If time is not an object of perception, how do they know today is a Saturday night? — Corvus

They experience days and nights following previous days and nights, not the time in which they follow each other.

If space is not an object of perception, how do they know where the Eiffel tower is located? — Corvus

They see the Eiffel tower, its extension and relations to other buildings, not the space that its extension and relations occupy.

But how do we experience the real God, souls and spirits? — Corvus

If they are real, then we can experience them systematically, also by those of us who don't expect them to be real. But since we don't, there's little reason to assume that they're real.

What exists for us to experience of God, souls, spirits etc. are our own and other people's descriptions, pictures, sculptures, plays performed by actors, movies with special effects, churches or art museums designed specifically with an ambience that tends to evoke sacred or otherworldly experiences.

Time and space may not be objects of perception, but we can use our knowledge of descriptions and theories of them in order to evoke relevant experiences of duration, extension etc.

Via symbolic language as I understand and define it we can explicitly understand ourselves to be whatever it is we take ourselves to be. We can understand ourselves to be possessed of symbolic language on account of being possessed of symbolic language for example. Do you believe there is any evidence that any other animals can do that? — Janus

Yes, because the ability to understand things in the environment remotely via symbols (natural or socially constructed) is a function of any animal's interest.

Bees, for instance, are interested in flowers, and benefit from having a specific symbol system (waggles) for sharing the direction and distance to flowers. Bees can identify their own and each other's functions and symbolic behaviours.

However, to understand oneself or one's possession of symbolic language is either necessary nor sufficient for possessing symbolic language.

Does it follow that the parrot's signaling is symbolic though? I think part of what I would count as the possession of symbolic language consists in the ability to explicitly understand that such and such a sound, gesture or mark conventionally stands for whatever it symbolizes.

↪mcdoodle The same question as above regarding the dolphins. And not I am not denying that other animals might possess symbolic language. I'm questioning whether we have clear evidence that they do as opposed to having some evidence that they might. — Janus

The true test for whether other animals have symbolic language is not empirical but depends on what is meant by 'language'. Other animals don't seem to have anything that resembles our verbal language, but they may have other kinds of languages, and so do humans.

All animals use signals or symbols in the basic sense that a symbol is something that stands for something else. For example, an insect identifies a scent or sound or gesture, which symbolizes the presence of nutrients, mates, predators etc. Animals who live in groups benefit from shared symbolic labor, hence the evolution of genetically wired and socially acquired symbol systems.

There are many different kinds of symbol systems, also among humans. Human language is a verbal symbol system which has some syntactic and semantic properties that distinguishes it from non-verbal systems such as pictorial or musical or gestural that we also use.

So we might agree that other animals don't have a symbolic language in the sense that the language has the kind of syntactic and semantic properties that human verbal language has. But that doesn't rule out the possibility that they have other symbolic languages. I find it uncontroversial that I'm using symbolic language based on gestures and sounds when I talk to my cat.

So your experience of hitting your thumb with a hammer is the same as my experience of seeing you hit your thumb with a hammer? — Patterner

Sure, but notice that you ask whether our experiences (plural) are the same experience (singular).

The former (plural) is a use of the word 'experience' in its constitutive sense (i.e. having the experience). The latter (singular) is the use of the same word in its intentionalistic sense (i.e. what the experience is about). What our experiences are about is the same.

But I don't know that this mannequin is not you. When seeing it, I believe it's you. — Patterner

Right, you can easily stipulate conditions under which it is impossible to know whether the object that you see is genuine or counterfeit. But questions on certainty concern your belief about your experience, not your experience per se. The belief is closely related yet different from the experience.

For example, you can't see something without having the conscious awareness of it, but you can believe that something is the case regardless of whether it is the case. Thus, the belief can be right or wrong, but the experience is just what it is, a presentation of something in your conscious awareness.

do you think what it's like for me to experience seeing you is the same as what it's like for you to be you? — Patterner

What it's like for you to see me hit my thumb with a hammer is pretty much what it's like for me to be me in that situation. The experience that you have is me hitting my thumb with a hammer.

