The things you are saying are very alien to my understanding of the world. I will watch the video.

Your statement implies the belief commonplace subjective experiences should be easily accessible to the objectivist methodologies of science. It also implies the subjective/objective distinction is a trivial matter and should therefore be no problem for science. — ucarr

Neither of these statements is true.

Scientists examining "the hard problem" indicate how, regarding this question, the division between subjective/objective is deep and treacherous. Why do you disagree with them? — ucarr

You haven't provided any evidence that "Scientists examining "the hard problem" indicate how, regarding this question, the division between subjective/objective is deep and treacherous."

You're claiming the objectivism of science does not handicap its examination of subjective mind?
— ucarr

Your above observations do not answer my question. Are you unwilling to answer it? — ucarr

You're kind of a dick.

Husserl devoted considerable energy to rejecting charges of ‘psychologism’ i.e. that phenomenology was a form of psychology or could be reduced to it. Too great a task to try and explain, besides I’m not expert in it. — Wayfarer

Given the limits of my understanding of phenomenology, it would be silly to take my statements as anything more than a first impression.

Truly, I am not trying to be confusing. This is the way thinkers I read talk. There is a good reason why these authors are ignored: it takes a solid education in continental philosophy to even begin understanding them. — Constance

The sources that @Joshs and @Wayfarer linked me to, which were written in mostly plain English, were interesting and helpful. As I noted in a previous post, they seem like psychology to me more than they do philosophy.

To me, this aligns with the world, which is, when subjected to a close inspection of what is going on in common perception, utterly foreign to understanding. — Constance

I just don't get this. There is a lot that is not understood, but I can't see why it would be "foreign to understanding."

You're claiming the objectivism of science does not handicap its examination of subjective mind? — ucarr

Science is one way of looking at the world. It's a good way, but not the only way. Subjective experience is not something magical or exotic. We all sit here in the whirling swirl of it all day every day. Why would something so common and familiar be different from all the other aspects of the world? I just don't see what the big deal is.

Any examples come to mind of sciences or scientists that do? — Wayfarer

As I noted, I've thought about this a lot and I'm not at all satisfied with what I've come up with. I'll just throw out some ideas.

Kant says time and space are “pure intuition.”

What may be the nature of objects considered as things in themselves and without reference to the receptivity of our sensibility is quite unknown to us. We know nothing more than our mode of perceiving them, which is peculiar to us, and which, though not of necessity pertaining to every animated being, is so to the whole human race. With this alone we have to do. Space and time are the pure forms thereof; sensation the matter. The former alone can we cognize a priori, that is, antecedent to all actual perception; and for this reason such cognition is called pure intuition. The latter is that in our cognition which is called cognition a posteriori, that is, empirical intuition. — Kant - Critique of Pure Reason

“Project Hail Mary” is a good book by Andy Weir, who wrote “The Martian.” In it, an Earth man travels to another star system and meets and befriends an alien who is also a space traveler from a different star system. The non-carbon based alien evolved on a planet with an atmosphere so dense no light can penetrate it. Organisms there never developed sight. The alien was perplexed because its trip took much less time than had been predicted. The Earth man had to explain to him about the speed of light and special relativity.

Our brains and minds have evolved for a special purpose - to figure out what actions we should take to stay alive and have offspring even when we have limited data. That’s where our tendency to analyze events by cutting them up, allowing us to simplify them. This works really well when we’re dealing with situations where we can isolate events from outside interaction, e.g. the large hadron collider or the James Webb telescope. When we get closer to human scale, especially in situations that actually involve people, it becomes much harder to separate events from their environment. We can no longer treat conditions as systems of regular geometric shapes and points. This is something I have experience with as a civil engineer. This is why the idea of studying biological systems as interconnected organisms interacting in symbiosis, ecology, was so revolutionary.

