There is the presumption that their findings are observer-independent i.e. replicable by anyone, They’re ‘third person’ in that sense. It’s an implicit assumption. — Wayfarer

It seems the explicit part of science as epistemic method that this "independence" is what is being socially-constructed. It is the realist position on indirect realism. :grin:

All the defenders of the Hard Problem and "what it is like to be a first person point of view" make the mistake of not understanding that selves arise within neurobiology as "other" to their perceptual/cognitive realities. The Bayesian Brain and psychology's "enactive turn" summarises the "how" of this. This is the concrete advance since Chalmers and Koch had their little self-aggrandising bet.

So the first person POV is "subjective" in relation to its neurobiological Umwelt. It objectifies the world as the "other" of its ability to forward model it environment. The self is that part of the brain activity which stands as a goal-organised predictive model of the world. The world then becomes for the organism that part of its wider reality which is the recalcitrant or unpredicted. By further processing that updates the running Bayesian model, the world gets assimilated to this "selfish" first person point of view and so woven in as a stable "consciousness" of "how everything is" in terms of a self~world relation.

Science comes along as humans eventually realise the modelling game being played and say we can do better. Through language, but better yet maths, we can implement a model of the modelling relation in such a way it would be like experiencing the world from a God-like view from nowhere. A transcendent third person point of view.

This is made concrete by a process of theory and measurement.

We can state publicly in formal terms a structure of thought that encodes predictions about states of the world. We can share a model with every other mind within our cultural orbit such that we can be sure we are thinking the same – because the rules of this thinking are captured in a rigid mechanical fashion.

And then the predictions are cashed out by reading numbers off dials. We become third person observers by making measurements – measurements that codify degrees of surprise or prediction error.

So whether we talk about "consciousness" as neurobiological awareness or socially-constructed knowing, it is the same epistemic process in action. Cognition as predictive modelling aimed at creating a self in control of its world.

The first person self becomes contrasted with the third person self only as the feature, rather than the bug, of the advances of human epistemology. We took nature's modelling relation to its next semiotic level. We found that we were embodied in our "private" worlds and so found the ladder that could get us out into a public space of theories and measurements.

At the deep metaphysical level – the one that speaks to the ontology of fundamental structure – the structure is the same. A self constructing itself as the prediction maker within what becomes its predictable world – its semiotic Umwelt.

So sure, one can bang on about ineffable feels and homuncular mind's eyes. That reflects an older technical point of view. It reflects the social technology required to impose stable order on the "world model" of cultures based on agrarian empire building. It produced the level of self-regulation that organised the world as a hierarchy of peasants, bureaucrats, priests and kings.

But now we live in industrialised societies where science is the new social technology. We can aim to regulate our lives in ways that have an impersonal rationality. We become ruled not by some transcending sense of God or generalised notion of the divine, but by something even more Platonic and impersonal than that. Laws of nature. And what a clock and ruler can tell us about that in terms of mechanical acts of measurement.

And sure, one may think this impersonalised form of mindfulness is a bit much. It's not real in the sense you might think your neurobiology of the "self and its world" is. The first person view stands clearly opposed to the third person view as the first person view is "the place which you actually inhabit".

But facts are facts. The first person view is just as much a modelling relation as the third person one. It is only that we find ourselves developmentally rooted in the first and making a conscious choice about the second.

And if we are going to be debating things "philosophically", we need to remember that between the neurobiology of the the organismic self and the social construction of the scientific self comes that middle period of being the peasants within an agrarian era with its organised religion and useful ways of having its folk think. There are good historical reasons for why the Hard Problem resonates with a theistic point of view – why Cartesianism still reigns with its crisp dualism of mind and body.

The argument between Dennett and Chalmers is just an argument over the reality of qualia — Janus

And that term, ‘qualia’, is only ever encountered in academic literature, precisely about this problem.

Let's say the subject is not real anyway, per Buddhism for example — Janus

So whether we talk about "consciousness" as neurobiological awareness or socially-constructed knowing, it is the same epistemic process in action. Cognition as predictive modelling aimed at creating a self in control of its world. — apokrisis

As I’ve said, I think Chalmer’s expression of ‘what it is like to be…’ is simply a rather awkward way of referring to ‘being’. And as I’ve also said, that is not something which can be framed in scientific terms, because there’s no ‘epistemic cut’ here. We’re never outside of it or apart from it. A Wittgenstein aphorism comes to mind, ‘We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.’

Cartesian doesn’t reign for that reason at all. It reigns as the implicit metaphysics of modern science (‘modern’ being the paradigm up until the 1927 Solvay conference.)