Well, that's not a direct but transitive relation. You can see what I'm like by way of seeing what the mannequin is like. But the object of your experience in that case is not me but the mannequin (or photograph, or mirror image, drawing etc).

If I see you, would you say my experience of you is like what you are like? — Patterner

The short answer is: yes, as long as I'm the object that you see.

One might add that the seeing is a presentation in your conscious awareness of some visible parts and properties of me as they appear in your visual field under conditions of satisfaction (e.g. under ordinary light conditions, with trichromatic eyes etc.)

I think I am missing every important quality/aspect of what you are like when I experience you. — Patterner

Granted that some parts are currently hidden from view (e.g, my lungs), but I wouldn't call them missing. A visual experience is about what's open to view. One can of course mistake things, such as in optical illusions, or even miss things when attention or interest makes one disregard some things while focussing on other things. But they're not missing in an absolute sense. You can always check again or look closer.

As far as we know only humans possess symbolic language. — Janus

.

.research offers the first evidence that parrots learn their unique signature calls from their parents and shows that vocal signaling in wild parrots is a socially acquired rather than a genetically wired trait. — P. Bennetch, Cornell Chronicle

the subjective experience of knowing one is seeing things in the world, including knowing one is seeing oneself. — ucarr

That's several different experiences and objects stacked on top of each other. What could that be like?

What is the cat like when it is not being seen? — Patterner

More or less like it is when it is seen (disregarding Schrödinger's cat). :smile:

Notice that there is no need to assume dualism between the cat and what it's like to see the cat: the experience is the cat.
— jkop

Do you claim a cat seen via the virtual viewing of imagination is no less physico_material than a cat seen via the optics of the eyes? — ucarr

Well, no. I claim that when you see the cat, then the relation between your experience and the cat is direct. Basically, the experience that you have is the cat that you see. What your experience is like is what the cat is like (e.g. cute, hairy etc).

When you imagine a cat, however, there is no relation between the experience and a cat (neither physical nor mental cat). What you are experiencing then is your own creative use of memories and beliefs with the intent to figure out (by what it feels like) what the cat is like.

The visible properties of the cat fix what it's like for you to experience the cat. Your use of memories and beliefs about cats fix what it's like for you imagine the cat.

Language open to more than one interpretation falsely suggests two objective and parallel modes of being? — ucarr

Language is and must remain open to more than one interpretation. We can use a word in different senses, but to use it ambiguously between different senses makes no sense. Fallacies of ambiguity are deceptively simple but pernicious when they remain unnoticed and get entrenched into our linguistic habits and assumptions (e.g. dualism).

A literal interpretation of the term 'mental image' is a fallacy of ambiguity.
— jkop

I see the redundancy; I don't see the ambiguity. — ucarr

We invent 'mental images' by using the verb 'see' ambiguously between an intentionalistic sense of seeing (as in seeing a visible object), and a constitutive sense of seeing (as in having the visual experience). That's like inventing 'Casper the friendly ghost' by combining properties which are immaterial in some sense and material in another.

You're saying the HPoC stems from an ambiguity of language without a referent ambiguity in nature? — ucarr

Right. Chalmers assumes that an experience is accompanied by a property of what it's like to have the experience. That's property-dualism.

As if seeing the cat consists of two experiences, one of the cat, and another of what it's like. Separately or somehow coalesced. I find the dualism implausible and redundant. I believe that seeing is the experience, and what the experience is like is what the cat is like.

Well, you quote two of my sentences, but omit the two different senses in which I use them, which makes them contradict each other. But that's not how I use them.





In the sense that an imagination is invisible and a cat is visible, they can't be compared, and that's why we can't find any resemblance between them. They can, however, resemble each other in the sense of what it's like to imagine vs see the cat.

Notice that there is no need to assume dualism between the cat and what it's like to see the cat: the experience is the cat. Nor is there a need to eliminate ordinary language use of the verb 'see' (or other perceptual verbs). See or experience or feel etc are used in many different senses.