This is Ellen Marie Chen’s translation of Verse 1 of the Tao Te Ching:

Tao that can be spoken of,
Is not the Everlasting (ch'ang) Tao.
Name that can be named,
Is not the Everlasting (ch'ang) name.
Nameless (wu-ming), the origin (shih) of heaven and earth;
Named (yu-ming), the mother (mu) of ten thousand things. — Lao Tzu

As Lao Tzu sees it, or at least as I see Lao Tzu seeing it, when something is nameless, unspoken, it doesn’t really exist. It is a formless, nameless unity - the Tao. When it is named, it is brought into existence as the multiplicity of the world as we experience it - the ten thousand things. I think this is similar to Kant’s idea of noumena and phenomena. I’ve always thought that it would be possible to experience the unspoken unity without words, although I have never been certain. In the article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the phenomenology of self-consciousness that Joshs linked for me, the author identifies a similar kind of wordless experience as “pre-reflective self-consciousness.”

As I noted, I’m not really satisfied with any of these. I do like the Kant quote. At least I can say “Because Kant says so” to my detractors.

Are you not evading an essential problem science (unwittingly) created for itself vis-a-vis study of first person experience when it defined itself as objective examination of entities, phenomena and facts, thus cordoning off itself from the personal mind, a something inherently subjective? — ucarr

No evasion. I don't see it as relevant.

You literally shouted when you had started this thread... — javi2541997

You should look up the meaning of "shout." Also "literal."

Any examples come to mind of sciences or scientists that do? — Wayfarer

This is something I've thought a lot about, with much frustration. I'll try to come up with a response tomorrow.

The authors of the Stanford Encyclopedia article would agree with you. They are among those who believe that a ‘mutual enlightenment’ between cognitive science and phenomenology is desirable and attainable. Husserl himself believed that trying to ground phenomenology in empirical science was putting the cart before the horse. I believe that it can eventually be possible to naturalize phenomenology , but this will require innovations in thinking within the psychological sciences that haven't taken place yet. Using current models within biology, neuroscience and cognitive psychology to underpin Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology would completely misrepresent the subject matter. — Joshs

This gets at something I've been thinking about as I read the SEP article. Phenomenology isn't really philosophy at all. It's psychology. So much of it makes definitive statements about phenomena and processes that can be verified or falsified using empirical methods. It's making scientific statements without providing evidence. Maybe I just haven't read enough to find it.

The distinction is that biology and neurology are conducted at arms length, to to speak. They’re objective disciplines, as distinct from immediate awareness of first-person experience. I think it’s a pretty easy distinction to draw. That quote I provided before from Dennett is from a post of his called ‘The Fantasy of First-Person Science’ so clearly it’s a distinction that he (one of the protagonists in the debate) recognizes. — Wayfarer

I wasn't questioning that people, including well-known philosophers, have made the distinction. But I think the important line of distinction is located elsewhere. Not between inside and outside science, but between a science that recognizes that reality is inextricably tangled with human cognition and one that doesn't.

What would recommend as Phenomenology for Dummies?
— T Clark

Try this:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-consciousness-phenomenological/ — Joshs

What would recommend as Phenomenology for Dummies?
— T Clark

Although only on one aspect, try this. (Amended link.) — Wayfarer

I took a look at both of these sources. I finished Wayfarer's and about halfway through Josh's. I will read the rest. They were exactly what I was looking for. Thanks. Probably the most interesting aspect of the readings for me is how the views presented are closely parallel my own which I've presented here often. This from the blog post Wayfarer linked to:

When we leave our house in the morning, we take the objects we see around us as simply real, factual things—this tree, neighboring buildings, cars, etcetera. This attitude or perspective, which is usually unrecognized as a perspective, Edmund Husserl terms the “natural attitude” or the “natural theoretical attitude.”...

...From a phenomenological perspective, this naturalizing attitude conceals a profound naïveté. Husserl claimed that “being” can never be collapsed entirely into being in the empirical world: any instance of actual being, he argued, is necessarily encountered upon a horizon that encompasses facticity but is larger than facticity. Indeed, the very sense of facts of consciousness as such, from a phenomenological perspective, depends on a wider horizon of consciousness that usually remains unexamined. — Marc Applebaum

As the text indicates, we don't find our everyday world waiting for us, we create it, i.e. the idea of objective reality is not necessary to account for the world we find ourselves in. From Verse 1 of Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao Te Ching:

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

This from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article Joshs linked to:

