousness has ever totally convinced me from any side.

The reason that we can meaningfully talk about red apples is because our physical sensory systems are, in the relevant sense, the same. But they need not be, as considering how one would communicate the idea of red apples to a blind person demonstrates. — Andrew M

Here I might disagree. The reason we can talk meaningfully about our experience of red apples is because we have red experiences. It's true that our visual system, which is understood in physical/chemical/biological terms is key to our ability to experience red, but we are not communicating the facts of how our perception works or the optics of light bouncing off an apple. We're communicating an experience that those with color vision have.

And it's this experience that is missing from the physical/chemical/biological facts of perception, light or the object itself. That is the entire point of the OP.

Whether our experience of red is radically private or not doesn't change the fact that we don't know why having red experiences would accompany an explanation of perception.

Nagel's way of putting this is that science provides objective, third person explanations. But experiencing red is first person and subjective. So something is left out with any objective explanation. That explanation can be scientific, mathematical, computational, or functional and it will still leave the experience out, because all of those are objective explanations.

The SEP article on physicalism suggests that the question of consciousness and physicalism might be a question about objectivity in disguise. The real fundamental issue is around what's objective versus what's subjective, and why we understand the world fundamentally in terms of both concepts.

he thinks every single version of physicalism fails, which is why he says he was led to endorse a form of property dualism. — Marchesk

Looks like he was "led" from assuming dualism to endorsing dualism.

Chalmers isn't like a theist arguing for God. — Marchesk

But how on earth could anyone know that every single version of physicalism fails to account for consciousness? He even looks like a christian rock musician O:)

But how on earth could anyone know that every single version of physicalism fails to account for consciousness? — jkop

How many violins can you build out of a pile of bricks? Does it depend on the size of the pile? The quality of the bricks? Brick technology? Some yet-to-be discovered brick?

What if you put Mary in a room with a blue, yellow and red ball and said 'which one is red?' if until that moment she had never seen any colours how would she know that, until someone pointed and said 'that is the red one'? Until that moment 'which was the red ball' would have been something she didn't know. — Wayfarer

A similar argument has also been advanced by an 'innovative dualist'" (note the reference to Churchland, who is a convinced physicalist)

The German philosopher Martine Nida-Rümelin, an innovative dualist and a strong defender of the knowledge argument, clarifies Churchland’s point by offering a modified version of the Mary’s Room thought experiment. Remember that Mary already knows what colors particular objects like stop signs and ripe bananas are, so if someone were to bring these objects into the room, she would be able to name their colors. So instead, suppose that someone brings Mary objects that are randomly colored — say, toy blocks. Again, Mary sees colors for the first time — but in this case, she cannot identify them.

This scenario, says Nida-Rümelin, shows knowledge by acquaintance, or knowing what it’s like. Mary becomes acquainted with colors whose descriptions she already knew, but at this point she is not yet able to relate correctly the new experience of each color with her knowledge of it. For instance, she may think that the color of the red block is what people call “blue.” Churchland and Nida-Rümelin agree that no learning has occurred at this stage, and so no disproof of physicalism. We can see this because Mary has not actually learned anything new about the world: she’s wrong about the red block being blue.

But, Nida-Rümelin continues, when Mary then leaves the room and sees the blue sky, she does learn something new: she learns that the color of the blue block she saw earlier is what people are referring to when they say the sky is blue. Mary acquires knowledge about other people’s experience (assuming they have normal vision). According to Nida-Rümelin, the knowledge argument only claims that Mary learns something in this final stage

What is it Like to Know? New Atlantis.

Also a comment on this phrase from the above essay:

The general approach of dualists is to demonstrate that qualia are an additional set of properties of the world, over and above its physical traits.

I disagree with this. I would say that 'qualia' are attributes of sensory experiences, which possess a subjective element, i.e. they're undergone by a subject. That doesn't make them 'properties of the world'. Anyway 'Physical objects' are simply a special case of qualia, i.e. they associated with tangible or tactile objects and conform to mathematical predictions.

But the mathematical predictions they conform to, like the laws of motion, are not themselves qualia, nor are they physical. The whole status of scientific law is of course another question altogether, but if it is the case that scientific and arithmetical principles are not themselves physical then the whole physical project is untenable.

Any objections thus far?

