I appreciate hearing your view; I don’t have any comments to make. I’m mostly interested in finding a double crux.
This isn’t really a double crux, but it could help me think of one:
If someone becomes convinced that there isn’t any afterlife, would this rationally affect their behavior? Can you think of a case where someone believed in Heaven and Hell, had acted rationally in accordance with that belief, then stopped believing in Heaven and Hell, but still acted just the same way as they did before? We’re assuming their utility function hasn’t changed, just their ontology.
Well, for me, one crux is this question of nominalism vs philosophical realism. One way to investigate this question for yourself is to ask whether mathematics is invented (nominalism) or discovered (philosophical realism). I don’t often like to think in terms of -isms, but I have to admit I fall pretty squarely in the nominalist camp, because while concepts and words are useful tools, I think they are just that: tools, that we invented. Reality is only real in a reductionist sense; there are no people, no numbers and no consciousness, because those are just words that attempt to cope with the complexity of reality, so we just shouldn’t take them so seriously. If you agree with this, I don’t see how you can think the Hard Problem is worth taking seriously. If you disagree, I’m interested to see why. If you could convince me that there is merit to the philosophical realist position, I would strongly update towards the Hard Problem being worth taking seriously.
Reality is only real in a reductionist sense; there are no people, no numbers and no consciousness, because those are just words that attempt to cope with the complexity of reality,
That isn’t what reductionism says. Reduction is a form of explanation. It is not elimination. What is reductively explained still exists—heat still exists—it is just not different to its reduction base.
If you agree with this, I don’t see how you can think the Hard Problem is worth taking seriously.
The hard problem emerges from the requirement to explain consciousness reductively.
Examples of non-physical ontologies include dualism, panpsychism and idealism . These are not faced with the Hard Problem, as such, because they are able to say that subjective, qualia, just are what they are, without facing any need to offer a reductive explanation of them.
Saying that something “exists” is more subtle than that. In everyday life we don’t have to be pedantic about it, but in this discussion, I think we do.
There are lots of different ontologies which explain how certain parts of reality work. The concept of heat is one that most people include in their ontologies, because it’s just very useful most of the time, though not always. For example, there’s not much sense in asking what the temperature is of a single particle. Virtually every ontology breaks down in such a way at some point, which is to say that in certain situations it does not describe what happens in reality closely enough to be of practical value in that situation.
In pagan cultures, there were ontologies containing gods which ostensibly influenced certain parts of reality. There’s a storm? Zeus must be angry. To these cultures, Zeus existed, because it seemed to explain what was happening. It wasn’t a very good explanation from our perspective because it didn’t bestow great power in predicting storms.
But also in modern science, we have had and still do have theories which explain reality only partially. Newtonian mechanics describes the world very accurately, but not quite exactly. Einstein’s general relativity filled in some of the gaps, but we’re pretty sure that that is not exactly right either, because it’s not a quantum theory, which we think a better theory should be. Given that we know our theories are wrong, does inertia exist? Does spacetime exist? Do points of infinite density exist?
The hard problem emerges from the requirement to explain consciousness reductively.
You could similarly say that any valid ontology has the requirement to explain heat reductively, but then the pagan could also say that any ontology has the requirement to explain Zeus reductively. Seeing reality through the lens of ontologies, which we all have no choice but to do, colors the perception of what you think exists and needs to be explained. True, “heat” needs to be explained insofar as it does correspond to reality, but we might Pareto-improve our understanding of reality by using an entirely different ontology which doesn’t contain the concept of heat at all, which is pretty much what happened to the concept of Zeus. The concept of consciousness must be held to the same standard. We have to take a step back from our ontologies and ask what parts are actually useful and what exactly it means for them to be useful. The litmus test of modern science is that it must add predictive power. The problem is that consciousness, as described by the Hard Problem, is an ontological outgrowth (derived analytically from an existing ontology) that does not have any predictive power. Even worse, consciousness as described by the Hard Problem is unfalsifiable, meaning it has been by definition pre-empted from having predictive power (otherwise it could potentially have been falsified by comparing its predictions to some outcome), so why should I include it in my ontology?
There are lots of different ontologies which explain how certain parts of reality work. The concept of heat is one that most people include in their ontologies, because it’s just very useful most of the time, though not always. For example, there’s not much sense in asking what the temperature is of a single particle. Virtually every ontology breaks down in such a way at some point,
But that’s a completely general argument. If the worst thing you can say about phenomenal consciousness is that it is occasionally inapplicable, it is no worse off than heat.
which is to say that in certain situations it does not describe what happens in reality closely enough to be of practical value in that situation.
Yep. Hardly a damning indictment.,
In pagan cultures, there were ontologies containing gods which ostensibly influenced certain parts of reality. There’s a storm? Zeus must be angry. To these cultures, Zeus existed, because it seemed to explain what was happening. It wasn’t a very good explanation from our perspective because it didn’t bestow great power in predicting storms.
Note the difference between the phenomenon being explained, the explanandum, and the explanation. There is not much doubt that thunder and lightning exist , but there is much doubt that Zeus or Thor causes them .
But also in modern science, we have had and still do have theories which explain reality only partially. Newtonian mechanics describes the world very accurately, but not quite exactly. Einstein’s general relativity filled in some of the gaps, but we’re pretty sure that that is not exactly right either, because it’s not a quantum theory, which we think a better theory should be. Given that we know our theories are wrong, does inertia exist? Does spacetime exist? Do points of infinite density exist?
That’s another completely general argument.
The hard problem emerges from the requirement to explain consciousness reductively.
You could similarly say that any valid ontology has the requirement to explain heat reductively, but then the pagan could also say that any ontology has the requirement to explain Zeus reductively.
That’s the wrong way round: Zeus is posited, dobntfully, to explain something for which there is clear evidence. Consciousness is equivalent to the thunder, not the thunder god (particularly under a minimal definition … it’s important not to get misled by the idea that qualia are necessarily nonphyiscal or something).
Seeing reality through the lens of ontologies, which we all have no choice but to do, colors the perception of what you think exists and needs to be explained.
In general. Still not a specific point against consciousness.
True, “heat” needs to be explained insofar as it does correspond to reality,
It needs to be explained inasmuch as it appears to exist. Corresponding to reality is setting the bar far too high—we won’t know what is real until we have complete explanations. Rainbows are a useful example: they are worth explaining , and we have an explanation, and the explanation tells us they don’t literal exist as arches in the sky.
but we might Pareto-improve our understanding of reality by using an entirely different ontology which doesn’t contain the concept of heat at all, which is pretty much what happened to the concept of Zeus.
That only tells me consciousness might not exist. It doesn’t tell me that the problem of consciousness is easy or a non problem.
The concept of consciousness must be held to the same standard.
Who said otherwise?
We have to take a step back from our ontologies and ask what parts are actually useful and what exactly it means for them to be useful.
Useful for what?
The litmus test of modern science is that it must add predictive power.
The litmus test of philosophy is that it must tell the truth. If prediction isn’t available, you should accept that. You shouldn’t argue against X on the basis that it prevents prediction , because you have no reason to believe that the universe is entirely predictable. Science is based on the hope that things are predictable and comprehensible, but not in the certainty.. They are falsifiable claims.
The problem is that consciousness, as described by the Hard Problem, is an ontological outgrowth (derived analytically from an existing ontology) that does not have any predictive power.
Why? Where is that proven?
Even worse, consciousness as described by the Hard Problem is unfalsifiable, meaning it has been by definition pre-empted from having predictive power
Consciousness as described by the HP is not necessarily epiphenomenal.
Now, Chalmers set out the HP, and Chalmers *might* be an epiphneomnealist, but it doesn’t follow that the hP requires epiphenomenalism (the field is rife with that kind of misunderstanding).
Also, the argument form epiphenomenalism is quite different to the argument from nominalism.
But that’s a completely general argument. If the worst thing you can say about phenomenal consciousness is that it is occasionally inapplicable, it is no worse off than heat.
Unlike heat, I can’t imagine any situation in which consciousness as described by the Hard Problem is applicable. Can you give me a situation in which you can make better predictions using the concept?
Note the difference between the phenomenon being explained, the explanandum, and the explanation. There is not much doubt that thunder and lightning exist , but there is much doubt that Zeus or Thor causes them .
Zeus is posited, dobntfully, to explain something for which there is clear evidence. Consciousness is equivalent to the thunder, not the thunder god (particularly under a minimal definition … it’s important not to get misled by the idea that qualia are necessarily nonphyiscal or something).
We can agree that thunder and lightning exist and that Zeus and Thor do not, but not that consciousness exists as posed by the Hard Problem. To resolve that disagreement we need to agree on what it means for something to exist. I proposed this litmus test of additive predictive power.
The litmus test of philosophy is that it must tell the truth. If prediction isn’t available, you should accept that. You shouldn’t argue against X on the basis that it prevents prediction , because you have no reason to believe that the universe is entirely predictable. Science is based on the hope that things are predictable and comprehensible, but not in the certainty.. They are falsifiable claims.
How does one test that a statement is true (or at least not false)? I accept that there may be things that are true that I can’t know are true, but there is an infinite number of such possible things. How would I decide which to believe and which not? And if I did, what would that get me?
The problem is that consciousness, as described by the Hard Problem, is an ontological outgrowth (derived analytically from an existing ontology) that does not have any predictive power.
Why? Where is that proven?
Consciousness as described by the Hard Problem is not derived from any observation that can be independently corroborated. When you claim to observe your own consciousness, you are not observing reality directly, you are observing your own ontology. Your ontology contains consciousness as described by the Hard Problem and that is why you’re seeing it.
Unlike heat, I can’t imagine any situation in which consciousness as described by the Hard Problem is applicable.
Applicable to what? As I said ,it is an explanandum, not an explanation. We have prima facie evidence of consciousness because we are conscious. Also , I dont buy that “consciousness as described by the Hard Problem” is epiphenomneal.
Can you give me a situation in which you can make better predictions using the concept?
I can give you situations where I can make equally good predictions of external behaviour. Pain is a quale, I fI feel pain, I grimace, go “ouch!” etc.
Note the difference between the phenomenon being explained, the explanandum, and the explanation. There is not much doubt that thunder and lightning exist , but there is much doubt that Zeus or Thor causes them .
Zeus is posited, dobntfully, to explain something for which there is clear evidence. Consciousness is equivalent to the thunder, not the thunder god (particularly under a minimal definition … it’s important not to get misled by the idea that qualia are necessarily nonphyiscal or something).
We can agree that thunder and lightning exist and that Zeus and Thor do not, but not that consciousness exists as posed by the Hard Problem.
What does “as posed by the HP” mean? Again, the HP does not state that consciousness is epiphenomenal or nonphysical.
To resolve that disagreement we need to agree on what it means for something to exist. I proposed this litmus test of additive predictive power.
I propose that it is predictive power or, explanatory power , or prima facie evidence.
You can’t just have closed loop of explanatory posits explaining each other. Explanations are explanations of something.
