That is an interesting analogy. I read Chalmers as breaking from the Cartesian theater where the duality of a first person being separated from the rest of the movie is the explanation itself.:

With experience, on the other hand, physical explanation of the functions is not in question. The key is instead the conceptual point that the explanation of functions does not suffice for the explanation of experience. This basic conceptual point is not something that further neuroscientific investigation will affect. In a similar way, experience is disanalogous to the élan vital. The vital spirit was put forward as an explanatory posit, in order to explain the relevant functions, and could therefore be discarded when those functions were explained without it. Experience is not an explanatory posit but an explanandum in its own right, and so is not a candidate for this sort of elimination. — Chalmers, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness

The question is not whether we are only physical beings but whether the methods to establish what is only physical will explain experience. Chalmers is introducing a duality that is recognized through the exclusion of a phenomena instead of accepting the necessity for an agency beyond phenomena.

To that point, we don't know enough to say what consciousness does to understand how it may relate to the specific event of being a 'first' person. Compare this circumspection to the boldness of Identity Theory where that aspect of the 'physical' self is the first order of business.

I read Chalmers as breaking from the Cartesian theater where the duality of a first person being separated from the rest of the movie is the explanation itself. ..The question is not whether we are only physical beings but whether the methods to establish what is only physical will explain experience. Chalmers is introducing a duality that is recognized through the exclusion of a phenomena instead of accepting the necessity for an agency beyond phenomena. — Paine

I like Zahavi’s critique of Chalmers’ position:

“Chalmers's discussion of the hard problem has identified and labeled an aspect of consciousness that cannot be ignored. However, his way of defining and distinguishing the hard problem from the easy problems seems in many ways indebted to the very reductionism that he is out to oppose. If one thinks that cognition and intentionality is basically a matter of information processing and causal co-variation that could in principle just as well go on in a mindless computer–or to use Chalmers' own favored example, in an experienceless zombie–then one is left with the impression that all that is really distinctive about consciousness is its qualitative or phenomenal aspect. But this seems to suggest that with the exception of some evanescent qualia everything about consciousness including intentionality can be explained in reductive (computational or neural) terms; and in this case, epiphenomenalism threatens.

To put it differently, Chalmers's distinction between the hard and the easy problems of consciousness shares a common feature with many other recent analytical attempts to defend consciousness against the onslaught of reductionism: They all grant far too much to the other side. Reductionism has typically proceeded with a classical divide and rule strategy. There are basically two sides to consciousness: Intentionality and phenomenality. We don't currently know how to reduce the latter aspect, so let us separate the two sides, and concentrate on the first. If we then succeed in explaining intentionality reductively, the aspect of phenomenality cannot be all that significant. Many non-reductive materialists have uncritically adopted the very same strategy. They have marginalized subjectivity by identifying it with epiphenomenal qualia and have then claimed that it is this aspect which eludes reductionism.

But is this partition really acceptable, are we really dealing with two separate problems, or is experience and intentionality on the contrary intimately connected? Is it really possible to investigate intentionality properly without taking experience, the first-person perspective, semantics, etc., into account? And vice versa, is it possible to understand the nature of subjectivity and experience if we ignore intentionality. Or do we not then run the risk of reinstating a Cartesian subject-world dualism that ignores everything captured by the phrase “being-in-the-world”?”

I'm a hard determinist, so I don't share that concern.

Other people cannot be said to learn of my sensations only from my behaviour — for I cannot be said to learn of them. I have them.
This much is true: it makes sense to say about other people that they doubt whether I am in pain; but not to say it about myself. — Wittgenstein, PI 246

↪Joshs
I'm a hard determinist, so I don't share that concern. — frank

Hard determinism has worked well for the natural sciences , but it isn’t such a great fit for elucidating psychological processes such as intentionality, mental illness, motivation, affectivity, empathy and learning.

you can't follow a simple argument there's little point continuing. try reading what I've written rather than arguing against what you think I probably wrote. — Isaac

If I'm not understanding you correctly, maybe it would help if your "argument" was the least bit coherent.

On the one hand, we "have" experiences, yet whatever they are, they are a pale, ghostly thing, a not "an entity/event in need of explanation", it is a mere "felicitous word", that exists somewhere in it's "own world".

