So it's not that the neuroscientist has a "blindspot" as you stated here
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/771468
and actually that it is only a "hard problem" for idealist (or subjectivist) philosophers '. I agree. — 180 Proof

You seem to misunderstand. Neuroscience has a blind spot, I think that's obvious, as described by the analogy of @Olivier5. Having a blind spot, what I described as having a weakness, is not necessarily a problem though. So long as we all recognize our own weaknesses and we work around them, the weakness is not a problem.

When someone does not recognize one's own weakness, that will be a problem because the weakness will manifest in a mistake when unexpected. This is not "the hard problem" explicitly. The hard problem is something more like the difficulty of recognizing the weakness, seeing the blind spot.

If the so-called "hard problem ..." is not a scientific problem for neuroscience, as you admit,

So "the hard problem .." is not a scientific problem like I've stated.
— 180 Proof

No not really ... — Metaphysician Undercover

then your point about a "blindspot" is merely a tendentious non sequitur, MU.

Actually it's your conclusion which is non-sequitur. The scientist, just like everyone else in the world is confronted with problems which are not scientific problems. I.e., many problems we face cannot be solved with the scientific method. So, that the problem is not a scientific problem does not mean that scientists are not confronted with it.

I paged through The Conscious Mind and found what you're saying about re-arranging neural circuits (while asleep or something) so when you wake up you experience the inverted spectrum.

I guess I don't think whether you phrase it with one or two people it matters too much. But that probably goes some way to explain why I don't believe experience is private, ala the private language argument.

Having a blind spot, what I described as having a weakness, is not necessarily a problem though. So long as we all recognize our own weaknesses and we work around them, the weakness is not a problem. — Metaphysician Undercover

Is it intrinsic to this particular blind spot that its enactors are often blind to it being a blind spot? Is this when a blind spot bites? When it is not recognized as a limitation?

he scientist, just like everyone else in the world is confronted with problems which are not scientific problems. I.e., many problems we face cannot be solved with the scientific method. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's true and unless you're unremittingly scientistic, that would be well understood. Not many actual scientists seem to be members here, but there are a number of folk who consider science to be a more reliable pathway to understanding 'reality' than many other approaches. Where is the line drawn? Seems to be about where you think reality begins and ends.

When it comes to the hard problem of consciousness it seems to me difficult to determine who's territory this really is. And whether it is an actual thing. I am somewhat ambivalent and I recognize that like most I have no specialized knowledge with which to enhance my intuitive understanding of the matter.

It does seem to me that this problem either clicks with people or does not click. What exactly is the difference? Is it world view or experience or an actual blind spot?

I don't believe experience is private, ala the private language argument — Moliere

This is among the reasons why enactivism makes more sense to me than any other account of 'experience'. :up:

So while the thread is amusing, it is not going to achieve anything like a consensus. I — Banno

LOL. God forbid!

This is among the reasons why enactivism makes more sense to me than any other account of 'experience'. :up: — 180 Proof

I fail to see how experience itself is not private, even thought or the telling or acting out of it obviously is not, and the experience itself is mediated by socially acquired conceptions.

Does 'unmediated experience' make sense to you?

Well I believe even animals experience is mediated; unmediated experience would be literally nothing or no-thing.

... unmediated experience would be literally nothing or no-thing — Janus

:up: Ergo my enactivist outlook.

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience. — David Chalmers, Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness

Flowery vague ambiguities all packaged up nicely into a name. It's all in the name. It's all about the name. What's the name picking out to the exclusion of all else?

There is nothing it is like to be me.

"Felt" quality of redness??? The redness of the apple feels...

Gibberish.

It's qualia because the felt quality of the redness is private and unique to each individual...

,,,colors are not the sort of thing that we feel.

What unites each of these is that some folk call them "states of experience" not that there is something it is like to be a conscious organism.

As if all conscious organisms who been burnt were/are conscious to the same degree about the same things in all the same ways? Gibberish. As if all people share one and only one set of characteristics or features of and/or within experience such that it makes sense to say that there is something it is like to be a person or a bat or a cat or whatever?

The hard problem of consciousness is nothing more than self-imposed bewitchment.