And as I’ve also said, that is not something which can be framed in scientific terms, because there’s no ‘epistemic cut’ here. We’re never outside of it or apart from it. — Wayfarer

You don't yet understand the epistemic cut. Perhaps I should rename it the epistemic bridge for your benefit.

The cut is the mechanics of a sign, a switch, a ratchet, that gets inserted so as to make the modelling a reality. Brains do that at their level. Societies do that at the next level up.

You are being too psychology-centric. You think only of the minds of "individuals". But organisms can become entrained to social levels of reality modelling. Ants and humans are the "ultrasocial" extremes of this development, as they could insert the further systems of sign in the form of pheromone signals and verbal signals.

You don't yet understand the epistemic cut — apokrisis

I understand it perfectly well thank you. Since you first mentioned it, I’ve read up on it. I’m talking about epistemology, not systems science or modeling. The epistemological implications are well known in non-dualism but that is bound to be a digression.

As I’ve said, I think Chalmer’s expression of ‘what it is like to be…’ is simply a rather awkward way of referring to ‘being’. And as I’ve also said, that is not something which can be framed in scientific terms, because there’s no ‘epistemic cut’ here. We’re never outside of it or apart from it. A Wittgenstein aphorism comes to mind, ‘We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.’

Cartesian doesn’t reign for that reason at all. It reigns as the implicit metaphysics of modern science (‘modern’ being the paradigm up until the 1927 Solvay conference.) — Wayfarer

But no one contests the question of being in the sense that the fact of our existence is not at issue. It is the nature of that existence which is at issue.

Science deals with what can be observed, measured, conjectured about and experimented with; that's it. It doesn't eliminate the subject because we, the subjects, are the ones doing the observing, measuring, conjecturing and experimenting. 'Hard' science doesn't deal with the subject, though; we are not observing, measuring, conjecturing about and experimenting with ourselves, other than in 'softer' sciences such as for example psychology, anthropology and sociology.

We cannot definitively answer the question as to whether perception gives us access to, in the sense of knowledge about, a "real" outside, because this can be framed in different ways, and the answer will depend on the framing.

I think the Wittgenstein quote refers to the fact that science cannot solve ethical, aesthetic or spiritual questions.

I think the Wittgenstein quote refers to the fact that science cannot solve ethical, aesthetic or spiritual questions. — Janus

Quite so. Can’t you see how that also relates to the ‘problem of consciousness’ that is being discussed?

Not really, I see the problem of consciousness as being either a scientific question, which is not strictly relevant to the ethical, aesthetical and spiritual, or else as being immaterial to the questions of ethics, aesthetics and spirituality; simply because the latter are pragmatic, "living" questions, whereas the non-scientific question of consciousness is slippery and even incapable of being coherently framed.

But physical sciences don't exclude the first person as far as I can tell.
— wonderer1

There is the presumption that their findings are observer-independent i.e. replicable by anyone, They’re ‘third person’ in that sense. It’s an implicit assumption. — Wayfarer

I suppose I should have asked where you draw a line between physical sciences and ~physical sciences, and why?

Neuroscience certainly is a physical science, and doesn't exclude the first person. Do you disagree?

Of course, the subject of neuroscience is the human brain, and humans are subjects, but that it not the point at issue. ‘Facing up to the problem of consciousness’ concerns the difficulty, or even the impossibility, of a providing a scientific account of first-person experience due its subjective nature.

The bet which was the subject of the OP was placed in 1998 between David Chalmers and Kristoff Koch as to whether a neurological account of the nature of experience would be discovered in the next 25 years. From the story:

At the 26th ASSC conference this past weekend, 25 years after the initial wager, the results were declared: Koch lost. Despite years of scientific effort — a time during which the science of consciousness shifted from the fringe to a mainstream, reputable, even exciting area of study — we still can’t say how or why the experience of consciousness arises.

(The article is here.)

Do you see the distinction that is being made? Have you read the original Chalmer’s paper?

Do you know what it's like to be you? — RogueAI

It's alright. Got a bit more boring lately as I've finally had to give up work completely, but I live in a nice place, so I'm OK. Thanks for asking though.

So you deem the "I" addressed to be identical to you as body. And yet, the imagined table is only an aspect of your bodily processes, specifically of certain aspects of your CNS - the very same CNS from which this "I" results (at least as its typically understood; such that the I is one of many functioning process of the body - along with a multitude of unconscious processes of mind - but is not the body itself). But then in deeming this "I" identical to you as body there is grave incoherence in terms of what is being referenced in the expression, "Things I imagine". — javra

Why? I'm not seeing any incoherence. The imagined table is, in this context, a facon de parler. It's objectified by our language. The fact that we can talk about it doesn't make it real in the sense of there being some laws governing it that investigation could discover. The 'laws' of language are a joint construction between you, I, and all the other language users. At the level of 'governing laws' the imagined table is just some goings on in my brain, but we don't talk that way, so in our jointly constructed world the imagined table becomes a thing. We bring it into existence by making it the object of a sentence. You're trying to take these mutually constructed objects and pretend there's something to 'discover' there, but there's nothing there, we made all this stuff up to have this conversation.