However, when the same word is used in many different senses, it also gets used ambiguously between different senses. Many forms of dualism are fallacies of ambiguity. A literal interpretation of the term 'mental image' is a fallacy of ambiguity. Whenever our talk of what we have in mind gets muddled, or leads to intellectual disasters, it's probably because we use perceptual verbs ambiguously between different senses.

So perhaps the hard problem of consciousness is a fallacy of ambiguity?

Surely that makes visibility "central to resemblance" -- indeed, it sounds like the criterion for it ("you can't, unless . . ."). — J

That's strange, because I also give examples of invisible things such as feelings that can resemble each other.

The invisible and visible can't resemble each other unless we make both visible. But we can also make both invisible, and compare what they feel like. These are not criteria for resemblance per se, but comparability. Resemblance requires at least two objects which can resemble each other (i.e. comparable).

Your visible/invisible distinction seems irrelevant, at least for the one imagining the cat. — Luke

A cartoonist who imagines a fictional cat might find it relevant to also see visible cats.

It makes little difference whether you reduce all seeings and imaginings to "feelings", or whether you call it a comparison between a seen cat and an imagined cat. — Luke

Understanding their differences makes sense, I think.

The feeling in seeing a cat is causally fixed by the cat, while the feeling in imagining a cat is more loosely constrained by memories, beliefs, functions of interest, expectations, social pressure etc.. But no matter our expectations or social pressure etc, the cat remains a cat, and my visual experience is the cat. Salva veritate! :joke:

There just isn't any reason to make the visible/invisible comparison central to resemblance. — J

I didn't. What's central to resemblance is a set of comparable objects and states of affairs. The visible/invisible comparison is a means for clarifying what those comparable objects and states of affairs are, for example when we create visible objects of what we have in mind, and somehow seem to be able to compare them.

you want to stipulate a meaning for "resemblance" that makes physical visibility more important as a criterion. I guess you can do that, but I think we need 1) an explanation for how the ordinary-language use became so common, and 2) a good argument for why this notion of "resemblance" is useful or clarificatory, in this context. What are you trying to ameliorate, with this usage? — J

1.The importance of visibility is relative to the success of vision as a means for acquiring knowledge of our environment. This knowledge-related feature of vision affects our linguistic habits so much that we are not only using the verb 'see' when we optically see visible objects, but also when we discover a solution to an abstract problem and say "I see how we can solve it". We "see" what someone is saying when we understand it, but also when we hear it without understanding it, because in another sense seeing is merely the attempt to make sense of what there is to see, or hear, or feel etc. We taste wine and "see" what the taste means (e.g. old wine). We see visible objects, but also voids, abstract, fictional, impossible, or nonsensical objects.

Thus we use the verb 'see' in several very different senses, and when we use it ambiguously between them, we produce fallacies of ambiguity. One example of such a fallacy is when we believe that we can see and acquire knowledge of mental images inside our heads. If that was true, then there would be no need to produce sketches, drawings or complex images, because then one could just think and investigate what one supposedly has in mind.

2. Anyone interested in understanding the term 'mental image' and the relation between what we have in mind and visible objects (e.g. images) might want to take a look at the possibility of a resemblance-relation. Obviously there can be no visible resemblance, since what we have in mind is not visible. But there can be resemblance between two states of affairs such as seeing things and thinking about things.

Only in distinguishing between the world and your experience do you become a realist and at the same time an indirect realist as the experience is not the same thing as the world. — Harry Hindu

The indirect realist never experiences the world, recall, only figments (e.g. sense-data) of his/her own experiences, by way of which s/he indirectly experiences the world. That's why it's called indirect.

Indirect realism and solipsism are identical in this respect, because also the solipsist experiences only figments of his/her own experiences.

The direct realist, however, experiences the world as it is, at least most times, under ordinary conditions of experience. Both the direct and the indirect realist acknowledge that there is a relation between experience and world. For the direct realist, the relation is direct.

For the solipsist, there is no genuine relation between experience and world, since the perceptual process and the world are figments of the experience. So, your claim that direct realism is solipsism is based on a misunderstanding of both.

Sounds more like solipsism to me. — Harry Hindu

On the contrary! When you experience the world as it is, then your experience is the world. Doesn't mean that the world is a figment of your experience.