For phenomenologists, the immediate and first-personal givenness of experience is accounted for in terms of a pre-reflective self-consciousness. In the most basic sense of the term, self-consciousness is not something that comes about the moment one attentively inspects or reflectively introspects one’s experiences, or recognizes one’s specular image in the mirror, or refers to oneself with the use of the first-person pronoun, or constructs a self-narrative. Rather, these different kinds of self-consciousness are to be distinguished from the pre-reflective self-consciousness which is present whenever I am living through or undergoing an experience, e.g., whenever I am consciously perceiving the world, remembering a past event, imagining a future event, thinking an occurrent thought, or feeling sad or happy, thirsty or in pain, and so forth. — SEP - Phenomenological Approaches to Self-Consciousness

The idea of pre-reflective self-consciousness is one I've thought a lot about, although not in those terms. It's one of the primary questions I have about Lao Tzu's way of seeing the world - is it possible to experience the Tao directly without words. My intuition tells me it is, but I've struggling with it. A lot of the issues raised in the SEP article echo ones I've been working on and I got some new ways of looking at the questions from the article. I'm not as sour on phenomenology as I was before I read this stuff.

Which brings us to the bottom line, as the cliche goes - I don't see how anything I've read here is inconsistent with the idea that the experience of consciousness is a manifestation of biological and neurological processes.

I think I am aligned with you in that I think these historical possibilities cover up "something" that is revealed in a reduction that removes implicit knowledge claims from the "moment" of encounter. This something is inherently, what could you call it, value-cognitive, where the cognitive part refers to the fact that the understanding is engaged. — Constance

I'm a bit lost with this kind of language. In a previous post, I wrote that I didn't hold much with phenomenology. Since then, I've decided to put some effort into learning at least the basics so I can participate in these types of discussions more productively. What would recommend as Phenomenology for Dummies?

What happens when the strictures of thought are removed and the self is truly decentered; is it not thereby dissolved altogether?

When I think of the meditative "method", the allowing of thought content to fall away from consciousness, while sitting quietly, I am struck by its annihilative nature. It really is the most radical thing a person can do, one could argue, this annihilation of the world. But if language falls away, so does understanding and knowledge, and agency is lost, and one is no longer "there" to witness anything. — Constance

I am not a meditator, at least not in any formal way, but I think this misrepresents the meditative process, although I've heard this type of criticism before. Awareness without words is possible without any kind of annihilation. I come to this from my interest in the Tao Te Ching. Lao Tzu talks about "wu wei", which means "inaction," acting without intention. Actions come directly from our true selves, our hearts I guess you'd say. Lao Tzu might say our "te," our virtue. Without words or concepts. I have experienced this. It's no kind of exotic mystical state. It's just everyday, meat and potatoes, although it can sometimes be hard to accomplish.

Perhaps the "direct experience of noumena" should not be so radically conceived. This term 'noumena' I am not that comfortable with because of its Kantian association. I prefer "pure phenomenon" for the act of reducing what is there, in our midst to what is strikingly "other" than the language that conceives it, but the what-is-there doesn't go anywhere. — Constance

I use the Kantian "noumena" instead of the Taoist "Tao" just because it is more familiar to western philosophers with the hope it might make my way of seeing things seem less foreign and mystical.

You are clearly not understanding what I am saying. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think I understand, but I disagree. As far as I'm concerned, we can leave it at that unless you have more to say.

that is the inside of their body, not the inside of their experience. — Wayfarer

When this started, that is what I thought we were talking about, but @Metaphysician Undercover didn't seem to be making that distinction.

It is looking at the outside of things and making inferences about what is happening on the inside through theories and logical inference. We see effects on the outside and make inferences about the internal causes. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. I take a picture of with an x-ray that I can look at and see what is inside the person. How is that different from taking a picture of that person and seeing what their outside looks like. They can insert a thin camera attached to a fiber-optic cable and take pictures of what is inside me either by making a small hole or going in through one of my natural orifices. I'm scheduled to have one of them stuck up my butt in a few months.

You are making an artificial, unsupportable distinction in an effort to hold your argument together.