The hard problem of consciousness is nothing more than self-imposed bewitchment. — creativesoul

:smirk: :up:

The folks who think that there no problem at all are welcome to do something more productive with their time than write here that "there is no problem at all", again and again. You could write about a topic you care for, on a problem you actually face in your p-zombitudiness.

What things don't share the same world? I don't know what you mean. — frank

"Share the same world", It's a colloquial expression - thought it was more universal, but apparently not. It means to be involved in the same activities. The use of the word 'consciousness' as it's used here and the study of neurons are not 'in the same world' they don't overlap in their activities. There's no need for one to explain the other, it wouldn't even make sense it'd be like expecting physics to explain what a googly is in cricket.

That a person needs to hold a doubt for there to be a doubt, is implicit in the definition of doubt: "a feeling of not being certain about something, especially about how good or true it is." — Olivier5

Exactly. And unless you want to argue that the dictionary was given to us by God or created by an act of nature, then nothing in it is 'discovered'. We declare definitions to be what they are, we could have declared otherwise.

So your idea of a discussion forum is that someone posts a claim and everyone who disagrees with it should refrain from posting in that thread.

That explains a lot about your approach to this forum.

Do you understand the difference between stubborn dogmatic polemical argument and productive discussion? Maybe productive discussion is not to be found between paradigms, but within them.

you agree that we have experiences, and therefore some scientific accounting for them is necessary, to have a complete understanding of the world. — hypericin

No. That's exactly the notion I'm disagreeing with. Us being able to use a word in conversation is not an indicator that that word picks out some empirical object or event in need of a scientific explanation. I gave the example of 'orange'. A perfectly useful word. There's no scientific explanation for the boundaries of the colour, nor is there any need for one. We just find 'orange' a useful level of distinction, not too fine to be cumbersome, not too broad to be useless. Nothing in the physics of photons explains 'orange' as a category, nor should it.

The OP...

the laws of biology, chemistry, electricity, and quantum mechanics in no way explain consciousness—or even hint that consciousness is possible. — Art48

If the OP wanted a within-paradigm discussion, then drawing in biology, chemistry, electricity, and quantum mechanics mightn't be the best way to go about that.

As usual, a claim is made against science, then when a scientific paradigm is invoked in the defense of that claim, the argument shifts to a non-overlapping magesteria one.

Well, if a scientific paradigm has no place in discussions about consciousness, then will everyone please stop going on about neuroscience (the failings thereof) in relation to it.

Well, if a scientific paradigm has no place in discussions about consciousness, then will everyone please stop going on about neuroscience (the failings thereof) in relation to it. — Isaac

I’m in agreement with a lot of what you’ve said in this discussion, but I think it’s worth pointing out why people do this. I think it’s an understandable reaction to the claims in popular science to the effect that consciousness has been, or will soon be, explained away by neuroscience. That is, a scientism that thereby devalues our stories. Do you recognise that this is a thing?

We declare definitions to be what they are, we could have declared otherwise. — Isaac

You are welcome to produce an alternative definition of "doubt" if you think it useful, but the meaning of the word "doubt" in standard English is a sort of feeling, felt by a human being. It's not about something free-floating in the universe, somewhere between Saturn and Neptune.

Defined conventionally, a doubt without a person holding it is simply a logical impossibility. It makes no sense whatsoever, like "colorless green ideas sleeping furiously".

I think it’s an understandable reaction to the claims in popular science to the effect that consciousness has been, or will soon be, explained away by neuroscience. That is, a scientism that thereby devalues our stories. Do you recognise that this is a thing? — Jamal

Yes.

I think there's two separate questions here. The first is whether neuroscience explains this 'phenomenological' use of the term consciousness. I think the answer to that is no (mainly because I can't see how it possibly could).

The second is the question of whether the 'phenomenological' use of the term consciousness makes coherent sense, is a useful term. I also happen to think the answer to that question is no. But it's a different question and the fact that the answer is 'no' doesn't, in my view, justify a claim that neuroscience has 'explained' it.

You are welcome to produce an alternative definition of "doubt" if you think it useful, — Olivier5

Why would I do that? Pointing out that the definition is an arbitrary cultural artifact is not the same as saying I want it replaced with another one. It's simply pointing out that we didn't 'discover' doubting needed a doubter. It's how we defined the word 'doubt'. It's not a fact of nature, it's a fact about how we speak.