At times you have likened experience to fictional entities (gods, pixie dust, the ether), at other times human convention (the boundary between red and orange, the movement of chess pieces), at other times you declared the simple identity of experience and neural activity. Which is it? And all this without, as far as I can tell, the slightest shred of evidence or argument that experience is any of these, or even that it is possible for experience to be any of these. You just baldly insist on it.

Are you just waving around your (no doubt flawed) interpretation of the results of the Anomalous Monism argument as if they were self evident truths?

If there is an argument somewhere, it seems to be this "killer".

If we're not describing some.empirical object (or event) then it would be weird if some empirical objects matched up with it exactly. The 'hard problem' would emerge if there was a one-to-one correspondence. Then we'd have something odd to explain. That it doesn't is exactly what we'd expect. It's not even an easy problem, its not a problem at all. — Isaac

Which is garbage. If memory does not have a one-to-one correspondence with neural activity (as you have asserted), does that imply that there is no neural basis for memory? That memory too has no need for explanation, existing in its own shadowy world? No, it just means that the relationship between memory and neural activity is irreducibly complex. Do I need to waste time providing evidence of the neural basis of memory?

No, forgive me if I'm not willing to spend another iota of my precious time picking over your opinions on this matter. They are just not that interesting. As a far wiser man than me said,

I'm not looking to do a deep dive on what Isaac thinks because I'd probably bump my head on the bottom of the pool — frank

PS no one is attacking your precious neuroscience, so quit whining about it as if they were.

A few things struck me as odd. Why does epiphenomenalism "threaten"?
So what if

the aspect of phenomenality cannot be all that significant — Joshs

? Are we supposed to reason towards what elevates our self esteem and makes us feel good? Rather than towards the truth?

is experience and intentionality on the contrary intimately connected? — Joshs

I think I agree with this, but in the sense that explaining cognition without experience is hopeless, in the same way that explaining biology without cells is hopeless. Sure, all biology is ultimately reducible to molecules bouncing around, but you won't get anywhere trying to describe it in those terms. It is the wrong level of description. Similarly, neural activity is the wrong level of description to explain "higher" (that is, conscious) cognition. It (we) treats phenomenal experience as if it were elemental, and thinks in terms of them, even if they are ultimately reducible to neural activity (in ways yet to be elucidated).

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. — Isaac

Doubt necessarily implies a sentient, self-conscious entity holding it. Doubt is a thinking process. If you do not agree with this, then what is doubt to you?
Thinking is not just a convention or an agreement that humans hold on to. I, for example, do not need your approval or some other form of acknowledgment in order for me to claim that I am thinking or doubting. And if you tell me that you are doubting the validity of my claim, then you prove my point.

It basically concludes that communication is always a matter of pointing to facets of your audience's experience. — frank

If communication requires common experiential ground, this seems to rather imply the privacy of experience. If experience were communicable, then the relevant experiential background could be communicated.

There could be cases where experience varies significantly, as with people with aphantasia, but knowledge of that implies some commonality in order to communicate it. — frank

Aphantasia is kind of a special case. Our experience of our inner world echoes our experience of the outer world. Our inner monologue echoes the sound of us (or someone) talking, and our inner visualization echo (faintly,to be sure, for most) the experience of seeing. And so it is possible to understand one in terms of the other. Since those with aphantasia can still see, they can imagine visualization as a movie playing inside the head. But if they lacked both inner and outer sight, then it is impossible to communicate vision to that person.

As for "internal". I just don't understand what it's supposed to be internal to. My skull? — frank

Internality to me is close to privacy: from the external, third-person perspective, the organism's experience is not evident. Experience is only revealed from the internal, first-person perspective. That is, to the organism.

Doubt necessarily implies a sentient, self-conscious entity holding it. Doubt is a thinking process. If you do not agree with this, then what is doubt to you? — Caldwell

Well they set it out. Set out the logical implication in one of the standard forms of logical notation so we can check its validity.

he focused upon how the conflict of methods developed to establish facts beyond personal experience came to be used to explain that phenomena itself — Paine

The scientific method of natural sciences may be said to go "beyond personal experience" but not "beyond experience". Indeed, "experience" is key in empirical research (including any empirical research about "experience"!) as much as the notions of "spacetime", "mass", "charge" are key in physics.