The litmus test of philosophy is that it must tell the truth. If prediction isn’t available, you should accept that. You shouldn’t argue against X on the basis that it prevents prediction , because you have no reason to believe that the universe is entirely predictable. Science is based on the hope that things are predictable and comprehensible, but not in the certainty.. They are falsifiable claims.
How does one test that a statement is true (or at least not false)?
It’s complicated. But persistent failure to explain thing X using method Y is a hint of falsehood.
I accept that there may be things that are true that I can’t know are true, but there is an infinite number of such possible things. How would I decide which to believe and which not?
No one is asking you to believe in things which are invisible and non predictive.
And if I did, what would that get me?
The problem is that consciousness, as described by the Hard Problem, is an ontological outgrowth (derived analytically from an existing ontology) that does not have any predictive power.
Why? Where is that proven?
Consciousness as described by the Hard Problem is not derived from any observation that can be independently corroborated.
No. So what? If you had certain apriori knowledge that everything is objective, that would be a problem for consciousness. If there are fundamentally subjective perceptions, that’s a problem for physicalism.
You have evidence of your own perceptions, whether or not the you can corroborate then. You can make predictions from your own perceptions.
Insisiting on objective evidence is looking for the key under the lamppost.
When you claim to observe your own consciousness, you are not observing reality directly,
When you claim to observe the outside world, you are not observing reality directly.
you are observing your own ontology. Your ontology contains consciousness as described by the Hard Problem and that is why you’re seeing it.
Unless it’s really there. You can’t assume that something necessarily doesn’t exist in the territory, just because it does feature in the map.
As I said ,it is an explanandum, not an explanation. We have prima facie evidence of consciousness because we are conscious.
I believe consciousness exists and that we both have it, but I don’t think either of us have the kind of consciousness that you claim you have, namely consciousness as described by the Hard Problem. By consciousness as described by the Hard Problem I mean the kind of consciousness that is not fully explained by solutions to the Easy Problem.
Why do you believe that solutions to the Easy Problem are not sufficient? Conversely, why do you believe that heat is a sufficient explanation for what happens to one’s finger when touching fire? What does the latter do that the former does not? How do you in general decide that an explanation is sufficient?
I believe consciousness exists and that we both have it, but I don’t think either of us have the kind of consciousness that you claim you have, namely consciousness as described by the Hard Problem.
I believe that consciousness as described by the HP is just phenomenal consciousness...not epiphenomenal consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness is actually mundane..it’s just how things seem to you, how it feels to be sitting in a seat, looking at a screen , reading these words, right here, right now.
I have that, and I’m pretty sure you do too
By consciousness as described by the Hard Problem I mean the kind of consciousness that is not fully explained by solutions to the Easy Problem.
The kind of consciousness the HP is about isn’t defined as inexplicable. It’s defined as phenomenal … and then noticed as being unexplained.
Why do you believe that solutions to the Easy Problem are not sufficient?
They are not sufficient to explain phenomenal consciousness...ie. my own experience. They may well be sufficient to explain others behaviour.
Conversely, why do you believe that heat is a sufficient explanation for what happens to one’s finger when touching fire?
What happens is an objective process,.my finger gets hotter and a subjective sensation. The latter is not explained by the reductive explanations of heat. Reductive explanations are able to predict and terrorist their explananda. One can predict a temperature, and confirm the prediction , because one can measure temperature.
I don’t think I fall into either camp because I think the question is ambiguous. It could be talking about the natural structure of space and time (“mathematics”) or it could be talking about our notation and calculation methods (“mathematics”). The answer to the question is “it depends what you mean”.
The nominalist vs realist issue doesn’t appear very related to my understanding of the Hard Problem, which is more about the definition of what counts as valid evidence. Eliminitivism says that subjective observations are problematic. But all observations are subjective (first person), so defining what counts as valid evidence is still unresolved.
You don’t believe that all human observations are necessarily made from a first-person viewpoint? Can you give a counter-example? All I can think of are claims that involve the paranormal or supernatural.
Observations being made from a first person perspective is a rather trivial definition of subjective,. because it’s quite possible for different observers to agree on observations.(And for some aspects of the persepective to be predictable from objective facts).The forms of subjectivity that count are where they disagree, or where they can’t even express their perceptions.
I meant subjective in the sense of “pertaining to a subject’s frame of reference”, not subjective in the sense of “arbitrary opinion”. I’m sorry if that was unclear.
Like TAG said, in a trivial sense human observations are made from a first-person, subjective viewpoint. But all of these observations are also happening from a third-person perspective, just like the rest of reality. The way I see it, the third-person perspective is basically the default, i.e., reality is like a list of facts, from which the first-person view emerges. Then of course the question is, how is that emergence possible? I can understand the intuition that the third-person and first-person view seem to be fundamentally different, but I think of it this way: all the thoughts you think and the statements you make are happening in reality and the structure of that reality determines your thoughts. This is where the illusion arguments become relevant; illusions, such as optical ones, demonstrate clearly that you can be made to believe things that are wrong because of convenience or simply brain malfunction. Changing the configuration of your brain matter can make you believe absolutely anything. The belief in the first-person perspective has evolved because it’s just very useful for survival and you can’t choose to disbelieve what your brain makes you believe.
Given the above, to say that the first-person perspective is fundamentally different seems like the more supernatural claim to me.
the thoughts you think and the statements you make are happening in reality and the structure of that reality determines your thoughts.
The HP is about sensory qualities, not thoughts. Are you saying that we have, today, a theory which can predict the nature of sensory qualities from objective facts? (Which would be a solution to the HP, which would imply there ever was an HP)
Are you saying that we have, today, a theory which can predict the nature of sensory qualities from objective facts?
Yes, for example, if blood flow to the brain is decreased, you can use that to correctly predict a decrease in consciousness. If I show you a red piece of paper, you will experience red, if the paper is green, you experience green, etc.
Sure, change the neural patterns in a person’s brain and they’ll get new experiences. As far as non-humans are concerned, if you punch them in the face they’ll experience pain and fear or anger. Red looks like that because that’s what we mean when we say red. If a cup breaks, can you explain where its cupness has gone?
Can you really not imagine why I put forward those particular examples?
Sure, change the neural patterns in a person’s brain and they’ll get new experiences.
What new experiences? That’s the hard problem.
As far as non-humans are concerned, if you punch them in the face they’ll experience pain and fear or anger.
Yes, non human animals have some experiences in common with humans. They also have some that are different, like dolphin sonar. That’s the other hard problem?
Could you really not see what I was getting at?
And are you now admitting that there ever was a problem?
Sure, that’s a hard problem, but it’s not the hard problem. You can go through the usual scientific process and identify what neural patterns correlate with which experiences, but that’s all doable with solutions to the Easy Problem.
>Yes, non human animals have some experiences in common with humans. They also have some that are different, like dolphin sonar. That’s the other hard problem?
Again, sure, a hard problem, but to explain such things you can go through the usual scientific process and come up with new ontologies to describe new kinds of experiences.
In contrast, the problem with the Hard Problem is that you can’t even begin the scientific process. What it looks like to me what you’re trying to get at is that, for example, if there is a cup, we can both acknowledge that there are physical constituents that make up the cup, but you seem to pose that in addition to this there is a “cupness” to the cup. This is basically the essentialist position, which is related to philosophical realism.
In terms of consciousness, you seem to be saying that there is something it is like to be conscious, in addition to what the brain is doing from an objective standpoint. I deny that this is the case and therefore I deny that there is a problem that needs explanation. What does need explanation is why some people such as yourself claim that it requires an explanation, which I have tried to explain earlier.
You can go through the usual scientific process and identify what neural patterns correlate with which experiences
Why would you? The point of using reductive explanation is that it identifies phenomenal consciousness with neural activity, and therefore supports physicalism. On the other hand, you would still be able find correlations in a universe where dualism holds.
You can’t prove that physicslism, or anything else is true just by assuming it.
In contrast, the problem with the Hard Problem is that you can’t even begin the scientific process.
So what? You can’t assume that only things you want to explain in a particular way exist. Why would the universe care?
You seem to be assuming that science/physicslism is unfalsifiable—that if something defies scientific epistemology or physical ontology, then it can be dismissed for that reason.
In terms of consciousness, you seem to be saying that there is something it is like to be conscious, in addition to what the brain is doing from an objective standpoint.
I″m not positing that there is: I have subjective conscious experience because I’m a subject. I’m not looking at myself from the outside. Are you?
Qualia don’t go away when you stop believing in them: pains still hurt , tomatoes are still red.
In terms of consciousness, you seem to be saying that there is something it is like to be conscious, in addition to what the brain is doing from an objective standpoint
I am saying that there is something that is not , currently, explained from an objective viewpoint. It’s not the problem that assumes a non physicalist ontology, it’s the lack of solution that implies it.
>Why would you? The point of using reductuive explanation is that it *identitfies” phenomenal consciousness with neural activity, and therefore supports physicalism. On the other hand, you would still be able find correlations in a universe where dualism holds
You asked how changing neural patterns in a person’s brain can be linked to what experiences. You can use the scientific process to establish those links inasfar as they can be linked.
There is no possible universe in which dualism holds due to the interaction problem, unless you use a very narrow definition of what’s physical. (For example, I have encountered people who claimed that light is not physical. That’s fair, but that’s not the definition of physical that I or the vast majority of physicists and scientists use.)
>So what? You can’t assume that only things you want to explain in a particular way exist. Why would the universe care?
The point is that you can’t say anything meaningful about things you can’t explain using the scientific process. You can’t even say they exist. They may well exist, but you can’t tell something that doesn’t exist apart from something that can’t be explained scientifically. The scientific process is not just a particular way to explain things; indeed, the universe does not care to what degree you can know things; it just so happens that falsifying theories through predictions is the only way to know things. If horoscopes or dowsing rods were a way to know what’s true they would be science, but they aren’t so they’re not.
>I″m not positing that there is: I have subjective conscious experience because I’m a subject. I’m not looking at myself from the outside. Are you?
You are an object. Of course it looks like you’re a subject because that’s what your brain (i.e., “you”) looks like to that brain.
>I am saying that there is something that is not , currently, explained from an objective viewpoint. I’ve said so several times.
How do you decide whether a candidate explanation is sufficient to explain this something?
There is no possible universe in which dualism holds due to the interaction problem
Hopefully making this point won’t derail your discussion:
Quantum mechanics is not deterministic. This is a gap which dualists can use. The major names here might be John Eccles (in neuroscience) and Henry Stapp (in physics).
If a theory says that something is fundamentally random—e.g. when a nucleus undergoes radioactive decay—then the event had no cause. It just happened. This is an opportunity to extend the theory by introducing a cause. In these dualistic quantum mind theories, a nonphysical mind is added to quantum mechanics as an additional causal factor that determines some of the randomness.
This is an opportunity to extend the theory by introducing a cause. In these dualistic quantum mind theories, a nonphysical mind is added to quantum mechanics as an additional causal factor that determines some of the randomness.