My point is that... ..you judge a resemblance by comparing the cat that you imagine to the cat that you see. — Luke

A resemblance-relation requires at least two objects which can resemble each other. Granted that all objects resemble each other in the abstract sense of being objects, but how can anything invisible resemble something visible?

My point is that they can't, unless you somehow make both visible. For example, you draw a picture of the cat that you imagine. The visible features of the cat-picture are comparable with the visible features of the cat.

However, there's a feeling in what it's like to see the cat, which is comparable with a feeling of what it's like to see the cat-picture. There's also a feeling in what it's like to imagine a cat. You can compare your feelings (via memories), and judge resemblances between them.

I was questioning why you are talking about physical states at all with regard to judging a resemblance between an imagined cat and a seen cat. — Luke

You're right, I don't need to talk about physical states with regard to judging resemblances between different experiences. However, the thread is about the hard problem of consciousness, recall, in which dualism is implied between mental and physical states. Hence talk of physical states.

So Berkeley's idealism is implausible, but it's less implausible than Cartesian dualism? — Wayfarer

They're implausible in different ways.

..monist idealism is the only form of monism which has the appearance of being coherent. — Metaphysician Undercover

The idea that a mind somehow constructs the world, even before there were any minds, is not so coherent.

..we assume "matter" as something independent form minds, to support our belief in a real world which is independent from us, — Metaphysician Undercover

Then you omit all the direct realists for whom the relation between mind and matter is direct. When the two coalesce, it's meaningless to talk of one being independent of the other.

Have you ever checked your hormone and neurotransmitter levels in order to be satisfied of a resemblance? — Luke

No, I just feel them. What I feel is my physiological state, in which hormones and neurotransmitters etc are constitutive for having it.

I would think that the resemblance is more likely the result of some sort of comparison between the imagined cat and the seen cat. — Luke

Right, you feel what imagining the cat is like, and then you feel what seeing the cat is like, and may then also recognize properties that the two feelings share.

But feelings are invisible, you can't compare a visible cat nor graphic image with the feeling of imagining what they look like. You can, however, compare things of the same type, such as two visible cats, two visible images, or two invisible mental states by how they feel when you have them.

What it feels like for you to see the cat is, therefore, comparable to other feelings, such as those evoked by thoughts, memories, and attempts to mentally visualize the cat without seeing anything.

How do the physical causes of your mental states affect your judgement of a resemblance between them? — Luke

Well, for example, alcohol can affect my mental state so that I feel tipsy, a blurry kind of feeling, which in turn resembles the blurry feeling of seeing blurry or expressive pictures, or hearing blurry sounds, etc. There is something genuinely blurry about feeling tipsy, or in what it's like to see blurry pictures etc.. :)

Couldn't two very different mental states have the same hormone and neurotransmitter levels? — Luke

Yes, it's not all about the hormones and neurotransmitters. Our brains become individually personalized as each brain keeps on creating and modifying its neural networks relative to our lives and the things we encounter.

If it’s not some sort of resemblance between the doodle and “what you had in mind”, then what determines satisfaction here? — Luke

Imagining a cat may resemble seeing a cat (or cat-like doodle) since the levels of hormones and neurotransmitters that evoke the mental states in both cases can be similar or the same. Hence their resemblance. However, none of the two mental states (or "feelings") have the properties of an image.

if we want matter in or representations of reality, we need to keep the split between mind and matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

It ain't necessarily so, for we are not confined to representations of reality. Experiences of reality are presentations of reality in the sense that the experience in your mind of a material reality is the material reality. When mind about matter is the matter, then there is no split between mind and matter. .

And does that make sense to you? Does it seem plausible? — Wayfarer

No, but what makes sense is Berkeley's rejection of the split between mind and body.

I'm a person who's interested to start studying philosophy but I don't really know where to start. — AlienVareient

You typically spend the first 6 - 12 months studying the history of western philosophy: ancient, medieval, and modern, including an introduction to logic. Then you pick some famous philosopher's original work, read it carefully, also other books about it, and then you write an essay about the work. That's a start for further investigations.