Intentionality is a concept I use when I refer to other people's perspectives, whereas phenomenality is a concept i use exclusively with respect to my experiences.

It makes no sense for me to interpret science as analyzing a first-person subject, therefore it makes no sense for me to interpret science as saying anything either for or against phenomenality.

If communication requires common experiential ground, this seems to rather imply the privacy of experience. If experience were communicable, then the relevant experiential background could be communicated. — hypericin

Well... it's that we couldn't communicate all without any preceding common ground. There may be little nuances about your experience of say, seeing the stars at night, that I don't and possibly couldn't know about, but I must largely know what that experience is like in order to talk to you about it, right?

Aphantasia is kind of a special case. Our experience of our inner world echoes our experience of the outer world. Our inner monologue echoes the sound of us (or someone) talking, and our inner visualization echo (faintly,to be sure, for most) the experience of seeing. — hypericin

I see what you mean. I think Chalmers is including all of that as phenomenal consciousness, of the outer world and the realm of imagination.

Experience is only revealed from the internal, first-person perspective. That is, to the organism. — hypericin

Would you agree that the third person view is a construction?

Hard determinism has worked well for the natural sciences , but it isn’t such a great fit for elucidating psychological processes such as intentionality, mental illness, motivation, affectivity, empathy and learning. — Joshs

What part of the psyche doesn't fit with epiphenomenalism? I mean, when does freedom of the will become necessary to understanding?

I agree. The emphasis has been on what can be confirmed by shared and repeatable experiences. The point Chalmers is making about the use of reductive means to discover functions is echoed by the early cheerleader of modern science, Francis Bacon:

But my course and method, as I have often clearly stated and would wish to state again, is this--not to extract works from works or experiments from experiments (as an empiric), but from works and experiments to extract causes and axioms, and again from those causes and axioms new works and experiments, as a legitimate interpreter of nature. — Francis Bacon, The New Organon, Book 1, 67

What part of the psyche doesn't fit with epiphenomenalism? I mean, when does freedom of the will become necessary to understanding? — frank

↪Joshs A few things struck me as odd. Why does epiphenomenalism "threaten"?
So what if
the aspect of phenomenality cannot be all that significant
— Joshs
? Are we supposed to reason towards what elevates our self esteem and makes us feel good? Rather than towards the truth? — hypericin

Epiphenomenalism asserts that mental events are caused by physical events in the brain, which they have no effect on. It can also apply to a distinction between conscious subjective awareness and subpersonal, computational cognition. The former has been assumed as epiphenomenal with respect to the latter by computational approaches in cognitive psychology.

As Evan Thompson explains, “The mind was divided into two radically different regions, with an unbridgeable chasm between them—the subjective mental states of the person and the subpersonal cognitive routines implemented in the brain. The radically nonconscious, subpersonal region, the so-called cognitive un-conscious, is where the action of thought really happens; personal awareness has access merely to a few results or epiphenomenal mani-festations of subpersonal processing.

This radical separation of cognitive processes from consciousness created a peculiar "explanatory gap" in scientific theorizing about the mind. Cartesian dualism had long ago created an explanatory gap between mind and matter, consciousness and nature. Cognitivism, far from closing this gap, perpetuated it in a materialist form by opening a new gap between subpersonal, computational cognition and subjective mental phenomena. Simply put, cognitivism offered no account whatsoever of mentality in the sense of subjective experience. Some theorists even went so far as to claim that subjectivity and consciousness do not fall within the province of cognitive science.”

Enactivist approaches to cognition informed by phenomenological philosophy reject this ‘mind-mind’
split.

“The theory of autopoiesis and developmental systems theory to-gether provide a different view of the organism. Autopoietic systems (and autonomous systems generally) are unified networks of many in-terdependent processes. Organisms are accordingly not the sort of sys-tems that have atomistic traits as their proper parts; such traits are the products of theoretical abstraction.

Awareness, according to this model, far from being epiphenomenal, plays an important causal role. Its role is not as an internal agent or ho-munculus that issues commands, but as an order parameter that or-ganizes and regulates dynamic activity. Freeman and Varela thus agree that consciousness is neurally embodied as a global dynamic activity pattern that organizes activity throughout the brain.”

Sure, all biology is ultimately reducible to molecules bouncing around, but you won't get anywhere trying to describe it in those terms.