Firstly, how would we know that the correct way to extend the theory was to introduce a nonphysical mind as a cause? How would we tell the difference between the validity of this hypothesis and that of the infinite other possible causes?
Secondly, what is the difference between something physical and nonphysical? I hope I can assume that you agree that if something exists, then it behaves in some way. It is then up to us to try to describe that behavior as far as we can. Whether or not something is physical or not seems meaningless at this point. Quarks might as well be considered supernatural, magical, nonphysical objects whose behavior we happen to be able to describe, including how our mundane, physical reality emerges from it.
Supernatural, magical and nonphysical are contradictions in terms unless one decides on some arbitrary distinction between behaviors that are such and those that are not, because they will regardless behave in some way and we can predict that behavior inasfar as we can describe it.
what is the difference between something physical and nonphysical?
In naive, pre-scientific, pre-philosophical experience, there’s a world of things that we know through the senses, and a world of our own thoughts and feelings that we know in some other way. That is the root of physical versus non-physical, or matter versus mind.
Once science and philosophy get involved, the dividing line between physical and nonphysical can shift away from its naive starting point. Idealist philosophy can try to claim everything for the mind, physical science can try to claim everything for matter.
In the case of these quantum mind theories which have a Cartesian kind of dualism (mind and matter as distinct kinds of “substance”), there is no attempt to assimilate the mental world of thoughts and feelings, to the material world of things.
For example, in the Eccles theory, apparently thoughts and feelings in some way set the probabilities of quantum events in the synapse, and that’s how the interaction of substances occurs. Thoughts and feelings may fairly be called non-physical in such a theory, because there is no attempt to identify them with attributes of the physical brain. The mental realm is made of thoughts and feelings, the physical realm is made of particles with mass and spin, they are separate kinds of entity that interact in a specific way, and that’s it.
How would we tell the difference between the validity of this hypothesis and that of the infinite other possible causes?
Any theory (whether dualist, monist, or something else) that includes both mind and matter, is constrained by two kinds of data: introspective observation of thoughts and feelings, and physical observation of the material world. So you test it against the facts, like any other theory. Facts are not always easy to ascertain, they may be ambiguous, disputed, or denied, but they are still the touchstone of truth.
You asked how changing neural patterns in a person’s brain can be linked to what experiences. You can use the scientific process to establish those links inasfar as they can be linked.
Which isnt enough to exclude dualism.
There is no possible universe in which dualism holds due to the interaction problem,
There are lots of logically universes where the interaction problem doesn’t apply.
If there is complete determinism, or physical closure, then interaction implies overdetermination. But complete determinism and physical closure aren’t logical implications of just having some sort of physics.
So what? You can’t assume that only things you want to explain in a particular way exist. Why would the universe care?
The point is that you can’t say anything meaningful about things you can’t explain using the scientific process. You can’t even say they exist. They may well exist, but you can’t tell something that doesn’t exist
Sure you can. I have qualia right now, and so do you.
apart from something that can’t be explained scientifically. The scientific process is not just a particular way to explain things; indeed, the universe does not care to what degree you can know things; it just so happens that falsifying theories through predictions is the only way to know things.
Of course not. People knew things before Francis Bacon.
If horoscopes or dowsing rods were a way to know what’s true they would be science, but they aren’t so they’re not.
Horoscopes and dowsing rods aren’t the only alternative to science.
I″m not positing that there is: I have subjective conscious experience because I’m a subject. I’m not looking at myself from the outside. Are you?
You are an object.
I’m an object to you , and a subject to me. You can doubt my qualia, but I can’t doubt your own. You would notice your own if you did not insist on looking at yourself from the outside.
Of course it looks like you’re a subject because that’s what your brain (i.e., “you”) looks like to that brain.
Of course it looks to you like I’m a object because that’s what my brain looks like to your brain.
So far, so symmetrical.
You’re not showing that the object perspective is the only possible one. You could show that by showing that all subjective phenomena reduce to objective ones, since reduction is asymmetrical. But that involves actually solving the HP, not just writing down correlations.
I am saying that there is something that is not , currently, explained from an objective viewpoint. I’ve said so several times.
How do you decide whether a candidate explanation is sufficient to explain this something?
Using the same criteria I apply to anything else, such as falsifiability the ability to make novel predictions. You are the one who is special-pleading for a lower bar.
If it mispredicts a quale , I suppose. Of course, I don’t know how an equation describes a quale, and I also don’t know how to build a qualiometer. But then I’m not on side that thinks the HP can be solved by ordinary scientific means.
I don’t know how an equation describes a quale, and I also don’t know how to build a qualiometer.
When you find an explanation, how will you know that that was the explanation you were looking for?
If as you say you don’t know in advance how to describe qualia, that means you won’t be able to recognize that an explanation actually describes qualia, which in turn means you don’t actually know what you mean when you talk about qualia.
If as you say you don’t know in advance how to measure qualia, that means the explanation’s predictions can’t be tested against observations because we won’t know whether we are actually measuring qualia, which in turn means any explanation is a priori unfalsifiable.
You need to know in advance how to describe and measure what you’re seeking to explain in such a way that a third party can use those descriptions and measurements to falsify an explanation, otherwise the falsity of any explanation depends on your personal sensibilities; somebody else may have different sensibilities and come to an equally legitimate yet contradictory decision. Presumably, we are in a shared reality where it is an objective matter of fact that we either have qualia or we don’t; it can’t be subjectively true and false at the same time, depending on who you are.
I’m not saying qualia don’t exist, but I am saying that without objective descriptions of qualia and the ability to measure them objectively we can’t tell the difference between qualia and something that doesn’t exist.
That’s the thing, though—qualia are inherently subjective. (Another phrase for them is ‘subjective experience’.) We can’t tell the difference between qualia and something that doesn’t exist, if we limit ourselves to objective descriptions of the world.
Which is to say, the difference between qualia and nothing is easy to detect subjectively
..there’s a dramatic difference between having an operation with and without anaesthetic.
That’s the thing, though—qualia are inherently subjective. (Another phrase for them is ‘subjective experience’.) We can’t tell the difference between qualia and something that doesn’t exist, if we limit ourselves to objective descriptions of the world.
That doesn’t mean qualia can be excused and are to be considered real anyway. If we don’t limit ourselves to objective descriptions of the world then anyone can legitimately claim that ghosts exist because they think they’ve seen them, or similarly that gravity waves are transported across space by angels, or that I’m actually an attack helicopter even if I don’t look like one, or any other unfalsifiable claim, including the exact opposite claims, such as that qualia actually don’t exist. You won’t be able to disagree on any grounds except that you just don’t like it, because you sacrificed the assumptions to do so in order to support your belief in qualia.
The claim is that there is a hard problem...that qualia exist enough to need explaining,...not that they are ultimately real.
At one time, the existence of meteorites was denied because it didn’t fit with what people “knew” to be true.
There’s a problem in taking scattered subjective reports as establishing some conclusion definitively...but there’s an equal and opposite problem in rejecting reports because they don’t fit a prevailing dogma.
That doesn’t mean qualia can be excused and are to be considered real anyway. If we don’t limit ourselves to objective descriptions of the world then anyone can legitimately claim that ghosts exist because they think they’ve seen them, or similarly that gravity waves are transported across space by angels, or that I’m actually an attack helicopter even if I don’t look like one, or any other unfalsifiable claim, including the exact opposite claims, such as that qualia actually don’t exist. You won’t be able to disagree on any grounds except that you just don’t like it, because you sacrificed the assumptions to do so in order to support your belief in qualia.
Those analogies don’t hold, because you’re describing claims I might make about the world outside of my subjective experience (‘ghosts are real’, ‘gravity waves are carried by angels’, etc.). You can grant that I’m the (only possible) authority on whether I’ve had a ‘seeing a ghost’ experience, or a ‘proving to my own satisfaction that angels carry gravity waves’ experience, without accepting that those experiences imply the existence of real ghosts or real angels.
I wouldn’t even ask you to go that far, because—even if we rule out the possibility that I’m deliberately lying—when I report those experiences to you I’m relying on memory. I may be mistaken about my own past experiences, and you may have legitimate reasons to think I’m mistaken about those ones. All I can say with certainty is that qualia exist, because I’m (always) having some right now.
I think this is one of those unbridgeable or at least unlikely-to-be-bridged gaps, though, because from my perspective you are telling me to sacrifice my ontology to save your epistemology. Subjective experience is at ground level for me; its existence is the one thing I know directly rather than inferring in questionable ways.
Those analogies don’t hold, because you’re describing claims I might make about the world outside of my subjective experience (‘ghosts are real’, ‘gravity waves are carried by angels’, etc.).
The analogies do hold, because you don’t get to do special pleading and claim ultimate authority about what’s real inside your subjective experience any more than about what’s real outside of it. Your subjective experience is part of our shared reality, just like mine.
People are mistaken all the time about what goes on inside their mind, about the validity of their memories, or about the real reasons behind their actions. So why should I take at face value your claims about the validity of your thoughts, especially when those thoughts lead to logical contradictions?
I think we’re mostly talking past each other, but I would of course agree that if my position contains or implies logical contradictions then that’s a problem. Which of my thoughts lead to which logical contradictions?
Let’s say the Hard Problem is real. That means solutions to the Easy Problem are insufficient, i.e., the usual physical explanations.
But when we speak about physics, we’re really talking about making predictions based on regularities in observations in general. Some observations we could explain by positing the force of gravity. Newton himself was not satisfied with this, because how does gravity “know” to pull on objects? Yet we were able to make very successful predictions about the motions of the planets and of objects on the surface of the Earth, so we considered those things “explained” by Newton’s theory of gravity. But then we noticed a slight discrepancy between some of these predictions and our observations, so Einstein came up with General Relativity to correct those predictions and now we consider these discrepancies “explained”, even though the reason why that particular theory works remains mysterious, e.g., why does spacetime exist? In general, when a hypothesis correctly predicts observations, we consider these observations scientifically explained.
Therefore to say that solutions to the Easy Problem are insufficient to explain qualia indicates (at least to me) one of two things.
Qualia have no regularity that we can observe. If they really didn’t have regularities that we could observe, we wouldn’t be able to observe that they exist, which contradicts the claim that they do exist. However, they do have regularities! We can predict qualia! Which means solutions to the Easy Problem are sufficient after all, which contradicts the assumption that they’re insufficient.
We’re aspiring to a kind of explanation for qualia over and above the scientific one, i.e., just predicting is not enough. You could posit any additional requirements for an explanation to qualify, but presumably we want an explanation to be true. You can’t know beforehand what’s true, so you can’t know that such additional requirements don’t disqualify the truth. There is only one thing that we know will be true however, namely that whatever we will observe in the future is what we will observe in the future. Therefore as long as the predictions of a theory don’t deviate from future observations, we can’t rule out that it’s accurately describing what’s actually going on, i.e., we can’t falsify it. In a way it’s a low bar, but it’s the best we can do. However, if a hypothesis makes predictions that are compatible with any and all observations, i.e., it’s unfalsifiable, then we can’t ever gain any information about its validity from any observations even in principle, which directly contradicts the assumption that you can find an explanation.