This is how spatial expansion is commonly modeled, but it's very problematic. How could we create a boundary, even in principle, between the space which is inside a galaxy and not expanding, and the space which is between galaxies and is expanding. — Metaphysician Undercover

Problematic or not, astronomers have measured the red and blue shifts of stars and even planets within the Milky Way, our galaxy. They are not moving toward or away from each other. According to what I've read, gravity between parts of an individual galaxy is strong enough to overcome any local expansion.

physicists do not at all understand the relationship between space and massive objects. I think that's what the famous Michelson-Morley experiments demonstrated to us. — Metaphysician Undercover

The Michelson-Morley experiments measured the speed of light in different directions. They didn't have anything to do with gravity or the expansion of the universe.

It's a problem because we can never truly see the inside of an object. So sense observations of an object are always observations of the outside of things. No matter how we divide the object into parts, or peer at those parts through Xray or MIR, we are always looking at the parts as objects themselves, and we are looking at them from the outside...

...So, sure we can look at any phenomenon in the universe with the scientific method, but we cannot see the inside of any object that we look at with the scientific method. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is true of many things science studies. We don't see electrons, protons, quarks. We look at them by smashing them together and watching the parts spin off. We can't see the inside the sun, but we look at neutrinos and the results of spectroscopic analysis. We can't see inside black hole and neutron star collisions, but we can look at gravity waves. We can't see much more than a couple of miles into the Earth, but we can look at seismic and gravimetric data. We learn about things by looking inside them all the time - x-rays, cat scans, mri. There's no reason our minds should be any different.

The expansion of space is a difficult issue to wrap one's head around. I think it calls for a two dimensional time. But consider that if space expands, it must expand from every point outward. This means that there must be a multitude of such points with an expansion around each. And since the structures we know exist in the expanded space, the points must be connected somehow through the inside, in order to support coherent structures in the outwardly expanded space. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not sure if this is what you're getting at, but it is my understanding that the expansion of the universe leads to galaxies moving apart, but features within galaxies, e.g. stars, do not. The Earth is not moving away from the sun.

The point was that the only way to observe the inside of an object is through the first-person conscious experience. The methods of science cannot observe the inside of objects. — Metaphysician Undercover

As I've noted, this is clearly not true.

If science is disqualified from speaking about ethics and ultimate values, then so is religion. — Art48

Science already has lots to say about ethics and ultimate values - from the perspective of psychology, sociology, and anthropology.

Science fiction has been calling for a theory of consciousness since Capek's RUR. Those who aren't interested, don't know why anyone would ask, and are irritated because philosophical texts aren't dumbed down enough for them, should leave those who are interested in peace. — frank

Oh Frankie, Frankie, Frankie. Here, let me make some cocoa for you. I put in a marshmallow the way you like it. Now come over here and sit in your nice chair, drink you nice warm cocoa, and shut the fuck up.

The Wikipedia entry on “Non-overlapping magisterial” has: Non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) is the view, advocated by evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, that science and religion each represent different areas of inquiry, fact vs. values, so there is a difference between the "nets" over which they have "a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority", and the two domains do not overlap. — Art48

Stephen Jay Gould is one of my favorite writers. He taught me a lot about evolution, science, and writing. But I agree that his non-overlapping magisterium idea is wrongheaded. I think it's, as you say, a political gambit that doesn't really work.

Martin Luther placed astronomy in the domain of religion: — Art48

So Martin Luther was wrong, by our lights, about the sun and Earth. On the other hand, the Protestant Reformation knocked the Roman Catholic Church out of the center of the Christian religious universe and freed people to experience God directly. I'd say, socially and politically at least, it is as important as what Copernicus did. So cut Martin some slack.

And let's take a look at something else a religious leader wrote long before Luther came along - "The Literal Meaning of Genesis," written in 415 AD.

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.

If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? — St. Augustine

But if domain is not the essential difference between science and religion, what is? Epistemological method. The fundamental difference between science and religion is epistemological. — Art48

I think this is probably true.

Religion derives authority from sacred personages and holy scriptures, which cannot be contradicted. Science derives its authority from evidence and explanatory theories. — Art48

But I disagree with this.