Given this incoherence, again, in which way then do you deem what you refer to as "I" to be in any way different from the imagined table? (To emphasize: Both are functions of your body — javra

They are not both 'functions' of my body. 'I' refers to me, my body, whatever I deem to be part of that unit. The imagined table refers to either a story element created by some part of my brain, or the activity of that part of my brain, depending on which frame of reference you want to discuss it at. Those are two different things.

OK, so when one intends to imagine a table, you take it that one consciously holds awareness of all the table's imagined properties instantaneously to so intending, aka willing. — javra

No I take 'willing' to be a post hoc construction of the working memory after the event of imagining the table. As I said to you (part of the "word-salad" you decided was beyond you to understand), you are not here dealing with your experiences. The evidence you think you're presenting of the way your mind works is not direct evidence. You are working with your recollections of experiences which happened seconds ago. Those recollections are already constructed, they are filtered, they are biased, they are culturally influenced - same as any recollections are. The 'facts' you're supposedly working with here are already interpreted.

It's alright. Got a bit more boring lately as I've finally had to give up work completely, but I live in a nice place, so I'm OK. Thanks for asking though. — Isaac

Have your views evolved? Last time I asked you that, you claimed you didn't understand the question. Do you now admit that questions of "what is it like to be x" make sense?

Depends on the answer you want. Are you happy with the one I've given? Does that progress consciousness studies somehow?

"What is it like to climb Everest?" is a perfectly normal question if you accept the answer as "It was really good fun, but a bit cold".

If you want something involving philosophical zombies, your question makes no sense.

to what purpose? — Janus

A crate of wine, I think, was the goal, if I recall correctly.

Facing up to the problem of consciousness’ concerns the difficulty, or even the impossibility, of a providing a scientific account of first-person experience due its subjective nature. — Wayfarer

Again, you seemed to have misunderstood Chalmers' point. He does not propose that science can't explain experience. He's fairly confident that it can with some conceptual adjustments.

Namely through the introduction of first person perspectives https://consc.net/papers/firstperson.html

Subject of Dennett’s critical article ‘The Fantasy of First Person Science’, which I’ve already mentioned.

In no way have I misrepresented Chalmers’ position in this thread.

If you want something involving philosophical zombies, your question makes no sense. — Isaac

On the other hand, it would be great to have a philosophical zombie sherpa help you climb Everest because it wouldn’t matter if they fell off.

In no way have I misrepresented Chalmers’ position in this thread. — Wayfarer

Actually you have, repeatedly. Chalmers is optimistic about a theory of consciousness that explains experience.

it would be great to have a philosophical zombie sherpa help you climb Everest because it wouldn’t matter if they fell off. — Wayfarer

Ha!

Now that's an interesting question (fair warning - I'm about to dissect a perfectly innocent joke...). It would matter to me because I'd be bothered if I wasn't bothered (if that makes sense!).

I've always had this with the whole 'would you switch off an android which asks you not to' trope. I wouldn't. But not because of the android, but because of what I'd have to do by way of suppressing my own empathy in order to do it.

I'd get to know the philosophical zombie whilst he was helping me climb, I'd want to be bothered if he fell off. I'd be scared, if we lived in a world of philosophical zombies, of becoming the sort of person who wasn't bothered.

Not sure if that sentiment tells us anything useful about philosophical zombies... but there it is anyway.

@Wayfarer's posts are always well supported by citations (to the point of being infamous for it!). If you're going to accuse someone of misrepresentation, at least have the basic courtesy to do so with the same level of textual support with which the original claim was given. You're not a prophet.

On the other hand, it would be great to have a philosophical zombie sherpa help you climb Everest because it wouldn’t matter if they fell off. — Wayfarer

I think this passage is interesting:

"One huge advance would be the invention of a “consciousness-meter,” which could provide a “precise readout of the state of consciousness” of any given object. “I could point it at your head and get a read-out of your state of consciousness. Point it at this flower and see if it’s conscious or not. Point at a dog to see if anything might be going on in it. We don’t have that.” Such a device would “basically give you the data you need to formulate, let’s say, a semi-mathematical theory of consciousness,” which correlates a given physical system with a given conscious state."
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/david-chalmers-thinks-the-hard-problem-is-really-hard/

If you had such a meter, and pointed it a suspected P-zombie, and it registered no consciousness, wouldn't you still treat the suspected P-zombie as if it were conscious? After all, no device is infallible. I also don't see how such an invention could ever come about. Suppose you think you've come up with a consciousness detector, and you point it a dog. How could you possibly verify the accuracy of the meter? That would require another meter to verify the results of the first one, and you have an infinite regress. I see no way around this.