But how on earth could anyone know that every single version of physicalism fails to account for consciousness? He even looks like a christian rock musician O:)

Well it would have to be a problem in principle: that subjective reality in principle can't be reduced to objective reality, that this is a category error. I think that thought always was a possible configuration for matter, and over the eons biologic matter evolved to the point where this possibility is realized in the actuality of man. So property dualism, where what Mary felt when she experienced red could never been understood/felt without actually experience of it, similar to the bat argument. Mary's claim is ontological, it reflects how the experience of seeing red affected her, how she felt on seeing it, and not about her knowledge of the color.


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But how on earth could anyone know that every single version of physicalism fails to account for consciousness? He even looks like a christian rock musician O:) — jkop

The argument is really simple, actually. Physical concepts are objective. Conscious concepts are subjective.

It really goes back to Locke and his primary/secondary property distinction. If you use only the primary properties to describe the world, your explanation will leave out the secondary ones.

You don't get color, smell, etc from shape, number, etc. This isn't a problem until you need to explain the mind, since it's part of the world.

That's why it's a problem for physicalism.

You don't get color, smell, etc from shape, number, etc. This isn't a problem until you need to explain the mind, since it's part of the world. — Marchesk

Numbers are also only real for a mind capable of counting. There are no numbers 'in the world', but science could barely get out of bed without numbers.

How many violins can you build out of a pile of bricks? Does it depend on the size of the pile? The quality of the bricks? Brick technology? Some yet-to-be discovered brick? — Wayfarer

Bricks? :-}

Well it would have to be a problem in principle: that subjective reality in principle can't be reduced to objective reality, that this is a category error. — Cavacava

What is a "subjective reality", and who says anything about reducing it to an "objective reality"? In your use of the words 'subjective' and 'objective' dualism is assumed, so no wonder that there arises a "problem in principle" for you.

I don't think there are two realities, and the problem does not arise as I use the terms 'subjective' and objective' in the following way: an experience exists in a subjective domain in the objective reality, and as speakers we have the possibility to communicate our subjective experiences with the help of epistemologically objective descriptions.*

* On the distinction between ontologically subjective and objective, and epistemologically objective etc.. check out Searle, for example on YouTube.

The argument is really simple, actually. Physical concepts are objective. Conscious concepts are subjective. — Marchesk

Lol that's simply an assertion of dualism in which the distinction between the physical and subjective amounts to dualism.

It really goes back to Locke and his primary/secondary property distinction. If you use only the primary properties to describe the world, your explanation will leave out the secondary ones.

You don't get color, smell, etc from shape, number, etc. This isn't a problem until you need to explain the mind, since it's part of the world.

That's why it's a problem for physicalism. — Marchesk

Only under the assumption of property dualism: the dubious idea that the colour wouldn't be a physical pigment for instance but some mysterious entity lurking inside your consciousness. Hence the appearance of a "hard problem" of consciousness.

But it is simply false to say that it would be a problem for physicalism, for not all physicalists are property dualists.

Bricks? :-} — jkop

Hint: it's an analogy.

Only under the assumption of property dualism: the dubious idea that the colour wouldn't be a physical pigment for instance but some mysterious entity lurking inside your consciousness. Hence the appearance of a "hard problem" of consciousness. — jkop

So then where is the color we experience? Is it identical with some biological process, or does color supervene on the entirety of visual perception?

Only under the assumption of property dualism: the dubious idea that the colour wouldn't be a physical pigment for instance but some mysterious entity lurking inside your consciousness. Hence the appearance of a "hard problem" of consciousness. — jkop

A physical pigment of what, though? I take it you don't think rocks have color experiences. That would be panpsychist.

Bricks? — jkop

If in the future we fully simulate vision, would the software have color experiences? Is there a way of arranging the bits such that they are conscious?

So then where is the color we experience? Is it identical with some biological process, or does color supervene on the entirety of visual perception? — Marchesk

Neither.

What constitutes your colour experience is located in your head: a firing of neurons. But the colour that you experience is located outside your head, in the physical processes that reflect, transmit, absorb or emit light.

So, the experience is not just a firing of neurons but reaches out to the external objects and state of affairs that set the content of the experience. The internal experience that you have is, in this sense, inseparable from the external object or state of affairs that you experience.

A physical pigment of what, though? I take it you don't think rocks have color experiences. That would be panpsychist. — Marchesk

A pigment

..is a material that changes the color of reflected or transmitted light as the result of wavelength-selective absorption. — Wikipedia

If in the future we fully simulate vision, would the software have color experiences? Is there a way of arranging the bits such that they are conscious? — Marchesk

Who knows? If we can make artificial hearts pump blood, then perhaps in the future we can make artificial brains that have colour experiences, and their experiences would then be just as intrinsic and ontologically subjective as for humans. So, in this sense you might as well redefine us humans as "biological machines", and our visual systems as "software" that "simulate" colour vision.