Will science ever appropriate the fields of ethics and ultimate values for itself? It may be difficult to see how it could. But if it did, I would expect progress similar to the progress it made in cosmology, linguistic, and astronomy. — Art48

Dr. Mengele and his colleagues have already shown us what it would look like if science were to "appropriate the fields of ethics and ultimate values for itself."

Scientific explanations are grounded in empirical evidence, so it is nonsensical to demand of science an explanatory account of what empirical evidence is — sime

Agree with this.

which is what asking for a scientific explanation of consciousness amounts to. — sime

Don't agree with this.

So in the sciences for example, we are always breaking physical objects down into parts, analyzing, and using instruments like microscopes, Xray, CT-scans, MRI, and spectrometers, in an attempt to get a glimpse at the inside of physical objects. However, no matter how far we break down these objects in analysis, and whatever we do with these instruments we are always looking from the outside inward. That is unavoidable, as the nature of what is called scientific 'objective' observation. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree with this, but I don't see why it is a problem. Science is looking in from the outside. That's how it works. If we can look at every other phenomenon in the universe with science, why would we not be able to look at consciousness that way? Apples taste good, but we can learn most of what we need to know about apples without considering that.

Whenever our sciences leave us with an arbitrary starting point , this should be an impetus to start asking ‘why’ questions. Asking why a physical constant happens to be what it is is part of what led to the hypothesis that our universe with its constants may not be the only one — Joshs

I'm with @Isaac on this one. There doesn't have to be a why. The speed of light has to be something. Why does there have to be a reason? Sometimes "just because" is a good answer to a question.

As for the multiverse, well, let's not get started on that.

I don't think the question makes any sense at all. We don't ask why the speed of light is 299,792,458 metres per second, we don't ask why protein channels block certain molecules, we don't ask why water boils at 100C. Why would we expect an answer to the question of why these neurological functions result in consciousness. They just do.

We could give an evolutionary account, some natural advantage to consciousness. Random changes in neurological activity one time resulted in proto-consciousness which gave an evolutionary advantage to the creature and so it passed on that genetic mutation. There...is that satisfactory, and if not, why not? — Isaac

This makes a lot of sense to me, by which I mean I agree. This is why the hard problem may be hard, but it's not really a problem, just a question.

It is not a matter of just rearranging words. One has to argue. What is that Kantian distinction really about? Always one must go to the things that are given to see what there is that can provide justification. Kant had to talk about noumena; why? Either it is nonsense, or there is something in the witnessable, phenomenological (empirical) world that insists. This is where we have to look: what is it in the world we know that intimates noumena? What is there in the presence of things that is the threshold for metaphysics? How does one talk about such a threshold? One cannot say it, for it is an absence, and yet it is an absence that is in the presence of the world. — Constance

This lays out the question pretty well, although in different language than I would use. One thing I disagree with is equating the world of experience with the empirical world. As I noted in my previous post, I think it's possible to directly experience noumena, the Tao. It's just not possible to speak about it. When I start talking, then it becomes phenomena. Then I can measure it, name it, and conceptualize it.

This absence is intimated in the world, so it is part of the structure of our existence, and so, it is not outside of our identifiable existence as Kant would have it, but in it, saturating it, if you will, and it is staring you right in the face in everything you encounter. In the analysis of what it is to experience the world, it is clear that the language used to "say" what the world is is radically distinct from the existence that is being talked about. The cup is smooth to the touch, and warm, and resists being lifted, and so on, but all this language I use to describe the cup takes the actual givenness of sensation up IN a language setting. I call it a cup, but the calling does not, if you will, totalize what is there in the language possibilities because there is something that is not language in the "there" of it. It is an impossible other-than-language, and because language and propositional knowledge is what knowing is about, the understanding encounters in the familiar day to dayness of our lives something utterly transcendental. — Constance

This sounds as if you're agreeing with at least some of what I'm saying.

the hard problem of consciousness, phenomenology is not just an alternative view; it is necessary and inevitable. — Constance

You already know I disagree with this.