Why? I'm not seeing any incoherence. — Isaac

There's a few aspects, but I'll start with this:

'I' refers to me, my body, whatever I deem to be part of that unit. — Isaac

This statement claims that "I" refers to both a body and to a unit of that body, this at the same time and in the same respect - thereby making a whole equivalent to a part of that whole. If you uphold this logical contradiction, it is incoherent. If you don't than your quoted statement is erroneous or, at best, very misleading; in which case, please clarify it.

As I said to you (part of the "word-salad" you decided was beyond you to understand), you are not here dealing with your experiences. The evidence you think you're presenting of the way your mind works is not direct evidence. — Isaac

As to the first sentence, it reads as though making the claim that I have no experiences which I can then address. Which is sheer fallacy. I do have experiences, and it is these that I'm addressing. As to the second sentence, it is equivocating the way my total mind works with the way my conscious experience works. Where it to instead read, "The evidence you think you're presenting of the way your conscious experience unfolds is not direct evidence" it would be nonsensical.

No I take 'willing' to be a post hoc construction of the working memory after the event of imagining the table. — Isaac

OK. Interesting hypothesis. How then do you distinguish behaviors - such as that of imagining a table - that are voluntary (which means consciously willed) from those that are involuntary (which means not consciously willed).

posts are always well supported by citations (to the point of being infamous for it!). If you're going to accuse someone of misrepresentation, at least have the basic courtesy to do so with the same level of textual support with which the original claim was given. You're not a prophet. — Isaac

If he needs help discovering what Chalmers' meant by the "hard problem," I'll be happy to point him toward helpful resources.

This statement claims that "I" refers to both a body and to a unit of that body, this at the same time and in the same respect - thereby making a whole equivalent to a part of that whole. If you uphold this logical contradiction, it is incoherent. If you don't than your quoted statement is erroneous or, at best, very misleading; in which case, please clarify it. — javra

The collection {things I like} is made up of anything I deem to be a member of it. It's nothing more than those things, it's not those things + the collection of those things. The collection {my body} is similarly made up of those components I deem to be part of it. It's not a thing in addition to that collection.

As to the first sentence, it reads as though making the claim that I have no experiences which I can then address. Which is sheer fallacy. I do have experiences, and it is these that I'm addressing. As to the second sentence, it is equivocating the way my total mind works with the way my conscious experience works. Where it to instead read, "The evidence you think you're presenting of the way your conscious experience unfolds is not direct evidence" it would be nonsensical. — javra

The point is that you are conflating the already given with the constructed. Unless we live in some weird matrix-like hallucinatory trance, we appear to find our constructions (the things we think of as real) to be constrained in some way, not everything works. Yet also there are competing theories which all seem to work equally well, right now. different people believe different things to be the case and they seem to get on with life quite happily nonetheless, right?

So there's two categories here. The things we construct, and the causes or constraints on those constructions.

Investigating those causes just inevitably means investigating further constructions, we can't escape that. So for any of this to make any sense we determine the field which we're holding to be constructed and the field which we're holding to be causal. For example, we might ask why people behave the way they do. Here the behaviours (words like 'giving', 'fighting', 'hiding') are the constructions and something like the endocrine system would be the constraints. Btu if we're actually examining the endocrine system, then things like 'progesterone' are the constructions and we look to molecular forces as the constraints.

When you talk about your experiences, they are the constructions. something caused you to feel that way. If we investigate your experiences we look to the causes, not the constructions. you're treating your experiences as causes, as something we can use as base facts to investigate some construction. But there is no construction above that. your experiences are the end of the process, they're what we talk about, the objects of our language. They're not facts which we can use to discover something about the next level up, and they're certainly not something sacred, immune to analysis in terms of constructions lower down the hierarchy we postulate as being casual.

How then do you distinguish behaviors - such as that of imagining a table - that are voluntary (which means consciously willed) from those that are involuntary (which means not consciously willed). — javra

We tell ourselves a story about the causes of what just happened based primarily on interocepted states. Sometimes a story involving 'willing' will be most useful. Other times a story involving 'involuntary' will. Both are constructions, when looked at at this level of analysis.