When you find an explanation, how will you know that that was the explanation you were looking for?
I’m describing how the process of explaining qualia scientifically would look.
Science isn’t based on exactly predermining an explanation before you have it.
which in turn means you don’t actually know what you mean when you talk about qualia.
Says who? If I can tell that qualia are indescribable or undetectable, I must know something of “qualia” means. One of the problems with the Logical Positivist theory of meaning is tha it can’t be the whole story.
If as you say you don’t know in advance how to measure qualia, that means the explanation’s predictions can’t be tested against observations because we won’t know whether we are actually measuring qualia,
I said we dont know how to measure qualia, not that some device might be measuring something else. One could test a qualiometer on oneself.
which in turn means any explanation is a priori unfalsifiable.
L
If you exclude qualiometers , entirely subjective approaches and a few other things, you can’t have a standard scientific explanation. You can still have a philosophical explanation, such as qualia don’t exist, qualia are non physical, etc.
You need to know in advance how to describe and measure what you’re seeking to explain in such a way that a third party can use those descriptions and measurements to falsify an explanation, otherwise the falsity of any explanation depends on your personal sensibilities; somebody else may have different sensibilities and come to an equally legitimate yet contradictory decision.
But I’m not saying there is a scientific explanation of qualia
Presumably, we are in a shared reality here it is an objective matter of fact that we either have qualia or we don’t;
And if it is an objective fact that there is some irreducible subjectivity, it is clan objective fact that it doesn’t have a full scientific explanation.
it can’t be subjectively true and false at the same time, depending on who you are.
I don’t know who is suggesting that.
I’m not saying qualia don’t exist, but I am saying that without objective descriptions of qualia and the ability to measure them objectively we can’t tell the difference between qualia and something that doesn’t exist.
But you can notice your own qualia.. anaesthesia makes a difference.
Science isn’t based on exactly predermining an explanation before you have it.
But then how you would know that a given explanation, scientific or not, explains qualia to your satisfaction? How will you be able to tell that that explanation is indeed what you were looking for before?
If I can tell that qualia are indescribable or undetectable, I must know something of “qualia” means.
People have earnestly claimed the same thing about various deities. Do you believe in those? Why would your specific belief be true if theirs weren’t? Why are you so sure you’re not mistaken?
And if it is an objective fact that there is some irreducible subjectivity
Could be, but we don’t know that.
One could test a qualiometer on oneself.
How would you determine that it is working? That if you’re seeing something red, the qualiometer says “red”? If so, how would that show that there is something more going on than what’s explained with solutions to the Easy Problem?
it can’t be subjectively true and false at the same time, depending on who you are.
I don’t know who is suggesting that.
It’s a logical consequence of claiming there is no objective fact about something.
But you can notice your own qualia.. anaesthesia makes a difference.
Again, I agree with you that subjective experience exists, but I don’t see why solutions to the Easy Problem wouldn’t satisfy you. There’s something mysterious about subjective experience, but that’s true for everything, including atoms and electromagnetic waves and chairs and the rest of objective reality. Why does anything in the universe exist? It’s “why?” all the way down.
But then how you would know that a given explanation, scientific or not, explains qualia to your satisfaction?
You keep asking the same question. If we are talking about scientific explanation: a scientific explanation of X succeeds if it is able to predict X’s, particularly novel ones, and it doesn’t mispredict X’s.
A scientific explanation of qualia is exactly that with X=qualia. It’s not a different style of explanation. It may well be impossible, but that’s another story.
As for a philosophical explanation...well, how do you know? You have some philosophical account, probably along the lines of qualia don;’t exist or aren’t meaningful, although you refuse to say which. So you have some criteria for judging that to be the best explanation.
If I can tell that qualia are indescribable or undetectable, I must know something of “qualia” means.
People have earnestly claimed the same thing about various deities.
Of course they have. To believe in Zeus youmust know what “Zeus” means, and likewise to disbelieve in Zeus.
Do you believe in those?
HUh? Why are you asking?. I said “qualia” is meaningful. I also believe in qualia, but I don’t believe in qualia just because “qualia” is meaningful, I believe in qualia because I have them, as I have stated many times.
Why would your specific belief be true if theirs weren’t?
I don’t see Zeus, I do see colours. Do you find that confusing?
How would you determine that it is working? That if you’re seeing something red, the qualiometer says “red”?
Whatever. I am not saying there is a scientific explanation of qualia.
it can’t be subjectively true and false at the same time, depending on who you are.
I don’t know who is suggesting that.
It’s a logical consequence of claiming there is no objective fact about something.
That’s conflating two senses of “subjective”. Qualia are subjective in the sense that subjects can access their own qualia, but not other peoples.
But you can notice your own qualia.. anaesthesia makes a difference.
Again, I agree with you that subjective experience exists, but I don’t see why solutions to the Easy Problem wouldn’t satisfy you.
They don’t explain subjective experience. The Easy Problem is everything except subjective experience.
There’s something mysterious about subjective experience, but that’s true for everything, including atoms and electromagnetic waves and chairs and the rest of objective reality.
The fact that qualia are physically mysterious can’t be predicted from physics .. if physicalism is true, they should as explicable as the Easy problem stuff. That suggests physicalism is wrong.
You say you see colors and have other subjective experiences and you call those qualia and I can accept that, but when I ask why solutions to the Easy Problem wouldn’t be sufficient you say it’s because you have subjective experiences, but that’s circular reasoning. You haven’t said why exactly solutions to the Easy Problem don’t satisfy you, which is why I keep asking what kind of explanation would satisfy you. I genuinely do not know, based on what you have said. It doesn’t have to be scientific.
If we are talking about scientific explanation: a scientific explanation of X succeeds if it is able to predict X’s, particularly novel ones, and it doesn’t mispredict X’s.
But it’s not clear to me how you would judge that any explanation, scientific or not, does these things for qualia, because it seems to me that solutions to the Easy Problem do exactly this; I can already predict what kind of qualia you experience, even novel ones. If I show you a piece of red paper, you will experience the qualia of red. If I give you a drink or a drug you haven’t had before I can predict that you will have a new experience. I may not be able to predict quite exactly what those experiences will be in a given situation because I don’t have complete information, but that’s true for virtually any explanation, even when using quantum mechanics.
I suspect you may now object again and say, “but that doesn’t explain subjective experience”. Then I will object again and say, “what explanation would satisfy you?”, to which you will again say, “if it predicts qualia”, to which I will say, “but we can already predict what qualia you will have in a given situation”. Then you will again object and say, “but that doesn’t explain subjective experience”. And so on.
It looks to me like you’re holding out for something you don’t know how to recognize. True, maybe an explanation is impossible, but you don’t know that either. When some great genius finally does explain it all, how will you know he’s right? You wouldn’t want to miss out, right?
They don’t explain subjective experience. The Easy Problem is everything except subjective experience.
But this is the very thing in question. Can you explain to me how exactly you come to this conclusion? Having subjective experience does not in itself imply that it’s not physical.
The fact that qualia are physically mysterious can’t be predicted from physics
I’m genuinely curious what you mean by this. Can you expand on this?
You say you see colors and have other subjective experiences and you call those qualia and I can accept that, but when I ask why solutions to the Easy Problem wouldn’t be sufficient you say it’s because you have subjective experiences,
No it’s because the Easy Problem is , by definition ,everything except subjective experience. Its [consciousness-experience] explained [however], not [consciousness] explained [physically]. It happens to be the case that easy problems can be explained physically, but its not built into the definition.
Can you explain to me how exactly you come to this conclusion? Having subjective experience does not in itself imply that it’s not physical.
Because I’ve read the passages where Chalmers defines the Easy/ Hard distinction.
“What makes the hard problem hard and almost unique is that it goes beyond problems about the performance of functions. To see this, note that even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience—perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report—there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? (1995, 202, emphasis in original).”
See? It’s not defined in terms of physicality!
Have you even read that passage before?
but that’s circular reasoning. You haven’t said why exactly solutions to the Easy Problem don’t satisfy you, which is why I keep asking what kind of explanation would satisfy you.
...an EP explanation isn’t it even trying to be an explanation of X for X=qualia.
It doesn’t have to be scientific.
If we are talking about scientific explanation: a scientific explanation of X succeeds if it is able to predict X’s, particularly novel ones, and it doesn’t mispredict X’s.
But it’s not clear to me how you would judge that any explanation, scientific or not, does these things for qualia, because it seems to me that solutions to the Easy Problem do exactly this;
Only by lowering the bar.
I can already predict what kind of qualia you experience, even novel ones.
Of course not …you can’t even express them.
If I show you a piece of red paper, you will experience the qualia of red.
I’m a colour blind super scientist , what is this Red?
If I give you a drink or a drug you haven’t had before I can predict that you will have a new experience. I may not be able to predict quite exactly what those experiences will be
Unfortunately , that’s what “predict novel experiences” means. CF other areas of science: you don’t get Nobels for saying “I predict some novel effect I cant describe or quantify”.
in a given situation because I don’t have complete information, but that’s true for virtually any explanation, even when using quantum mechanics.
The problem isnt that you don’t have infinite information, it’s that you are not reaching the base line of every other scientific theory, because “novel qualia , don’t ask me what” isn’t a meaningful prediction.
I suspect you may now object again and say, “but that doesn’t explain subjective experience”. Then I will object again and say, “what explanation would satisfy you?”, to which you will again say, “if it predicts qualia”, to which I will say, “but we can already predict what qualia you will have in a given situation”.
Not in a good enough way, you can’t.
Then you will again object and say, “but that doesn’t explain subjective experience”. And so on.
It looks to me like you’re holding out for something you don’t know how to recognize. True, maybe an explanation is impossible, but you don’t know that either. When some great genius finally does explain it all, how will you know he’s right? You wouldn’t want to miss out, right?
They don’t explain subjective experience.
The fact that qualia are physically mysterious can’t be predicted from physics
I’m genuinely curious what you mean by this. Can you expand on this?
I explained in the next clause, which you snipped:-
if physicalism is true, they [qualia] should as explicable as the Easy problem stuff.
The core issue is that there’s an inference gap between having subjective experience and the claim that it is non-physical. One doesn’t follow from the other. You can define subjective experience as non-physical, as Chalmer’s definition of the Hard Problem does, but that’s not justified. I can just as legitimately define subjective experience as physical.
I can understand why Chalmers finds subjective experience mysterious, but it’s not more mysterious than the existence of something physical such as gravity or the universe in general. Why is General Relativity enough for you to explain gravity, even though the reason for the existence of gravity is mysterious?
he core issue is that there’s an inference gap between having subjective experience and the claim that it is non-physical.
Of course there is. There is no reason there should not be. Who told you otherwise? Chalmers takes hundreds of pages to set out his argument.
Physical reductionism is compatible with the idea that the stuff at the bottom of the stack is irreducible, but consciousness appears to be a high level phenomenon.
Chalmers takes hundreds of pages to set out his argument.