A rearrangement of the syntactically arranged bits in a computer, however, won't make it conscious. Computers have no semantics, and as long as their instructions are observer-relative (e.g. programmed to mimic the behaviour of a conscious human) then I don't see how they could have any experiences of their own.

Nagel's way of putting this is that science provides objective, third person explanations. But experiencing red is first person and subjective. So something is left out with any objective explanation. That explanation can be scientific, mathematical, computational, or functional and it will still leave the experience out, because all of those are objective explanations — Marchesk

I would suggest that objective explanations always directly or indirectly reference experience. For example, you might explain addition by showing how you can group stones together or explain quantum mechanics by pointing out interference patterns on a screen. In other words, there is no view from nowhere.

Which would mean that any explanation of experience would itself need to be in terms of experience.

Perhaps an alternative way of framing the issue to the usual subjective/objective framing.

So, the experience is not just a firing of neurons but reaches out to the external objects and state of affairs that set the content of the experience. The internal experience that you have is, in this sense, inseparable from the external object or state of affairs that you experience. — jkop

That works for perception, but what about dreaming or imagination? What if your visual cortex is stimulated by a magnet or electrode and you see color?

Perhaps an alternative way of framing the issue to the usual subjective/objective framing. — Andrew M

It is an alternative, but it prevents us from speaking of the world when humans aren't around, which would be most of the time, since humans only occupy part of the surface of one little pale blue dot for the past 50 thousand years or so.

It is an alternative, but it prevents us from speaking of the world when humans aren't around, which would be most of the time, since humans only occupy part of the surface of one little pale blue dot for the past 50 thousand years or so. — Marchesk

Not at all. We experience and describe the world from a human vantage point but it is still the world, independent of what humans say about it, that we are experiencing and describing.

There was no language about dinosaurs until humans came onto the scene. It doesn't follow that the referents of that language (i.e., the dinosaurs) didn't exist.

The consequence of this reframing is that our reports of our experience are no longer infallible reports of a private theater. They are instead provisional reports of our experience of the natural world. For example, I might report that I saw a red apple but be mistaken about that. It might instead have been a green apple that just appeared red in that lighting. Others can judge whether my report was accurate or not by looking for themselves. And this may lead me to revise my own report of what happened at the time. That is, the correct report of my experience is that I saw a green apple that appeared red due to the lighting.

That is, the correct report of my experience is that I saw a green apple that appeared red due to the lighting. — Andrew M

Sure, but what if I ask whether green is a property of the apple? Why do we care? Because we want to be able to get at an objective view of the world. When you ask me the mass of the apple, that mass doesn't depend on any sense modality humans have. Presumably, Martians with X-Ray vision will measure the apple to have the same mass, once we convert from their units to ours.

Color is a lot tricker than taste. Nobody is a taste realist, I take it. Nobody thinks that the apple objectively tastes sweet. It tastes sweet to animals whose taste buds detect a certain amount of sugar content. But what if we didn't' have a sense of taste or smell at all? Maybe we detected chemical content via spectroscopic eyes or some other sensory organ.

We experience and describe the world from a human vantage point but it is still the world, independent of what humans say about it, that we are experiencing and describing. — Andrew M

Independent, in what sense? We have sensory organs that are adapted to a particular range of stimuli, and intellectual capacities that we are told nowadays are the consequence of biological evolution. So how do we rise above those capacities and see the world 'independently' of those capacities? How do we know we're capable of seeing the world 'in itself' and as distinct from or apart from the categories of understanding through which we view it? I think that 'independence' is really a working assumption that is often treated as a metaphysical principle.

Color is a lot tricker than taste. Nobody is a taste realist, I take it. Nobody thinks that the apple objectively tastes sweet. It tastes sweet to animals whose taste buds detect a certain amount of sugar content. But what if we didn't' have a sense of taste or smell at all? Maybe we detected chemical content via spectroscopic eyes or some other sensory organ. — Marchesk

Properties like taste and color are pragmatic abstractions. What makes them objective is that they have an ostensive meaning and logic of use. It's not relevant at that level of abstraction what the underlying physical processes are.

These are the basic abstractions that we build on to get to more complex abstractions like "mass". If we had different sense modalities, then we would abstract the world differently at the sensory level. But we would still, in principle, end up with the same fundamental physics.