If he needs help discovering what Chalmers' meant by the "hard problem," I'll be happy to point him toward helpful resources. — frank

First, he doesn't need 'help'. You and he disagree. He's at the very least your epistemic peer, so if you disagree it is as likely you are wrong (and in need of 'help') as it is he is.

Secondly, if you were an acknowledged, qualified Chalmers expert, maybe we'd hear what you have to say first and ask for help second, but you're not. You're just an ordinary lay party. So if you think someone is wrong, have the courtesy of assuming you'll need to support that first. It's not rocket science.

First, he doesn't need 'help'. You and he disagree. He's at the very least your epistemic peer, so if you disagree it is as likely you are wrong (and in need of 'help') as it is he is.

Secondly, if you were an acknowledged, qualified Chalmers expert, maybe we'd hear what you have to say first and ask for help second, but you're not. You're just an ordinary lay party. So if you think someone is wrong, have the courtesy of assuming you'll need to support that first. It's not rocket science. — Isaac

No, the hard problem is a fixture of philosophy of mind at this point. The whole point of the hard problem is to put us on the path to a theory of consciousness that explains experience. Chalmers explores numerous possible pathways. There's nothing controversial about that.

My posts to Wayfarer were meant to be a heads up to look back at the very paper he cited. It does not say that science can not explain experience. If he thinks it does, he should point out which passage he believes says that, and we can bring to light where Wayfarer misunderstood.

There's nothing controversial about that. — frank

You and @Wayfarer disagree on some matter. Are you suggesting that it's somehow impossible that you're wrong. Has your narcissism really gone that far? If not, then it is not necessarily a matter of you 'bringing to light where he's misunderstood', but equally a matter of finding where you have misunderstood. Hence it is equally useful for you to point out which passage you think supports your conjecture as it is for Wayfarer to do so.

The collection {things I like} is made up of anything I deem to be a member of it. It's nothing more than those things, it's not those things + the collection of those things. The collection {my body} is similarly made up of those components I deem to be part of it. It's not a thing in addition to that collection. — Isaac

Someone with alien hand syndrome might not deem his hand (or other body part) to be an aspect of himself. For this and other reasons, I still find you explanation of what the "I" references to be uninformative.

The point is that you are conflating the already given with the constructed. — Isaac

Experience, including that which is empirical, is directly present to conscious awareness. That experience can be constructed can only be inferential. Inferred from experiential evidence. But, as is already known, we don't share a common outlook.

We tell ourselves a story about the causes of what just happened based primarily on interocepted states. Sometimes a story involving 'willing' will be most useful. Other times a story involving 'involuntary' will. Both are constructions, when looked at at this level of analysis. — Isaac

Thank you for the explanation. I myself don't find it convincing. While it might work well enough on a philosophy forum, such outlook would likely be quickly deleterious in many a real-life context. And it does not explain many a medical condition, such as that of alien hand syndrome. But again, we hold different outlooks.

As was addressing, that no one can empirically observe the mind's eye so far seems to be well enough substantiated. If anyone believes they've come upon evidence to the contrary, I'll likely take a look. Otherwise, due to time constraints, I'll at this point likely be leaving the debate in others' hands.

Someone with alien hand syndrome might not deem his hand (or other body part) to be an aspect of himself. For this and other reasons, I still find you explanation of what the "I" references to be uninformative. — javra

So? Then the hand is not part of his body, for him. How is that difficult? We'd disagree (he and I), and I were his doctor I'd treat his hand as if it were part of his body. But there's no fact of the matter beyond what we construct to be the case. We term 'body' as being just that collection of parts which we deem it is. God hasn't declared "... and this shall you call a 'body'!" we made it up.

Experience, including that which is empirical, is directly present to conscious awareness. — javra

So you keep declaring. To label something 'experience' is already to use a word in our common language which is already to have a social construction. Words are not given to us by God, we make them up collectively.

Your position simply reifies artefacts of language and then thinks it significant that we can't find them empirically. We couldn't find 'elan vital' either. Didn't stop us having a word for it.

My posts to Wayfarer were meant to be a heads up to look back at the very paper he cited. It does not say that science can not explain experience. If he thinks it does, he should point out which passage he believes says that, and we can bring to light where Wayfarer misunderstood. — frank

This is the paragraph I frequently cite:

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 Problem of Consciousness

Later, he says:

To explain experience, we need a new approach. The usual explanatory methods of cognitive science and neuroscience do not suffice. These methods have been developed precisely to explain the performance of cognitive functions, and they do a good job of it. But as these methods stand, they are only equipped to explain the performance of functions. When it comes to the hard problem, the standard approach has nothing to say.

That's fairly clear cut, is it not?