It's not a fact of nature, it's a fact about how we speak. — Isaac

That's good, because I am not speaking about nature. I am speaking about a sentence that I find illogical, the sentence: "I doubt that I exist as a sentient, self-conscious entity". That sentence is logically absurd because a doubt implies some sentient, self-conscious entity holding it.

That sentence is logically absurd because a doubt implies some sentient, self-conscious entity holding it. — Olivier5

How does doubt logically imply a sentient, self-conscious entity holding it? What logical steps form that implication? Perhaps you could render it in classical notation, that might help.

The use of the word 'consciousness' as it's used here and the study of neurons are not 'in the same world' they don't overlap in their activities. There's no need for one to explain the other, it wouldn't even make sense it'd be like expecting physics to explain what a googly is in cricket. — Isaac

I think you're broadly in agreement with Chalmers here.

Gibberish.

Much the same thing happens with an inverted spectrum; — Banno

But don't stop there, you've left us hanging.

Is it intrinsic to this particular blind spot that its enactors are often blind to it being a blind spot? Is this when a blind spot bites? When it is not recognized as a limitation? — Tom Storm

I would say that blind spots are intrinsic to the nature of theoretical knowledge. Theoretical knowledge has limitations, and when the knowledge is put into practise the limitations may become a problem. The issue with being blind to the blind spot is that often the limitations cannot be known in advance, they only become evident as a result of practise.

So scientists use the scientific method to experiment and observe, and this helps to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the various theories, as a sort of practise. But experimentation occurs in a very controlled environment which doesn't properly represent the natural environment where free practise occurs.

That's true and unless you're unremittingly scientistic, that would be well understood. Not many actual scientists seem to be members here, but there are a number of folk who consider science to be a more reliable pathway to understanding 'reality' than many other approaches. Where is the line drawn? Seems to be about where you think reality begins and ends. — Tom Storm

This points to the issue I mentioned near the beginning of the thread, the difference between the inside of an object and the outside of an object. Science is always looking from the outside in. That is the scientific way, to observe through the senses, and this is to put oneself outside the thing being observed, thereby producing objective observations. On the other hand, the subjective "introspection" gives one a look at what is going on inside an object. So we can come to understand that these two ways of looking at an object give us very distinct and different understandings of what an object is.

Now, what I must insist on, and what is so difficult to get across to the hard headed scientistic people who claim "science to be a more reliable pathway to understanding 'reality'", is that this is 'reality'. So it is completely incorrect to assume that science is the more reliable path towards understanding reality because it only has a method toward understanding a part of reality. The true reality is that there is such a difference between inside and outside, and that is why dualism has been the principal ontology for thousands of years.

Scientism tells us that science has brought us beyond dualism, and that there is no longer a need for dualist ontology because science is the only method required for understanding reality, as you imply with that statement. But the true reality is that science alone, by its current method, cannot deliver to us adequate principles for drawing a line between where the outside ends and the inside begins. It looks at everything from the one direction, and cannot give us the principles required to designate properties of "the inside". And without adequate principles for what constitutes the inside, science cannot make an accurate differentiation between inside and outside.

On the other hand, dualism starts with a much more accurate description of reality, the fundamental difference between inside and outside, thereby providing us with the basic premise required for the differentiation, and a true understanding of reality. That's why dualism has been the standard ontology for thousands of years, and has only recently gone on the decline due to the increase of scientism.

It does seem to me that this problem either clicks with people or does not click. What exactly is the difference? Is it world view or experience or an actual blind spot? — Tom Storm

So I would say that the difference is a difference of "world view". Science takes from the inside (theory), and applies what is taken from the inside, to the outside (practise). The application effectively proves and disproves what has been given by the inside, and this is the scientific method. Scientism denies the importance of the inside, insisting that the scientific method is all that is required for the existence of knowledge, thereby creating a blind spot for itself, its reliance on the inside. So science does not create the blind spot, nor does science reject dualism, it's the scientistic philosophy which rejects dualism, dissolving the difference between inside and outside, thereby producing a philosophical (not a scientific) blind spot.

I think you're broadly in agreement with Chalmers here. — frank

I don't see how. Chalmers famously labelled it the 'hard problem', didn't he? I'm suggesting it isn't a problem at all. I can't think of any way we could be much farther apart than that.