I agree with this, big time. Even reducing intentionality or consciousness to brain activity is a step too far. In every single case, Intentionality and consciousness is the activity of the organism as a whole. Physicalism has done itself a disservice by looking for some amorphous locus inside the head.

Well they set it out. Set out the logical implication in one of the standard forms of logical notation so we can check its validity. — Isaac

I don't need to. Go ahead if you could do so. I'm asking if you had any doubts as to what I just said, then you were already demonstrating what you purported to deny. Simple. It's not hard to understand this.

Epiphenomenalism asserts that metal events are caused by physical events in the brain, — Joshs

Epiphenomenonalism appeared in the 19th Century before we clearly understood that physics is unfinished. I don't think it violates the spirit of epiphenomenonalism to allow the explanation for consciousness to stray from the little spot between our ears. We can still call that cause, whatever it may be, physical, if that's important to someone. The point is that we end up with property dualism. The only question is whether an individual human has the power to alter the course of the universe, or if the universe is an unchanging block. I think I know your view on that.

Enactivist approaches to cognition informed by phenomenological philosophy reject this ‘mind-mind’ split. — Joshs

That's their prerogative, but I don't think their view is the only workable one. Do you?

I'm asking if you had any doubts as to what I just said, then you were already demonstrating what you purported to deny. — Caldwell

What? If I have doubts that proves that having doubt implies a thinking being? How? What is the process of logical implication?

This, I think, is "I(I) have a doubt (D)" in Russell's notation.

$\exists x(Ix \wedge \forall y(Iy \to y = x) \wedge Dx)$

I see the existence of 'I' being declared, not logically implied.

How do you render it such that it is logically implied?

Well... it's that we couldn't communicate all without any preceding common ground. — frank

The fact that we share a common experiential ground stems from the fact that we share a common world, as well as a common neurology. Nonetheless I cannot look through your eyes, as you cannot mine. We can never know what it would actually be like, if we could.

I think Chalmers is including all of that as phenomenal consciousness, of the outer world and the realm of imagination. — frank

Yup

Would you agree that the third person view is a construction? — frank

In what sense? When we observe anything in the world, we are observing it from a third person perspective. That is a component of our first person perspective, what it is like to be us.

When we observe anything in the world, we are observing it from a third person perspective. That is a component of our first person perspective, what it is like to be us. — hypericin

There isn't any phenomenal aspect to the third person account. It's the God's eye view. If you read a novel that's in third person, it's from a POV that no individual could have. Like:

They all knew that sooner or later the aliens would come back. What none of them realized was that the aliens were already among them, having shed their exoskeletons and invaded the local chickens.

That's third person.

There isn't any phenomenal aspect to the third person account. It's the God's eye view. — frank

In the literary sense it doesn't have to be free of phenomenal content. It just means that the point of view is not tied to any one character:

Tommy squirmed in the hard plastic chair, suffocating in the reek of recent flatulence which pervaded the office. The principal's voice was a drone, a distant second to the large red birthmark on the principal's forehead in the competition for Tommy's attention.

Philosophers don't generally use the 1st/3rd person distinction in the strict literary sense however, the usage is more by analogy. The third person perspective is that of the detached observer, while the first is the perspective of the conscious individual. In this sense everybody takes on both perspectives, and when looking in the mirror, simultaneously, on the same object.

We have very different views of that issue. :chin:

To some extent (currently in dispute), the desire to find out how Nature works is the desire to learn something beyond the aim of accounts given merely to tell a story.

When you say: "There isn't any phenomenal aspect to the third person account, that is to ignore the role of paying attention to phenomena has in moving toward that prize of objectivity. One can recognize the difference without pitting them against each other in a zero-sum game.

Obviously, we will need consciousness to explain consciousness. We will need consciousness to transcend it's own consciousness and become 1st, 2nd and 3rd person simultaneously.

When you say: "There isn't any phenomenal aspect to the third person account, that is to ignore the role of paying attention to phenomena has in moving toward that prize of objectivity. One can recognize the difference without pitting them against each other in a zero-sum game. — Paine

I wasn't pitting them against one another. Hyperion was saying that when you look out at the world, this is third person data. It's not. It's first person.

Third person data has no POV per se. It's usually thought of as a construct.

What role does science play from that perspective?

What role does science play from that perspective? — Paine

I don't understand the question.