Independent, in what sense? We have sensory organs that are adapted to a particular range of stimuli, and intellectual capacities that we are told nowadays are the consequence of biological evolution. So how do we rise above those capacities and see the world 'independently' of those capacities? How do we know we're capable of seeing the world 'in itself' and as distinct from or apart from the categories of understanding through which we view it? I think that 'independence' is really a working assumption that is often treated as a metaphysical principle. — Wayfarer

Independent in the sense that the world was there before humans were around to talk about it.

We don't rise above those capacities (which would be the view from nowhere). The ordinary use of terms like "see" imply that it is the world that is seen (as opposed to a private theater or Platonic cave). You could accurately call it a working assumption.

Why can't you accept #5? That seems like an unsettling declaration that lacks objectivity (no pun intended), or is perhaps based on a misunderstanding of Idealism.....

Oh well...

As it was said of Berkeley's thought in his own time, his arguments could be refuted by no one and yet convinced no one.....sad.

Why can't you accept #5? That seems like an unsettling declaration that lacks objectivity (no pun intended), or is perhaps based on a misunderstanding of Idealism..... — Victoribus Spolia

I'm convinced there is more to the world than what we perceive.

Ah, well I can't just let this opportunity at provocation go....so....

On what grounds do you believe that there exists more than consciousness and conscious content?

On what grounds do you believe that there exists more than consciousness and conscious content? — Victoribus Spolia

Science. I was intending on starting a thread on science and realism where I would explain.

Well that seems like putting the cart before the horse.....

Science assumes answers to questions I just asked you, for instance, if no logical grounds exist to believe in anything other than consciousness and conscious-content...then, for instance, there can be no such thing as physical causation (which science as we understand it assumes axiomatically).

So that seems to beg the question. Science assumes a mind-independent reality, how can you therefore use such to prove the existence of such?

Are you saying that based on the assumption of the existence of a mind-independent physical reality you therefore believe in a mind-independent physical reality? There is a fallacy in there, i'm sure you are aware.....but I am willing to wait for your upcoming thread if I am missing something essential.

So that seems to beg the question. Science assumes a mind-independent reality, how can you therefore use such to prove the existence of such? — Victoribus Spolia

Proof might not be doable in metaphysics, but I take it to be a most reasonable inference. If a plant is observed to have grown while nobody was around to perceive it, then it makes sense to suppose the plant underwent growth independent of any observers. There are all sort of things like that where the reasonable inference is that stuff is going on when we're not around to perceive.

The alternative is that somehow our experiences are structured as if stuff goes on without us. How experiences could be like that is a mystery.

"Proof might not be doable in metaphysics, but I take it to be a most reasonable inference."


Proof in metaphysics is demonstrated by logical necessity established through sound argument via deductive inference, all inferences are either deductive or inductive (inductive inferences are technically fallacious but regarded as reasonable so long as the conclusions are stated in a tentative and non-deductive manner).

In the example you used, "growth" is an imputed meaning to a group disparate perceptions, but there is not metaphysical or epistemic grounds to assert as a truth the belief that the plant grew independent of any one perceiving it. None.

Of course, if all reality in its temporal totality exists in a supreme consciousness from which our limited perceptual states originate, then in some sense the "growth" does happen independent of our own experience.

Your alternative of mystery is unnecessary, and going back to Mary, if qualia are states of consciousness that cannot be reduced to physical attributes by any logical proof, then it seems that percepts being bundles of these sensations (qualia) would imply the non-physical nature of reality as all of reality would be comprehended by these irreducible mental states. That is, all of the world of which we have any knowledge, is mental content, and given that we continuously receive new percepts of which we did not have knowledge, we must ask where such originated.....Well I can tell you they can only come from some other Consciousness, for something cannot give what itself does not have and only a consciousness can have conscious content (percepts and therefore qualia); thus, whatever occurs apart from our personal experience is necessarily occurring in some other Consciousness and that is a sufficient grounds for the objectivity you seek.

no mystery or speculation needed.

All I am saying, is that I do not think you are being intellectually fair to simply dismiss idealism; especially, since the realist interpretation you propose seems to be grounded on assumption, speculation, and lack of deductive proof.

To be honest,

I don't really want to derail your thread further from your main topic, I just wanted to voice my objection to you dismissing idealism out of hand.

I am perfectly content to wait until you have created a thread defending realism and science for me to hear out your case and critique it there in a more appropriate context.

I doubt that I will be posting further here, unless I feel it is necessary.