His argument does not bridge that gap. He, like you, does not provide objective criteria for a satisfying explanation, which means by definition you do not know what the thing is that requires explanation, no matter how many words are used trying to describe it.
I know. Like I said, neither Chalmers nor you or anyone else have shown it plausible that subjective experience is non-physical. Moreover, you repeatedly avoid giving an objective description what you’re looking for.
Until either of the above change, there is no reason to think there is a Hard Problem.
Also., the existence of a problem does not depend on the existence of a solution.
Agreed, but even if no possible solution can ultimately satisfy objective properties, until those properties are defined the problem itself remains undefined. Can you define these objective properties?
All I’m asking for is a way for other people to determine whether a given explanation will satisfy you. You haven’t given enough information to do that. Until that changes we can’t know that we even agree on the meaning of the Hard Problem.
The meaning of the Hard Problem doesn’t depend on satisfying me, since I didn’t invent it. If you want to find out what it is, you need to read Chalmers at some point.
But all of these observations are also happening from a third-person perspective, just like the rest of reality.
This is a hypothesis, based on information in your first-person perspective. To make arguments about a third-person reality, you will always have to start with first-person facts (and not the other way around). This is why the first person is epistemologically more fundamental.
It’s possible to doubt that there is a third-person perspective (e.g. to doubt that there’s anything like being God). But our first person perspective is primary, and cannot be escaped from. Optical illusions and stage tricks aren’t very relevant to this, except in showing that even our errors require a first-person perspective to occur.
EDIT:
The third-person perspective being epistemologically more/less fundamental than the first-person perspective could work as a double crux with me. Does it work on your end as well?
Would I be correct to say that you think the third-person perspective emerges from the first-person perspective? Or would you say that they’re simply separate?
If I had to choose between those two phrasings I would prefer the second one, for being the most compatible between both of our notions. My notion of “emerges from” is probably too different from yours.
The main difference seems to be that you’re a realist about the third-person perspective, whereas I’m a nominalist about it, to use your earlier terms. Maybe “agnostic” or “pragmatist” would be good descriptors too. The third-person is a useful concept for navigating the first-person world (i.e. the one that we are actually experiencing). But that it seems useful is really all that we can say about it, due to the epistemological limitations we have as human observers.
I think this is why it would be a good double crux if we used the issue of epistemological priority: I would think very differently about Hard Problem related questions if I became convinced that the 3rd person had higher priority than the 1st person perspective. Do you think this works as a double crux? Is it symmetrical for you as well in the right way?
If I had to choose between those two phrasings I would prefer the second one, for being the most compatible between both of our notions. My notion of “emerges from” is probably too different from yours.
The main difference seems to be that you’re a realist about the third-person perspective, whereas I’m a nominalist about it, to use your earlier terms.
That actually sounds more like the first phrasing to me. If you are a nominalist about the third-person perspective, then it seems that you think the third-person perspective does not actually exist and the concept of the third-person perspective is borne of the first-person perspective.
Do you think this works as a double crux?
I’m not sure whether this is a good double crux, because it’s not clear enough to me what we mean by first- and third-person perspectives. It seems conceivable to me that my conception of the third-person perspective is functionally equivalent to your conception of the first-person perspective. Let me expand on that below.
If only the first-person perspective exists, then presumably you cannot be legitimately surprised, because that implies something was true outside of your first-person perspective prior to your experiencing it, unless you define that as being part of your first-person perspective, which seems contradictory to me, but functionally the same as just defining everything from the third-person perspective. The only alternative possibility that seems available is that there are no external facts, which would mean reality is actually an inconsistent series of experiences, which seems absurd; then we wouldn’t even be able to be sure of the consistency of our own reasoning, including this conversation, which defeats itself.
I’m sorry that comparing my position to yours led to some confusion: I don’t deny the reality of 3rd person facts. They probably are real, or at least it would be more surprising if they weren’t than if they were. (If not, then where would all of the apparent complexity of 1st person experience come from? It seems positing an external world is a good step in the right direction to answering this). My comparison was about which one we consider to be essential. If I had used only “pragmatist” and “agnostic” as descriptors, it would have been less confusing.
Again, I think the main difference between our positions is how we define standards of evidence. To me, it would be surprising if someone came to know 3rd person facts without using 1st person facts in the process. If the 1st person facts are false, this casts serious doubt on the 3rd person facts which were implied. At our stage of the conversation, it seems like we can start proposing far more effective theories, like that nothing exists at all, which explains just as much of the available evidence we still have if we have no 1st person facts.
You seem to believe we can get at the true third person reality directly, maybe imagining we are equivalent to it. You can imagine a robot (i.e. one of us) having its pseudo-experiences and pseudo-observations all strictly happening in the 3rd person, even engaging in scientific pursuits, without needing to introduce an idea like the 1st person. But as you said earlier, just because you can imagine something, doesn’t mean that it’s possible. You need to start with the evidence available to you, not what sounds reasonable to you. The idea of that robot is occurring in your 1st person perspective as a mental experience, which means it counts as evidence for the 1st person perspective at least as much as it counts as evidence for the 3rd. So does what it feels like to think eliminitivism is possible, and so does what it feels like to chew 5 Gum® and etc, and etc.
To me, all of this is a boring tautology. For you, it’s more like a boring absurdity, or rather it’s the truth turned upside down and pulled inside out. This is why I’m more interested in finding a double crux, something that would reveal the precise points where our thinking diverges and reconverges. There are already some parallels that we’ve both noticed, I think. I would say that you believe in the 1st person but with only one authentic observer: God, who is and who sees everything with perfect indifference, like in Spinoza’s idea. You could also reframe my notion of the 1st person to be a kind of splintered or shattered 3rd person reality, one which can never totally connect itself back together all at once. Our ways of explaining away the problems are essentially the same: we both stress that our folk theoretic concepts are untrustworthy, that we are deceiving ourselves, that we apply a theory which shapes our interpretations without us realizing it. We are also both missing quite a few teeth, from biting quite a few bullets.
There must be some precise moment where our thinking diverges. What is that point? It seems like something we need to use a double crux to find. Do you have any ideas?
I appreciate hearing your view; I don’t have any comments to make. I’m mostly interested in finding a double crux.
This isn’t really a double crux, but it could help me think of one:
If someone becomes convinced that there isn’t any afterlife, would this rationally affect their behavior? Can you think of a case where someone believed in Heaven and Hell, had acted rationally in accordance with that belief, then stopped believing in Heaven and Hell, but still acted just the same way as they did before? We’re assuming their utility function hasn’t changed, just their ontology.
Well, for me, one crux is this question of nominalism vs philosophical realism. One way to investigate this question for yourself is to ask whether mathematics is invented (nominalism) or discovered (philosophical realism). I don’t often like to think in terms of -isms, but I have to admit I fall pretty squarely in the nominalist camp, because while concepts and words are useful tools, I think they are just that: tools, that we invented. Reality is only real in a reductionist sense; there are no people, no numbers and no consciousness, because those are just words that attempt to cope with the complexity of reality, so we just shouldn’t take them so seriously. If you agree with this, I don’t see how you can think the Hard Problem is worth taking seriously. If you disagree, I’m interested to see why. If you could convince me that there is merit to the philosophical realist position, I would strongly update towards the Hard Problem being worth taking seriously.
That isn’t what reductionism says. Reduction is a form of explanation. It is not elimination. What is reductively explained still exists—heat still exists—it is just not different to its reduction base.
The hard problem emerges from the requirement to explain consciousness reductively.
Examples of non-physical ontologies include dualism, panpsychism and idealism . These are not faced with the Hard Problem, as such, because they are able to say that subjective, qualia, just are what they are, without facing any need to offer a reductive explanation of them.
Saying that something “exists” is more subtle than that. In everyday life we don’t have to be pedantic about it, but in this discussion, I think we do.
There are lots of different ontologies which explain how certain parts of reality work. The concept of heat is one that most people include in their ontologies, because it’s just very useful most of the time, though not always. For example, there’s not much sense in asking what the temperature is of a single particle. Virtually every ontology breaks down in such a way at some point, which is to say that in certain situations it does not describe what happens in reality closely enough to be of practical value in that situation.
In pagan cultures, there were ontologies containing gods which ostensibly influenced certain parts of reality. There’s a storm? Zeus must be angry. To these cultures, Zeus existed, because it seemed to explain what was happening. It wasn’t a very good explanation from our perspective because it didn’t bestow great power in predicting storms.
But also in modern science, we have had and still do have theories which explain reality only partially. Newtonian mechanics describes the world very accurately, but not quite exactly. Einstein’s general relativity filled in some of the gaps, but we’re pretty sure that that is not exactly right either, because it’s not a quantum theory, which we think a better theory should be. Given that we know our theories are wrong, does inertia exist? Does spacetime exist? Do points of infinite density exist?
You could similarly say that any valid ontology has the requirement to explain heat reductively, but then the pagan could also say that any ontology has the requirement to explain Zeus reductively. Seeing reality through the lens of ontologies, which we all have no choice but to do, colors the perception of what you think exists and needs to be explained. True, “heat” needs to be explained insofar as it does correspond to reality, but we might Pareto-improve our understanding of reality by using an entirely different ontology which doesn’t contain the concept of heat at all, which is pretty much what happened to the concept of Zeus. The concept of consciousness must be held to the same standard. We have to take a step back from our ontologies and ask what parts are actually useful and what exactly it means for them to be useful. The litmus test of modern science is that it must add predictive power. The problem is that consciousness, as described by the Hard Problem, is an ontological outgrowth (derived analytically from an existing ontology) that does not have any predictive power. Even worse, consciousness as described by the Hard Problem is unfalsifiable, meaning it has been by definition pre-empted from having predictive power (otherwise it could potentially have been falsified by comparing its predictions to some outcome), so why should I include it in my ontology?
But that’s a completely general argument. If the worst thing you can say about phenomenal consciousness is that it is occasionally inapplicable, it is no worse off than heat.
Yep. Hardly a damning indictment.,
Note the difference between the phenomenon being explained, the explanandum, and the explanation. There is not much doubt that thunder and lightning exist , but there is much doubt that Zeus or Thor causes them .
That’s another completely general argument.
That’s the wrong way round: Zeus is posited, dobntfully, to explain something for which there is clear evidence. Consciousness is equivalent to the thunder, not the thunder god (particularly under a minimal definition … it’s important not to get misled by the idea that qualia are necessarily nonphyiscal or something).
In general. Still not a specific point against consciousness.
It needs to be explained inasmuch as it appears to exist. Corresponding to reality is setting the bar far too high—we won’t know what is real until we have complete explanations. Rainbows are a useful example: they are worth explaining , and we have an explanation, and the explanation tells us they don’t literal exist as arches in the sky.
That only tells me consciousness might not exist. It doesn’t tell me that the problem of consciousness is easy or a non problem.
Who said otherwise?
Useful for what?
The litmus test of philosophy is that it must tell the truth. If prediction isn’t available, you should accept that. You shouldn’t argue against X on the basis that it prevents prediction , because you have no reason to believe that the universe is entirely predictable. Science is based on the hope that things are predictable and comprehensible, but not in the certainty.. They are falsifiable claims.