I have the sense that when you say 'idealism', you believe that it posits something called 'mind' which is constitutive of reality in the same way that 'matter' is for materialism. — Wayfarer

I mention idealism and direct realism as examples of philosophies in which the hard problem does not arise from splitting the world in two between body and mind.

Bishop Berkeley understood, correctly, that such a split makes no sense, so he decided to focus on the mind. Matter is not eliminated, but it's not fundamental. Mind is.

In direct realism, the mind is directly linked to the world. My conscious awareness of the world is the actual world, not a mental replica. There's no gap between my conscious awareness and the world.

If you're using direct realism in a different way then I would hope that you would explain. — Harry Hindu

In direct realism, the mind is directly linked to the world. The world that I'm consciously aware of is the actual world, not a mental replica. So, there is no gap between my conscious awareness and the world, and without the gap, there is no inexplicable relation to explain. The hard problem of consciousness is a problem invented by dualists.

Doesn't your description contradict these statements? — J

No. In my description of a mental visualization of what a cat looks like, I use the word 'feeling' instead of 'mental image', because the word 'image' is literally false in that context.

What's mental is the intent to find out what the cat might look like, which may feel like seeing, since it can be satisfied by one's ability to use memories and beliefs about cats. It can also be satisfied by doodling with a pencil on paper until the visible shapes of a drawn cat satisfy what you had in mind. But what you had in mind was never an image, only a hunch, a feeling evoked by the intent etc.

Those are mental states, and unlike visible images that can be used for representing things, mental states don't represent anything. Instead, they present what there is to see, such as images and cats.

One might add that the feeling of imagining a cat can become as immersive as the feeling evoked when seeing a real cat. AfaIk, it's the same part of the brain that is active in both cases. That's why hallucinations are possible, but also the ability to empathise and know what it's like to be another person or animal.

Therefore, it is possible to know, at least partly, what it's like to be a cat, or even a bat!

Actually, direct realism is part of the hard problem. In asserting that you see the world as it is - as static objects and physical brains, and comparing that to how the mind appears and is described as being non-physical and immaterial is how the hard problem arises. — Harry Hindu

:roll: That's not direct realism. Why bother?

I asked you what an observer is, and you didn't answer the question. — Harry Hindu

For example, a bird observing its environment,, birdwatchers observing the bird, a prison guard observing prisoners, a solo musician observing his own playing, an audience observing the musician, scientists observing their experiments, a thinker observing his own thinking (e.g. indirectly via its effects).

It sounds like where we differ is that you want to eliminate the idea of a mental image altogether. I think there are plausible and persuasive reasons for doing this in the case of perceptions. But not for imagined or remembered images. If these experiences are not, in some ordinary-language way, mental images, then what are they? And how could they be explained away as being identical with their physical substrates? — J

I don't want to eliminate the idea of a mental image. The ability to imagine things is central in my daily work (architecture). Like most people, I have a limited ability to mentally imagine what complex and detailed buildings look like. That's why we draw sketches, renderings, use photos etc It's an interactive process between one's imagination and the feedback one gets from seeing colours and shapes. In this way it is possible to generate, revise, and accumulate knowledge of spatially complex and detailed buildings before they exist.

It would be impossible to imagine the complete building, or even a simplified contour without encountering problems. I can hardly imagine 5 or 6 features of my cat and rotate them sideways without forgetting some or having to start over again. The composition of this alleged mental cat seems disjoint or detachable unlike the continuous compositions of visible images. For example, I imagine looking closer at the imagined cat, but its features don't appear more detailed. It's more like a verbal description where the words have been replaced by memories of cat-features. Like the words in a sentence can be composed in ways that evoke feelings, memories of having seen cats can be composed in ways that evoke the feeling of seeing imagined cats.

In my posts above I'm arguing against the property dualism that is implied in the so called hard problem of consciousness. The problem reappears also in epistemological forms of dualism, such as in indirect realism, or in any philosophy in which it is assumed that consciousness is inaccessible to our knowledge.

