[Emma_Goldman]

I am very suspicious of the ordinary formulation of the 'hard problem of consciousness'.

What is the relevant quality being distinguished between the description or explanation of the physical processes that correlate to certain mental states and behaviours, on the one hand, and the description and explanation of the conscious first-person experience of phenomenal states, on the other? Usually when people distinguish the two in order to suggest that the first is 'easy' and the second 'hard', they beg the question and build their conclusion into their premise.

If you assume from the beginning that the first is subject to the normal canons of empirical investigation as to how the physical world operates, and the second isn't, then of course they will appear as 'easy' and 'hard'. But the obvious physicalist response is that consciousness has evolved as an efficient information-processing device in in the course of evolution and so that it is, really, understandable through the empirical investigation of the empirical world.

Too much is made of the idea of 'objective facts' and 'subjective experience'. It causes so much linguistic confusion.

[smcphile]

> Too much is made of the idea of 'objective facts' and 'subjective experience'. It causes so much linguistic confusion.

I disagree on this point. When we think of matter, in terms of physics or chemistry, we think of matter as having certain qualities, such as mass, volume, velocity, etc. However subjective experience doesn’t seem, at least on the surface, to share those qualities.

Can the existence of subjective experience be explained using only the qualities currently associated with matter, as understood in today’s physics? It doesn’t seem so.

So it seems to me that the fact that subjective experience exists is a hint that our current models are incomplete and need revising.

How exactly do they need revising? No idea whatsoever.

[raxxorrax]

I agree that the qualifier of hard and easy is arbitrary, but think there are at least as much premises build into qualifiers like free or will for that matter.

If the original comment suggests that the self is an abstraction, my will is always going to interact with other abstractions as well. To the qualifier free is only applicable on that layer.

> But the obvious physicalist response is that consciousness has evolved as an efficient information-processing device

Pretty lazy from physicists really. Maybe they cannot help themselves indeed.

But why an information-processing device and not a free actor? Why so minimal in the conclusion?

> subjective experience

Agreed if subjective facts may just be inexplicable facts.

[smcphile]

> But the obvious physicalist response is that consciousness has evolved as an efficient information-processing device in in the course of evolution and so that it is, really, understandable through the empirical investigation of the empirical world.

What I don’t understand here is how consciousness can both 1) have survival value and thus be passed on through evolution and 2) be an epiphenomenon that has no influence whatsoever on the physical world.

I suppose both statements could be true, but only if a very non-intuitive definition of consciousness is used, and that seems to me to be also begging the question.

Update: fixed a typo

[Emma_Goldman]

I don't know if that is a helpful way of constructing the issue; it certainly isn't a neutral one. If you are a physicalist (which I'm not) consciousness is not an epiphenomenon with no influence on the physical world, but a component of the physical world which takes part in and influences the physical world.

All I am arguing this that the normal formulation of the hard problem of consciousness begs the question. It is obviously the case that a converse statement could beg the question in the opposite direction. I am myself agnostic on the question of consciousness because we have so little knowledge of the issue. A lot of philosophy in this area is interesting, and fun to think about, but more often than not it is speculative and linguistic in character.

[smcphile]

> I don't know if that is a helpful way of constructing the issue; it certainly isn't a neutral one.

Reading what I wrote again, I agree that it could have been expressed better. Sorry about that.

> If you are a physicalist (which I'm not) consciousness is not an epiphenomenon with no influence on the physical world, but a component of the physical world which takes part in and influences the physical world.

Ok. If I try to look at it from the physicalist's point of view, I have trouble understanding how the subjective side of consciousness is explained. It seems to me to be just ignored or waved away.

Why couldn't the functions of consciousness in influencing the world exist without subjectively experienced consciousness? What evolutionary value does this subjectively experienced consciousness have (as seen from a physicalist point of view)?

> All I am arguing this that the normal formulation of the hard problem of consciousness begs the question.

You're not necessarily wrong, it depends on what exactly is meant by begging the question.

What you wrote was:

> What is the relevant quality being distinguished between the description or explanation of the physical processes that correlate to certain mental states and behaviours, on the one hand, and the description and explanation of the conscious first-person experience of phenomenal states, on the other? <

Intuitively it seems to me that there is a difference of quality, even if I'm incapable of describing exactly what that difference is. I can't even imagine how one would go about explaining the difference in quality to the satisfaction of everyone.

This doesn't bother me too much though, because, put perhaps too briefly, philosophy is not science and logical arguments are not mathematical logic.

However, I can also see how someone could see not answering your question as begging the question.

> I am myself agnostic on the question of consciousness because we have so little knowledge of the issue. A lot of philosophy in this area is interesting, and fun to think about, but more often than not it is speculative and linguistic in character.

My way of thinking is perhaps not so different.

I think of philosophy as being constrained by science, in that you don't want philosophy to contradict well established scientific facts, but as being otherwise freer than science to explore how the world might work. I also think of philosophy as having a role in dealing with questions that are largely outside the domain of science (beauty, ethics, etc.), but which can still sometimes be informed by science.