Why? Where is that proven?
Consciousness as described by the HP is not necessarily epiphenomenal.
Now, Chalmers set out the HP, and Chalmers *might* be an epiphneomnealist, but it doesn’t follow that the hP requires epiphenomenalism (the field is rife with that kind of misunderstanding).
Also, the argument form epiphenomenalism is quite different to the argument from nominalism.
Unlike heat, I can’t imagine any situation in which consciousness as described by the Hard Problem is applicable. Can you give me a situation in which you can make better predictions using the concept?
We can agree that thunder and lightning exist and that Zeus and Thor do not, but not that consciousness exists as posed by the Hard Problem. To resolve that disagreement we need to agree on what it means for something to exist. I proposed this litmus test of additive predictive power.
How does one test that a statement is true (or at least not false)? I accept that there may be things that are true that I can’t know are true, but there is an infinite number of such possible things. How would I decide which to believe and which not? And if I did, what would that get me?
Consciousness as described by the Hard Problem is not derived from any observation that can be independently corroborated. When you claim to observe your own consciousness, you are not observing reality directly, you are observing your own ontology. Your ontology contains consciousness as described by the Hard Problem and that is why you’re seeing it.
Applicable to what? As I said ,it is an explanandum, not an explanation. We have prima facie evidence of consciousness because we are conscious. Also , I dont buy that “consciousness as described by the Hard Problem” is epiphenomneal.
I can give you situations where I can make equally good predictions of external behaviour. Pain is a quale, I fI feel pain, I grimace, go “ouch!” etc.
What does “as posed by the HP” mean? Again, the HP does not state that consciousness is epiphenomenal or nonphysical.
I propose that it is predictive power or, explanatory power , or prima facie evidence.
You can’t just have closed loop of explanatory posits explaining each other. Explanations are explanations of something.
It’s complicated. But persistent failure to explain thing X using method Y is a hint of falsehood.
No one is asking you to believe in things which are invisible and non predictive.
No. So what? If you had certain apriori knowledge that everything is objective, that would be a problem for consciousness. If there are fundamentally subjective perceptions, that’s a problem for physicalism.
You have evidence of your own perceptions, whether or not the you can corroborate then. You can make predictions from your own perceptions.
Insisiting on objective evidence is looking for the key under the lamppost.
When you claim to observe the outside world, you are not observing reality directly.
Unless it’s really there. You can’t assume that something necessarily doesn’t exist in the territory, just because it does feature in the map.
Well, if you did, scientific realism is dead.
I believe consciousness exists and that we both have it, but I don’t think either of us have the kind of consciousness that you claim you have, namely consciousness as described by the Hard Problem. By consciousness as described by the Hard Problem I mean the kind of consciousness that is not fully explained by solutions to the Easy Problem.
Why do you believe that solutions to the Easy Problem are not sufficient? Conversely, why do you believe that heat is a sufficient explanation for what happens to one’s finger when touching fire? What does the latter do that the former does not? How do you in general decide that an explanation is sufficient?
I believe that consciousness as described by the HP is just phenomenal consciousness...not epiphenomenal consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness is actually mundane..it’s just how things seem to you, how it feels to be sitting in a seat, looking at a screen , reading these words, right here, right now.
I have that, and I’m pretty sure you do too
The kind of consciousness the HP is about isn’t defined as inexplicable. It’s defined as phenomenal … and then noticed as being unexplained.
They are not sufficient to explain phenomenal consciousness...ie. my own experience. They may well be sufficient to explain others behaviour.
What happens is an objective process,.my finger gets hotter and a subjective sensation. The latter is not explained by the reductive explanations of heat. Reductive explanations are able to predict and terrorist their explananda. One can predict a temperature, and confirm the prediction , because one can measure temperature.
How do you decide whether a candidate explanation is sufficient to explain phenomenal consciousness?
I don’t think I fall into either camp because I think the question is ambiguous. It could be talking about the natural structure of space and time (“mathematics”) or it could be talking about our notation and calculation methods (“mathematics”). The answer to the question is “it depends what you mean”.
The nominalist vs realist issue doesn’t appear very related to my understanding of the Hard Problem, which is more about the definition of what counts as valid evidence. Eliminitivism says that subjective observations are problematic. But all observations are subjective (first person), so defining what counts as valid evidence is still unresolved.
What exactly do you mean by this? That nature is mathematical?
This sounds like it could be a double crux, because if I believed this the Hard Problem would follow trivially, but I don’t believe it.
You don’t believe that all human observations are necessarily made from a first-person viewpoint? Can you give a counter-example? All I can think of are claims that involve the paranormal or supernatural.
Observations being made from a first person perspective is a rather trivial definition of subjective,. because it’s quite possible for different observers to agree on observations.(And for some aspects of the persepective to be predictable from objective facts).The forms of subjectivity that count are where they disagree, or where they can’t even express their perceptions.
I meant subjective in the sense of “pertaining to a subject’s frame of reference”, not subjective in the sense of “arbitrary opinion”. I’m sorry if that was unclear.
Like TAG said, in a trivial sense human observations are made from a first-person, subjective viewpoint. But all of these observations are also happening from a third-person perspective, just like the rest of reality. The way I see it, the third-person perspective is basically the default, i.e., reality is like a list of facts, from which the first-person view emerges. Then of course the question is, how is that emergence possible? I can understand the intuition that the third-person and first-person view seem to be fundamentally different, but I think of it this way: all the thoughts you think and the statements you make are happening in reality and the structure of that reality determines your thoughts. This is where the illusion arguments become relevant; illusions, such as optical ones, demonstrate clearly that you can be made to believe things that are wrong because of convenience or simply brain malfunction. Changing the configuration of your brain matter can make you believe absolutely anything. The belief in the first-person perspective has evolved because it’s just very useful for survival and you can’t choose to disbelieve what your brain makes you believe.
Given the above, to say that the first-person perspective is fundamentally different seems like the more supernatural claim to me.
The HP is about sensory qualities, not thoughts. Are you saying that we have, today, a theory which can predict the nature of sensory qualities from objective facts? (Which would be a solution to the HP, which would imply there ever was an HP)
Yes, for example, if blood flow to the brain is decreased, you can use that to correctly predict a decrease in consciousness. If I show you a red piece of paper, you will experience red, if the paper is green, you experience green, etc.
Now, how about the hard problems: can you predict novel qualia? Can you predict non human qualia? Can you explain why red looks like that?
(And are you admitting hta thtere ever was a problem?)
Sure, change the neural patterns in a person’s brain and they’ll get new experiences. As far as non-humans are concerned, if you punch them in the face they’ll experience pain and fear or anger. Red looks like that because that’s what we mean when we say red. If a cup breaks, can you explain where its cupness has gone?
Can you really not imagine why I put forward those particular examples?
What new experiences? That’s the hard problem.
Yes, non human animals have some experiences in common with humans. They also have some that are different, like dolphin sonar. That’s the other hard problem?
Could you really not see what I was getting at?
And are you now admitting that there ever was a problem?
>What new experiences? That’s the hard problem.
Sure, that’s a hard problem, but it’s not the hard problem. You can go through the usual scientific process and identify what neural patterns correlate with which experiences, but that’s all doable with solutions to the Easy Problem.
>Yes, non human animals have some experiences in common with humans. They also have some that are different, like dolphin sonar. That’s the other hard problem?
Again, sure, a hard problem, but to explain such things you can go through the usual scientific process and come up with new ontologies to describe new kinds of experiences.
In contrast, the problem with the Hard Problem is that you can’t even begin the scientific process. What it looks like to me what you’re trying to get at is that, for example, if there is a cup, we can both acknowledge that there are physical constituents that make up the cup, but you seem to pose that in addition to this there is a “cupness” to the cup. This is basically the essentialist position, which is related to philosophical realism.
In terms of consciousness, you seem to be saying that there is something it is like to be conscious, in addition to what the brain is doing from an objective standpoint. I deny that this is the case and therefore I deny that there is a problem that needs explanation. What does need explanation is why some people such as yourself claim that it requires an explanation, which I have tried to explain earlier.
Why would you? The point of using reductive explanation is that it identifies phenomenal consciousness with neural activity, and therefore supports physicalism. On the other hand, you would still be able find correlations in a universe where dualism holds.
You can’t prove that physicslism, or anything else is true just by assuming it.
So what? You can’t assume that only things you want to explain in a particular way exist. Why would the universe care?
You seem to be assuming that science/physicslism is unfalsifiable—that if something defies scientific epistemology or physical ontology, then it can be dismissed for that reason.
I″m not positing that there is: I have subjective conscious experience because I’m a subject. I’m not looking at myself from the outside. Are you?
Qualia don’t go away when you stop believing in them: pains still hurt , tomatoes are still red.
I am saying that there is something that is not , currently, explained from an objective viewpoint. It’s not the problem that assumes a non physicalist ontology, it’s the lack of solution that implies it.
>Why would you? The point of using reductuive explanation is that it *identitfies” phenomenal consciousness with neural activity, and therefore supports physicalism. On the other hand, you would still be able find correlations in a universe where dualism holds
You asked how changing neural patterns in a person’s brain can be linked to what experiences. You can use the scientific process to establish those links inasfar as they can be linked.
There is no possible universe in which dualism holds due to the interaction problem, unless you use a very narrow definition of what’s physical. (For example, I have encountered people who claimed that light is not physical. That’s fair, but that’s not the definition of physical that I or the vast majority of physicists and scientists use.)
>So what? You can’t assume that only things you want to explain in a particular way exist. Why would the universe care?
The point is that you can’t say anything meaningful about things you can’t explain using the scientific process. You can’t even say they exist. They may well exist, but you can’t tell something that doesn’t exist apart from something that can’t be explained scientifically. The scientific process is not just a particular way to explain things; indeed, the universe does not care to what degree you can know things; it just so happens that falsifying theories through predictions is the only way to know things. If horoscopes or dowsing rods were a way to know what’s true they would be science, but they aren’t so they’re not.
>I″m not positing that there is: I have subjective conscious experience because I’m a subject. I’m not looking at myself from the outside. Are you?
You are an object. Of course it looks like you’re a subject because that’s what your brain (i.e., “you”) looks like to that brain.
>I am saying that there is something that is not , currently, explained from an objective viewpoint. I’ve said so several times.
How do you decide whether a candidate explanation is sufficient to explain this something?
Hopefully making this point won’t derail your discussion:
Quantum mechanics is not deterministic. This is a gap which dualists can use. The major names here might be John Eccles (in neuroscience) and Henry Stapp (in physics).
MWI is deterministic.
How could dualists use a random process?
If a theory says that something is fundamentally random—e.g. when a nucleus undergoes radioactive decay—then the event had no cause. It just happened. This is an opportunity to extend the theory by introducing a cause. In these dualistic quantum mind theories, a nonphysical mind is added to quantum mechanics as an additional causal factor that determines some of the randomness.