Those are not my problems. I'm a direct realist, and a monist, so there's no need for you to give me a lecture on the monist nature of the world. Likewise, when I'm talking of subjective and objective in their ontological and epistemological senses, I'm not trying to split the world in two. In a monist world, things can have different modes of existing, and some things are observer-dependent (e.g. money) while other things (e.g. mountains) exist regardless of observers. But thanks anyway :up:

Ok, Husserl might not seem to be a dualist, but the assumption that consciousness is immaterial in the sense that it never appears as an object in a world of objects, implies an epistemological dualism, and the hard problem reappears. For if consciousness is immaterial, then it seems we have no way of knowing what it's like to be another observer, or how immaterial experiences arise in a material world.

A similar problem arises for indirect realists because of their assumption that we never see objects directly, only by way of seeing our own sense-data (or mental images) first.

For idealists for whom everything is consciousness, the hard problem does not arise from a metaphysical or epistemological wedge. Likewise, it doesn't arise for direct realists under the assumption that we see objects directly: e.g. what it feels like is what the object appears like.

Dualism posits two substances of different kinds, i.e. mental and material. But consciousness doesn't have to be conceived of as an 'immaterial thing' apart from but different to the physical. Rather it pertains to a different order, namely, the subjective or first-person order, in which it never appears as an object. Rather it is that to which (or whom) all experience occurs, the condition for the appearance of all knowledge. — Wayfarer

Right, so instead of substance-dualism you have two orders or perspectives or property-dualism. All the same, when we want to explain how two phenomena are related to each other, yet assume that they are fundamentally different in a way that makes is hard or impossible to understand how they could be related, then the problem might be in the assumption.

The past and future are irreconcilably different, — Metaphysician Undercover

In research on gravity, there's talk of backwards causation and that time is not a fundamental property of the universe. I don't know, but it doesn't seem to be a hard problem to explain how the past creates the future.

But the kind of "feeling" involved in having a mental image of a cat is surely not explainable by hormone levels. — J

Right, but there is no relation between a mental image and hormone levels to explain when the cat that you see is a real cat (not a mental image).

(When you assume that you're seeing a mental image, then you have a relation to explain between the mental and the physical which no-one can make sense of, because of the dualism that it implies.)

What remains to be explained is a relation between the experience (the feeling of what it's like to see the cat) and its probable causes in your brain, the cat, and the conditions under which you see the cat.

A major cause of what it's like to see the cat is, of course, the cat and its visible properties. When you see it, you feel a certain way based on what there is to see. A scary or aggressive cat makes you feel a certain way which is different from seeing a cute or happy cat.

What it feels like when you see the cat is what the cat appears like to you.. :cool:

One might also consider the fact that the the brain adds and modifies its neural networks all the time as you experience things. That's how our brains become personalised. This means that the conditions under which you saw the cat yesterday are somewhat different today, and again different tomorrow. What it's like for you to see the cat changes more or less each time.

How's that for a start on how the brain creates subjective first-person experiences?

Regarding mental images. Beside the ability to see cats, you can remember or know what it's like to see a cat, and you can use the knowledge to evoke the same or similar feelings when you imagine or dream about cats. But without a cat, or with your eyes closed, nothing is seen, only felt as if you were seeing the cat. A "mental image" couldn't even resemble visible objects such as cats or images. But it feels a certain way to imagine a cat, just like it feels a certain way to actually see a cat.

Can you sketch even the beginning of an explanation of a mental image that involves feeling-type causes such as hormones or other chemical items? — J

Just replace the mental image with a real cat. What it's like to see the cat is a feeling, not an image. The feeling has many possible causes, but without dualist assumptions, it's possible to explain.

We need a physicalist translation, or reduction, of "experience," for starters. In what sense is visual experience biological? Do we know how our brains create the illusion of the Cartesian theater that characterizes subjective experience? Not at all. You can say, "Someday we will," and I agree that's likely, but at the moment it's unsolved, and it's not a matter of lacking a description, as you put it. We lack any theory at all about how and why it happens. — J

I'm not sure our ignorance is so fundamental. Moreover, the word 'experience', like perceptual verbs such as 'see', are ambiguous. By clarifying their ambiguity we can get rid of some of the problems.