There is one fundamental premise that really should preside over the entire inquiry: all one has ever experienced, every can experience, and hence ever know, is phenomena. — Constance

This is something I've struggled with a bit. I know you can't talk about noumena. As Lao Tzu says, the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. But I'm not sure you can't experience it.

It reminds me of an issue I came across regarding Freud and the unconscious: The unconscious was considered to be a metaphysical concept entirely, and I thought, no, for there is an evidential basis for it. But the response was quick, pointing out that it was not that the unconscious had never been directly experienced, but rather that it was impossible for it to every be experienced, encountered, and this is why it belonged to metaphysics. — Constance

This surprises me. Did Freud consider the unconscious to be a metaphysical concept? Seems unlikely. Not everything I am not aware of is metaphysical.

Here, anything that can ever be conceived, even in the most compelling argument imaginable, simply cannot be anything but a phenomenological event, for to conceive at all is inherently phenomenological. Nonsense to think otherwise. Consciousness is inherently phenomenological. — Constance

As I noted, I suspect this isn't true, but I'm not sure.

This, then, is not a matter for science as we know it. It lies with the "science" of phenomenology. Which leads me to reaffirm that philosophy is going to end up one place, and it is here, in phenomenology. There is quite literally no where else to go. — Constance

I've read a little about phenomenology and I don't get it. Wikipedia says

Phenomenology (from Greek φαινόμενον, phainómenon "that which appears" and λόγος, lógos "study") is the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness. — Wikipedia

But when I go to read about it, it is just a bunch of jargon and convoluted language. As if I need someone to tell me how to understand something I am intimately familiar with.

I think it might be because many of the issues are conceptual and not empirical. — bert1

I think it's because many of the issues are so personal. Our experiences are what is most who we are.

flogging dead horses is also not productive. — Wayfarer

I just worked 52 hours in the last four days due to the little triple pandemic of COVID, flu, and RSV knocking out our department. What's your excuse, Skippy? — frank

Oh, wait. I have a better one:

You have fallen prey to the Who gives a shit logical fallacy.

I just worked 52 hours in the last four days due to the little triple pandemic of COVID, flu, and RSV knocking out our department. What's your excuse, Skippy? — frank

You only need an excuse for being wrong.

Dennett gas a minority viewpoint. Don't sweat it. — frank

So we vote to determine the truth now? Majority wins?

Dennett's claims were so preposterous as to verge on the deranged. — Wayfarer

And people on the other side think the same about Chalmers. It's not an argument, it's name calling. I know you are, but what am I?

Well, thanks! (although one of the reasons I had stopped posting for six months was because of this debate, I am continually mystified as to why people can't see through Dennett.) — Wayfarer

I'm really glad you're back, but but I know you don't think things have changed in the past 6 months.

The argument is about the first-person nature of experience — Wayfarer

I do understand that. I even understand why it's hard to imagine that that experience could be explainable in terms of biology and neurology. It's just so immediate and intimate. I can feel that, but I just don't get why people think that is any different from how all the other phenomena whirling around us come to be.

Chalmers is one of the most influential philosophers of our time. — frank

Ok. He's popular so he must be right.

Providing a scientific explanation for the experience that accompanies function: that's the hard problem. — frank

I just don't see what the big deal is. I think it's just one more case, perhaps the only one left, where people can scratch and claw to hold onto the idea that people are somehow exceptional.

Phenomenal consciousness and metacognition constitute the hard problem. There is something it is like to be you (or me) what is this? (And no, I'm not looking for an answer.) — Tom Storm

I'm not sure how that is different from what I wrote. And no, I'm not looking for an answer either.

Isn't this what they call the hard problem - How does manipulating information turn into our experience of the world? The touch, taste, sight, sound, smell?
— T Clark

No. — frank

This from "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness."

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. that 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

Has anyone considered that the ability to manipulate information (and information itself) and consciousness are one in the same. — Mark Nyquist

Isn't this what they call the hard problem - How does manipulating information turn into our experience of the world? The touch, taste, sight, sound, smell?

I don't know if I'm smarter, but I am more privy to actual reality...

...I have seen many things. Things "smart" people have never seen. — neonspectraltoast

I find your statements unconvincing.