Firstly, how would we know that the correct way to extend the theory was to introduce a nonphysical mind as a cause? How would we tell the difference between the validity of this hypothesis and that of the infinite other possible causes?
Secondly, what is the difference between something physical and nonphysical? I hope I can assume that you agree that if something exists, then it behaves in some way. It is then up to us to try to describe that behavior as far as we can. Whether or not something is physical or not seems meaningless at this point. Quarks might as well be considered supernatural, magical, nonphysical objects whose behavior we happen to be able to describe, including how our mundane, physical reality emerges from it.
Supernatural, magical and nonphysical are contradictions in terms unless one decides on some arbitrary distinction between behaviors that are such and those that are not, because they will regardless behave in some way and we can predict that behavior inasfar as we can describe it.
In naive, pre-scientific, pre-philosophical experience, there’s a world of things that we know through the senses, and a world of our own thoughts and feelings that we know in some other way. That is the root of physical versus non-physical, or matter versus mind.
Once science and philosophy get involved, the dividing line between physical and nonphysical can shift away from its naive starting point. Idealist philosophy can try to claim everything for the mind, physical science can try to claim everything for matter.
In the case of these quantum mind theories which have a Cartesian kind of dualism (mind and matter as distinct kinds of “substance”), there is no attempt to assimilate the mental world of thoughts and feelings, to the material world of things.
For example, in the Eccles theory, apparently thoughts and feelings in some way set the probabilities of quantum events in the synapse, and that’s how the interaction of substances occurs. Thoughts and feelings may fairly be called non-physical in such a theory, because there is no attempt to identify them with attributes of the physical brain. The mental realm is made of thoughts and feelings, the physical realm is made of particles with mass and spin, they are separate kinds of entity that interact in a specific way, and that’s it.
Any theory (whether dualist, monist, or something else) that includes both mind and matter, is constrained by two kinds of data: introspective observation of thoughts and feelings, and physical observation of the material world. So you test it against the facts, like any other theory. Facts are not always easy to ascertain, they may be ambiguous, disputed, or denied, but they are still the touchstone of truth.
Which isnt enough to exclude dualism.
There are lots of logically universes where the interaction problem doesn’t apply.
If there is complete determinism, or physical closure, then interaction implies overdetermination. But complete determinism and physical closure aren’t logical implications of just having some sort of physics.
Sure you can. I have qualia right now, and so do you.
Of course not. People knew things before Francis Bacon.
Horoscopes and dowsing rods aren’t the only alternative to science.
I’m an object to you , and a subject to me. You can doubt my qualia, but I can’t doubt your own. You would notice your own if you did not insist on looking at yourself from the outside.
Of course it looks to you like I’m a object because that’s what my brain looks like to your brain.
So far, so symmetrical.
You’re not showing that the object perspective is the only possible one. You could show that by showing that all subjective phenomena reduce to objective ones, since reduction is asymmetrical. But that involves actually solving the HP, not just writing down correlations.
Using the same criteria I apply to anything else, such as falsifiability the ability to make novel predictions. You are the one who is special-pleading for a lower bar.
How do you decide that an explanation specifically for this something (that is not currently explained from an objective viewpoint) is falsified?
If it mispredicts a quale , I suppose. Of course, I don’t know how an equation describes a quale, and I also don’t know how to build a qualiometer. But then I’m not on side that thinks the HP can be solved by ordinary scientific means.
When you find an explanation, how will you know that that was the explanation you were looking for?
If as you say you don’t know in advance how to describe qualia, that means you won’t be able to recognize that an explanation actually describes qualia, which in turn means you don’t actually know what you mean when you talk about qualia.
If as you say you don’t know in advance how to measure qualia, that means the explanation’s predictions can’t be tested against observations because we won’t know whether we are actually measuring qualia, which in turn means any explanation is a priori unfalsifiable.
You need to know in advance how to describe and measure what you’re seeking to explain in such a way that a third party can use those descriptions and measurements to falsify an explanation, otherwise the falsity of any explanation depends on your personal sensibilities; somebody else may have different sensibilities and come to an equally legitimate yet contradictory decision. Presumably, we are in a shared reality where it is an objective matter of fact that we either have qualia or we don’t; it can’t be subjectively true and false at the same time, depending on who you are.
I’m not saying qualia don’t exist, but I am saying that without objective descriptions of qualia and the ability to measure them objectively we can’t tell the difference between qualia and something that doesn’t exist.
That’s the thing, though—qualia are inherently subjective. (Another phrase for them is ‘subjective experience’.) We can’t tell the difference between qualia and something that doesn’t exist, if we limit ourselves to objective descriptions of the world.
Which is to say, the difference between qualia and nothing is easy to detect subjectively ..there’s a dramatic difference between having an operation with and without anaesthetic.
That doesn’t mean qualia can be excused and are to be considered real anyway. If we don’t limit ourselves to objective descriptions of the world then anyone can legitimately claim that ghosts exist because they think they’ve seen them, or similarly that gravity waves are transported across space by angels, or that I’m actually an attack helicopter even if I don’t look like one, or any other unfalsifiable claim, including the exact opposite claims, such as that qualia actually don’t exist. You won’t be able to disagree on any grounds except that you just don’t like it, because you sacrificed the assumptions to do so in order to support your belief in qualia.
The claim is that there is a hard problem...that qualia exist enough to need explaining,...not that they are ultimately real.
At one time, the existence of meteorites was denied because it didn’t fit with what people “knew” to be true.
There’s a problem in taking scattered subjective reports as establishing some conclusion definitively...but there’s an equal and opposite problem in rejecting reports because they don’t fit a prevailing dogma.
Those analogies don’t hold, because you’re describing claims I might make about the world outside of my subjective experience (‘ghosts are real’, ‘gravity waves are carried by angels’, etc.). You can grant that I’m the (only possible) authority on whether I’ve had a ‘seeing a ghost’ experience, or a ‘proving to my own satisfaction that angels carry gravity waves’ experience, without accepting that those experiences imply the existence of real ghosts or real angels.
I wouldn’t even ask you to go that far, because—even if we rule out the possibility that I’m deliberately lying—when I report those experiences to you I’m relying on memory. I may be mistaken about my own past experiences, and you may have legitimate reasons to think I’m mistaken about those ones. All I can say with certainty is that qualia exist, because I’m (always) having some right now.
I think this is one of those unbridgeable or at least unlikely-to-be-bridged gaps, though, because from my perspective you are telling me to sacrifice my ontology to save your epistemology. Subjective experience is at ground level for me; its existence is the one thing I know directly rather than inferring in questionable ways.
The analogies do hold, because you don’t get to do special pleading and claim ultimate authority about what’s real inside your subjective experience any more than about what’s real outside of it. Your subjective experience is part of our shared reality, just like mine.
People are mistaken all the time about what goes on inside their mind, about the validity of their memories, or about the real reasons behind their actions. So why should I take at face value your claims about the validity of your thoughts, especially when those thoughts lead to logical contradictions?
I think we’re mostly talking past each other, but I would of course agree that if my position contains or implies logical contradictions then that’s a problem. Which of my thoughts lead to which logical contradictions?
Let’s say the Hard Problem is real. That means solutions to the Easy Problem are insufficient, i.e., the usual physical explanations.
But when we speak about physics, we’re really talking about making predictions based on regularities in observations in general. Some observations we could explain by positing the force of gravity. Newton himself was not satisfied with this, because how does gravity “know” to pull on objects? Yet we were able to make very successful predictions about the motions of the planets and of objects on the surface of the Earth, so we considered those things “explained” by Newton’s theory of gravity. But then we noticed a slight discrepancy between some of these predictions and our observations, so Einstein came up with General Relativity to correct those predictions and now we consider these discrepancies “explained”, even though the reason why that particular theory works remains mysterious, e.g., why does spacetime exist? In general, when a hypothesis correctly predicts observations, we consider these observations scientifically explained.
Therefore to say that solutions to the Easy Problem are insufficient to explain qualia indicates (at least to me) one of two things.
Qualia have no regularity that we can observe. If they really didn’t have regularities that we could observe, we wouldn’t be able to observe that they exist, which contradicts the claim that they do exist. However, they do have regularities! We can predict qualia! Which means solutions to the Easy Problem are sufficient after all, which contradicts the assumption that they’re insufficient.
We’re aspiring to a kind of explanation for qualia over and above the scientific one, i.e., just predicting is not enough. You could posit any additional requirements for an explanation to qualify, but presumably we want an explanation to be true. You can’t know beforehand what’s true, so you can’t know that such additional requirements don’t disqualify the truth. There is only one thing that we know will be true however, namely that whatever we will observe in the future is what we will observe in the future. Therefore as long as the predictions of a theory don’t deviate from future observations, we can’t rule out that it’s accurately describing what’s actually going on, i.e., we can’t falsify it. In a way it’s a low bar, but it’s the best we can do. However, if a hypothesis makes predictions that are compatible with any and all observations, i.e., it’s unfalsifiable, then we can’t ever gain any information about its validity from any observations even in principle, which directly contradicts the assumption that you can find an explanation.
I’m describing how the process of explaining qualia scientifically would look.
Science isn’t based on exactly predermining an explanation before you have it.
Says who? If I can tell that qualia are indescribable or undetectable, I must know something of “qualia” means. One of the problems with the Logical Positivist theory of meaning is tha it can’t be the whole story.
I said we dont know how to measure qualia, not that some device might be measuring something else. One could test a qualiometer on oneself.
L
If you exclude qualiometers , entirely subjective approaches and a few other things, you can’t have a standard scientific explanation. You can still have a philosophical explanation, such as qualia don’t exist, qualia are non physical, etc.
But I’m not saying there is a scientific explanation of qualia
And if it is an objective fact that there is some irreducible subjectivity, it is clan objective fact that it doesn’t have a full scientific explanation.
I don’t know who is suggesting that.
But you can notice your own qualia.. anaesthesia makes a difference.
But then how you would know that a given explanation, scientific or not, explains qualia to your satisfaction? How will you be able to tell that that explanation is indeed what you were looking for before?
People have earnestly claimed the same thing about various deities. Do you believe in those? Why would your specific belief be true if theirs weren’t? Why are you so sure you’re not mistaken?
Could be, but we don’t know that.
How would you determine that it is working? That if you’re seeing something red, the qualiometer says “red”? If so, how would that show that there is something more going on than what’s explained with solutions to the Easy Problem?
It’s a logical consequence of claiming there is no objective fact about something.
Again, I agree with you that subjective experience exists, but I don’t see why solutions to the Easy Problem wouldn’t satisfy you. There’s something mysterious about subjective experience, but that’s true for everything, including atoms and electromagnetic waves and chairs and the rest of objective reality. Why does anything in the universe exist? It’s “why?” all the way down.
You keep asking the same question. If we are talking about scientific explanation: a scientific explanation of X succeeds if it is able to predict X’s, particularly novel ones, and it doesn’t mispredict X’s.