For example, in talk of the experience of seeing a cat, the word 'experience' or 'seeing' can refer to what is constitutive for having the experience: the feeling. But they can also refer to what the experience is about: the cat.

The cat is the object that you see, which causes you to feel a certain way. The way it makes you feel is what the cat is like when it is seen under those conditions, and what the cat is like is not a creation of anyone's brain, nor are the conditions under which the cat is seen.

The feeling, however, is evoked by the brain and your ability to see the cat. But the feeling is not an entity that accompanies the experience, it is the experience in its constitutive sense.

So, what is left to explain is this: How does my brain create the feeling?, and I believe we know at least something about how feelings are evoked by hormone levels, neurons releasing dopamine etc.

The impossible request that we ought to explain how hormone levels etc create the illusion of a Cartesian theatre seems to be based on a fallacy of ambiguity.

This does not eliminate or explain away the feeling, I just don't see a good reason for believing that the experience of what it feels like to see a cat from a first person point of view is impossible to explain. What is there to see is not a mental theatre but reality.

Ok, J, thanks, I'll respond tomorrow. I have to go.

I am conscious as I type this. In a couple hours, I will be unconscious. The states are fundamentally different. Aside from differences in brain activity, however, a physical exam of me in each state of consciousness would find very little different. — Patterner

They're fundamentally different under the assumption that consciousness is non-material, which implies dualism, i.e. that we split the world in two, which is implausible.

And the world would be different without humans and their minds, so I don't see how you've made any sensible distinction between what it means to be subjective vs objective. — Harry Hindu

It should be clear by now, that it depends on whether we use those words in their ontological sense or their epistemic sense.

I was pointing out that the mind is not special in having things independent of it, so you have failed to make any sensible distinction between what is objective and subjective. — Harry Hindu

The mind is special in the sense that its existence is observer-dependent, unlike the world. The world doesn't depend on an observer to exist. They have different modes of existing.

I meant rewrite the thesis but avoid using those terms. Give a description you believe is accurate but that doesn't have recourse to "observer" or "experience" . — J

Recall I asked you to explain to me why we can't use those words, but you didn't.

The assumption that consciousness is material leads to empirical or conceptual problems to be solved. The assumption that consciousness is non-material leads to the hard and probably insurmountable problem, because of the dualism that it implies.

Out of everything in our universe, some carbon based organisms on this planet happen to have the ability to be conscious. And that's supposed to be a fundamental property of the universe? I don't think so. There's a lot more for us to learn about the universe, and so far there is little reason to split it in two.

So where do the images come from? — Corvus

Our empathic ability. It's the ability to mentally construct, visualize, and actually feel things that we are not directly exposed to. So if you know what it feels like to see things, then you probably have the ability to evoke the same or similar feeling when you don't see anything. The same areas in the brain are activated when you see something and when you imagine seeing it.

leave out the terms "observer" and "experience." Let's look at the result and see what we think. — J

Ok, let's see:

visual ..... have a hierarchical structure in the sense that the ..... is not solely a biological phenomenon. It is also causally constrained by the behavior of light, and influenced by the .....'s psychology, sociology, language and culture. All of these can be described, but none of them is a complete description of the ....... — jkop

But what does it show? That we can't investigate the nature of the observer and experience without using the words 'observer' and 'experience'? It depends on how we use the words, of course. For example, we can distinguish between different senses of the word 'experience' in order to avoid circular or ambiguous fallacies of reasoning.

It's the dualism implied by the (I think unwarranted) assumption that consciousness is non-material which makes it seem hard. For monists or biological naturalists consciousness is an empirical or conceptual problem, until we know enough. Ignorance is no reason for assuming that consciousness is non-material.

And the fact that it turned out inorganic and organic compounds are not fundamentally different is not evidence that the same answer will apply to the HPoC. — Patterner

Right, conscious states are different from unconscious states, but are they fundamentally different?

A series of biochemical reactions release the energy in nutrients, and ion channels generate electrical signals that pulsate across cell membranes, connect synapses, and fire through neural networks etc. Even if we'd be able to map the entire brain process that is constitutive for, say, a visual experience, it does not include what is seen, e.g. a bird. It makes no sense to look for a neurological version of a bird in the brain when the object of the experience is flying in the sky.

Also, what it feels like to have that visual experience is not necessarily a part of the visual experience. Neurons release dopamine, for instance, which may cause an overlapping or separate experience, but the cause for the release of dopamine can be fixed by expectations, or social pressure to feel a certain way when seeing the bird. The cause of the feeling is then only partly to be found in biochemistry and partly in psychology or sociology or culture. Hence a seeming inability to explain what it feels like in terms of biochemistry.

The problem isn't the lack of a complete description. Rather, it's how we can even talk about all this without importing (as you do) the term "observer". — J

Ok, please explain to me why we can't talk about all this without using the word 'observer'?

Sure, we can describe a subjective experience, but how do we explain its existence, or why it exists in the way it does and not in another? That's the hard problem. — J

For example, a feeling of being drunk (its existence and why it exists the way it does) is uncontroversially explained by the effects that alcohol has on our cognitive functions. One might add descriptions of situations, ambience and memories of previous experiences, expectations etc. to further articulate what it feels like.

In order to make that into a hard problem of consciousness (afaik), we'd have to define the feeling as something that is detached from being drunk, as something that accompanies it. By detaching the feeling from the drunken state, while assuming that the two must still be related somehow, we seem to create the very problem that we are pretending to solve. But the feeling is not necessarily related to the experience. It might be a function of interest of the body to receive awards, e.g. dopamine released by neurons at work whenever the experience satisfies or disappoints. Just a speculation.

If we could build a working brain our of inorganic parts that was functionally equivalent to a working organic brain, wouldn't the non-biological brain be conscious? — RogueAI

I read recently about an artificial model of the brain of a fruit fly. It is supposedly a complete model, but I don't know if or how it works.

If we can manufacture artificial fruit flies, then it seems at least possible to manufacture larger or more complex organisms. But it might be improbable considering the overwhelming complexity of organisms. To simulate a collection of selected functions seems much easier, but a simulation of being conscious is not conscious.

The confusion of levels of description — Wolfgang

Right, anything goes when we attempt to solve a hard problem that doesn't exist. :cool:

Vitalism used to be a solution to a "hard problem" based on the assumption that inorganic and organic compounds are fundamentally different, yet related somehow. But how can they be related yet fundamentally different? Hence the vitalist suggestion that organic compounds must contain some non-physical element. Later the synthesis of urea showed that the different compounds are not fundamentally different.

Now I don't think we're anywhere near a synthesis of consciousness from unconscious compounds, but if seems fairly clear that consciousness is a biological phenomenon. Moreover, conscious states such as visual experiences have a hierarchical structure in the sense that the experience is not solely a biological phenomenon. It is also causally constrained by the behavior of light, and influenced by the observer's psychology, sociology, language and culture. All of these can be described, but none of them is a complete description of the experience. However, the lack of a single complete description is hardly a problem.

The world is independent of a map as well so this does not really get at what it means to be objective vs subjective. — Harry Hindu

Consider cities and landscapes and most of the environments that people live in. Large parts of our lived world depend on the maps and drawings after which they were built. Those are parts of the actual world, and it is in this sense that the world depends on maps for being such a world. Without maps it would be a different world.

..as if humans have this special quality of the world being independent from us. — Harry Hindu

I can't make sense of that.

Earth is the only planet that we know to have human life. In this sense, is the Earth subjective in that Earth is the only planet to have human life? ...
..you seem to be trying to make a special case for human consciousness in that it is the only thing that has uniqueness. — Harry Hindu

That's not what I say. Many humans and other animals are conscious. Consider the events in your physiology when you are having the conscious awareness of a tickle. Others may have similar events, but not those that exist in your physiology. The tickle exists whenever you feel it, and when you no longer feel it, then it doesn't exist anymore. This mode of existing is radically different from the way the world exists or the map.