A scientific explanation of qualia is exactly that with X=qualia. It’s not a different style of explanation. It may well be impossible, but that’s another story.
As for a philosophical explanation...well, how do you know? You have some philosophical account, probably along the lines of qualia don;’t exist or aren’t meaningful, although you refuse to say which. So you have some criteria for judging that to be the best explanation.
Of course they have. To believe in Zeus youmust know what “Zeus” means, and likewise to disbelieve in Zeus.
HUh? Why are you asking?. I said “qualia” is meaningful. I also believe in qualia, but I don’t believe in qualia just because “qualia” is meaningful, I believe in qualia because I have them, as I have stated many times.
I don’t see Zeus, I do see colours. Do you find that confusing?
Whatever. I am not saying there is a scientific explanation of qualia.
That’s conflating two senses of “subjective”. Qualia are subjective in the sense that subjects can access their own qualia, but not other peoples.
They don’t explain subjective experience. The Easy Problem is everything except subjective experience.
The fact that qualia are physically mysterious can’t be predicted from physics .. if physicalism is true, they should as explicable as the Easy problem stuff. That suggests physicalism is wrong.
You say you see colors and have other subjective experiences and you call those qualia and I can accept that, but when I ask why solutions to the Easy Problem wouldn’t be sufficient you say it’s because you have subjective experiences, but that’s circular reasoning. You haven’t said why exactly solutions to the Easy Problem don’t satisfy you, which is why I keep asking what kind of explanation would satisfy you. I genuinely do not know, based on what you have said. It doesn’t have to be scientific.
But it’s not clear to me how you would judge that any explanation, scientific or not, does these things for qualia, because it seems to me that solutions to the Easy Problem do exactly this; I can already predict what kind of qualia you experience, even novel ones. If I show you a piece of red paper, you will experience the qualia of red. If I give you a drink or a drug you haven’t had before I can predict that you will have a new experience. I may not be able to predict quite exactly what those experiences will be in a given situation because I don’t have complete information, but that’s true for virtually any explanation, even when using quantum mechanics.
I suspect you may now object again and say, “but that doesn’t explain subjective experience”. Then I will object again and say, “what explanation would satisfy you?”, to which you will again say, “if it predicts qualia”, to which I will say, “but we can already predict what qualia you will have in a given situation”. Then you will again object and say, “but that doesn’t explain subjective experience”. And so on.
It looks to me like you’re holding out for something you don’t know how to recognize. True, maybe an explanation is impossible, but you don’t know that either. When some great genius finally does explain it all, how will you know he’s right? You wouldn’t want to miss out, right?
But this is the very thing in question. Can you explain to me how exactly you come to this conclusion? Having subjective experience does not in itself imply that it’s not physical.
I’m genuinely curious what you mean by this. Can you expand on this?
No it’s because the Easy Problem is , by definition ,everything except subjective experience. Its [consciousness-experience] explained [however], not [consciousness] explained [physically]. It happens to be the case that easy problems can be explained physically, but its not built into the definition.
Because I’ve read the passages where Chalmers defines the Easy/ Hard distinction.
“What makes the hard problem hard and almost unique is that it goes beyond problems about the performance of functions. To see this, note that even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience—perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report—there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? (1995, 202, emphasis in original).”
See? It’s not defined in terms of physicality!
Have you even read that passage before?
...an EP explanation isn’t it even trying to be an explanation of X for X=qualia.
Only by lowering the bar.
Of course not …you can’t even express them.
I’m a colour blind super scientist , what is this Red?
Unfortunately , that’s what “predict novel experiences” means. CF other areas of science: you don’t get Nobels for saying “I predict some novel effect I cant describe or quantify”.
The problem isnt that you don’t have infinite information, it’s that you are not reaching the base line of every other scientific theory, because “novel qualia , don’t ask me what” isn’t a meaningful prediction.
Not in a good enough way, you can’t.
Then you will again object and say, “but that doesn’t explain subjective experience”. And so on. It looks to me like you’re holding out for something you don’t know how to recognize. True, maybe an explanation is impossible, but you don’t know that either. When some great genius finally does explain it all, how will you know he’s right? You wouldn’t want to miss out, right? They don’t explain subjective experience.
I explained in the next clause, which you snipped:-
if physicalism is true, they [qualia] should as explicable as the Easy problem stuff.
The core issue is that there’s an inference gap between having subjective experience and the claim that it is non-physical. One doesn’t follow from the other. You can define subjective experience as non-physical, as Chalmer’s definition of the Hard Problem does, but that’s not justified. I can just as legitimately define subjective experience as physical.
I can understand why Chalmers finds subjective experience mysterious, but it’s not more mysterious than the existence of something physical such as gravity or the universe in general. Why is General Relativity enough for you to explain gravity, even though the reason for the existence of gravity is mysterious?
Of course there is. There is no reason there should not be. Who told you otherwise? Chalmers takes hundreds of pages to set out his argument.
Physical reductionism is compatible with the idea that the stuff at the bottom of the stack is irreducible, but consciousness appears to be a high level phenomenon.
His argument does not bridge that gap. He, like you, does not provide objective criteria for a satisfying explanation, which means by definition you do not know what the thing is that requires explanation, no matter how many words are used trying to describe it.
The discussion was about whether there is a Hard Problem , not whether Chalmers or I have solved it.
I know. Like I said, neither Chalmers nor you or anyone else have shown it plausible that subjective experience is non-physical. Moreover, you repeatedly avoid giving an objective description what you’re looking for.
Until either of the above change, there is no reason to think there is a Hard Problem.
Like.I said, I don’t have to justify non physicalism when that is not.what the discussion is about.
Also., the existence of a problem does not depend on the existence of a solution.
Agreed, but even if no possible solution can ultimately satisfy objective properties, until those properties are defined the problem itself remains undefined. Can you define these objective properties?
Weve been through this.
You don’t have a non circular argument that everything is objective
It can be an objective fact that subjectivity exists.
All I’m asking for is a way for other people to determine whether a given explanation will satisfy you. You haven’t given enough information to do that. Until that changes we can’t know that we even agree on the meaning of the Hard Problem.
The meaning of the Hard Problem doesn’t depend on satisfying me, since I didn’t invent it. If you want to find out what it is, you need to read Chalmers at some point.
This is a hypothesis, based on information in your first-person perspective. To make arguments about a third-person reality, you will always have to start with first-person facts (and not the other way around). This is why the first person is epistemologically more fundamental.
It’s possible to doubt that there is a third-person perspective (e.g. to doubt that there’s anything like being God). But our first person perspective is primary, and cannot be escaped from. Optical illusions and stage tricks aren’t very relevant to this, except in showing that even our errors require a first-person perspective to occur.
EDIT: The third-person perspective being epistemologically more/less fundamental than the first-person perspective could work as a double crux with me. Does it work on your end as well?
Would I be correct to say that you think the third-person perspective emerges from the first-person perspective? Or would you say that they’re simply separate?
If I had to choose between those two phrasings I would prefer the second one, for being the most compatible between both of our notions. My notion of “emerges from” is probably too different from yours.
The main difference seems to be that you’re a realist about the third-person perspective, whereas I’m a nominalist about it, to use your earlier terms. Maybe “agnostic” or “pragmatist” would be good descriptors too. The third-person is a useful concept for navigating the first-person world (i.e. the one that we are actually experiencing). But that it seems useful is really all that we can say about it, due to the epistemological limitations we have as human observers.
I think this is why it would be a good double crux if we used the issue of epistemological priority: I would think very differently about Hard Problem related questions if I became convinced that the 3rd person had higher priority than the 1st person perspective. Do you think this works as a double crux? Is it symmetrical for you as well in the right way?
That actually sounds more like the first phrasing to me. If you are a nominalist about the third-person perspective, then it seems that you think the third-person perspective does not actually exist and the concept of the third-person perspective is borne of the first-person perspective.
I’m not sure whether this is a good double crux, because it’s not clear enough to me what we mean by first- and third-person perspectives. It seems conceivable to me that my conception of the third-person perspective is functionally equivalent to your conception of the first-person perspective. Let me expand on that below.
If only the first-person perspective exists, then presumably you cannot be legitimately surprised, because that implies something was true outside of your first-person perspective prior to your experiencing it, unless you define that as being part of your first-person perspective, which seems contradictory to me, but functionally the same as just defining everything from the third-person perspective. The only alternative possibility that seems available is that there are no external facts, which would mean reality is actually an inconsistent series of experiences, which seems absurd; then we wouldn’t even be able to be sure of the consistency of our own reasoning, including this conversation, which defeats itself.
I’m sorry that comparing my position to yours led to some confusion: I don’t deny the reality of 3rd person facts. They probably are real, or at least it would be more surprising if they weren’t than if they were. (If not, then where would all of the apparent complexity of 1st person experience come from? It seems positing an external world is a good step in the right direction to answering this). My comparison was about which one we consider to be essential. If I had used only “pragmatist” and “agnostic” as descriptors, it would have been less confusing.
Again, I think the main difference between our positions is how we define standards of evidence. To me, it would be surprising if someone came to know 3rd person facts without using 1st person facts in the process. If the 1st person facts are false, this casts serious doubt on the 3rd person facts which were implied. At our stage of the conversation, it seems like we can start proposing far more effective theories, like that nothing exists at all, which explains just as much of the available evidence we still have if we have no 1st person facts.
You seem to believe we can get at the true third person reality directly, maybe imagining we are equivalent to it. You can imagine a robot (i.e. one of us) having its pseudo-experiences and pseudo-observations all strictly happening in the 3rd person, even engaging in scientific pursuits, without needing to introduce an idea like the 1st person. But as you said earlier, just because you can imagine something, doesn’t mean that it’s possible. You need to start with the evidence available to you, not what sounds reasonable to you. The idea of that robot is occurring in your 1st person perspective as a mental experience, which means it counts as evidence for the 1st person perspective at least as much as it counts as evidence for the 3rd. So does what it feels like to think eliminitivism is possible, and so does what it feels like to chew 5 Gum® and etc, and etc.
To me, all of this is a boring tautology. For you, it’s more like a boring absurdity, or rather it’s the truth turned upside down and pulled inside out. This is why I’m more interested in finding a double crux, something that would reveal the precise points where our thinking diverges and reconverges. There are already some parallels that we’ve both noticed, I think. I would say that you believe in the 1st person but with only one authentic observer: God, who is and who sees everything with perfect indifference, like in Spinoza’s idea. You could also reframe my notion of the 1st person to be a kind of splintered or shattered 3rd person reality, one which can never totally connect itself back together all at once. Our ways of explaining away the problems are essentially the same: we both stress that our folk theoretic concepts are untrustworthy, that we are deceiving ourselves, that we apply a theory which shapes our interpretations without us realizing it. We are also both missing quite a few teeth, from biting quite a few bullets.
There must be some precise moment where our thinking diverges. What is that point? It seems like something we need to use a double crux to find. Do you have any ideas?
I don’t think I disagree with what you’re saying here, though we may be using different terms to say the same thing.
How does what you say here inform your thoughts about the Hard Problem?