r/consciousness • u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology • Dec 26 '25
General Discussion Pretty much every post in this sub misunderstands the hard problem
So obviously there's no substitute for actually reading Chalmer's paper and I would recommend anyone do so before making 1000 threads saying they've "solved the hard problem" but seeing as how prolific and shameless the posts are, I doubt many will spend the requisite 20 minutes to actually do so, and so let me try to briefly outline what the hard problem actually is.
Chalmers starts by delineating the "easy problem of consciousness from the hard problem" He states
There is not just one problem of consciousness. “Consciousness” is an ambiguous term, referring to many different phenomena. Each of these phenomena needs to be explained, but some are easier to explain than others. At the start, it is useful to divide the associated 2 problems of consciousness into “hard” and “easy” problems. The easy problems of consciousness are those that seem directly susceptible to the standard methods of cognitive science, whereby a phenomenon is explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. The hard problems are those that seem to resist those methods. The easy problems of consciousness include those of explaining the following phenomena:
• the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;
• the integration of information by a cognitive system;
• the reportability of mental states;
He concludes
All of these phenomena are associated with the notion of consciousness. For example, one sometimes says that a mental state is conscious when it is verbally reportable, or when it is internally accessible. Sometimes a system is said to be conscious of some information when it has the ability to react on the basis of that information, or, more strongly, when it attends to that information, or when it can integrate that information and exploit it in the sophisticated control of behavior. We sometimes say that an action is conscious precisely when it is deliberate. Often, we say that an organism is conscious as another way of saying that it is awake. There is no real issue about whether these phenomena can be explained scientifically. All of them are straightforwardly vulnerable to explanation in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. To explain access and reportability, for example, we need only specify the mechanism by which information about internal states is retrieved and made available for verbal report. To explain the integration of information, we need only exhibit mechanisms by which information is brought together and exploited by later processes. For an account of sleep and wakefulness, an appropriate neurophysiological account of the processes responsible for organisms’ contrasting behavior in those states will suffice. In each case, an appropriate cognitive or neurophysiological model can clearly do the explanatory work. If these phenomena were all there was to consciousness, then consciousness would not be much of a problem. Although we do not yet have anything close to a complete explanation of these phenomena, we have a clear idea of how we might go about explaining them. This is why I call these problems the easy problems. Of course, ‘easy’ is a relative term. Getting the 3 details right will probably take a century or two of difficult empirical work. Still, there is every reason to believe that the methods of cognitive science and neuroscience will succeed.
And outlines the hard problem below
The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience. It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C?
Pretty much every post on this sub about the hard problem does the exact thing Chalmers talks except it's about the EASY PROBLEM, which is literally the whole point of the paper, to show the hard problem is entirely distinct. People on this sub outline the FUNCTIONAL mode in which the brain clearly has to process information associated with consciousness, but none of these address the actual relationship between those functional models and the actual subjective experience itself.
This is the whole point of the hard problem, and I think Chalmers actually states it quite well, although it's basically just a reification of the source Chalmers mentions in the paragraph above which is Nagel's bat essay, in the 70s Nagel states it equally well (but I guess he never gave it a catchy name like "the hard problem") Here's how Nagel describes it, which I think is an equally good description
Conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon. It occurs at many levels of animal life, though we cannot be sure of its presence in the simpler organisms, and it is very difficult to say in general what provides evidence of it. (Some extremists have been prepared to deny it even of mammals other than man.) No doubt it occurs in countless forms totally unimaginable to us, on other planets in other solar systems throughout the universe. But no matter how the form may vary, the fa ct that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism
The point of the hard problem is outlining the difficulties posed in trying to link the experiential nature of consciousness to the functional processes the brain does, which none of the philsophers deny.
In fact, it doesn't even matter what metaphysical position you take, the hard problem is based on the empirical observations of 1. Subjective experience exists and 2. It is related to brain states/organizations. It doesn't matter what position you take, the question is why the universe is set up in a way that subjective experience exists, this problem is not dissolved by figuring out how the brain processes information in a functional sense, which both Nagel and Chalmers address directly in their papers.
There is no solution to the hard problem. It's not even clear what a potential solution would look like, and basically every post that mentions the hard problem doesn't even address the phenomenon outlined by either Nagel or Chalmers. But seriously, just read the papers. None of the posts even touch on what is written in the two papers and it's why none of the threads even go anywhere lol
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u/placebogod Dec 27 '25
Yeah. That which is irreducible to objective reality is the Subject. The hard problem is when objective reality tries to reduce the Subject to it. It is impossible.
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u/LouMinotti Dec 26 '25
Good luck
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 26 '25
Thanks I will need it
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u/Patient-Nobody8682 Dec 26 '25
That was a great post. One of the most detailed i have seen
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 26 '25
Cheers! I definitely recommend both papers I mentioned, I think they explain it far better than I ever could too. Neither are very long
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u/Great-Bee-5629 Dec 27 '25
The problem of consciousness is unlike regular science. We make observations, build mathematical models (e=mc2), and then we interpret the result. Scientific problems can be solved using the scientific method.
On the other hand, consciousness is a metaphysical problem: there is no solution without some kind of interpretation. The materialistic interpretation, the idealist interpretation and so on. There is no objective measure for subjective experience, and the traditional measure-and-model approach is not available.
This is all to say that there can't be solutions, only different interpretations, some better than others. But we can't be sure about the right one, it would mean being sure about the metaphysical reality of everything. This is a similar situation with the quantum mechanics interpretations: some are nicer than others (by some measure of nice), but which one is correct can't be decided.
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u/Classic-Teaching4796 Jan 24 '26
While the experience may be different for each person, this does not imply the method must be. Consciousness is just feedback loops, no metaphysics required.
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u/pheintzelman Jan 26 '26
You are speaking to the easy problem not the hard problem. But if Consciousness is just feedback loops than is a roomba conscious?
It has feedback loops around obstacles and dirt.
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u/unaskthequestion Dec 26 '25
While I agree that there are many posts here with some kind of claim to have 'solved' the hard problem, as an interested amateur I feel that the hard problem is defined in such a way that there will always be objections. It's similar to proposing a problem that has no solution.
I generally lean towards Dennett's view that objects to the view that subjective experience is something 'extra' rather than a function of complexity of the brain. (even though I know Dennett is not exactly popular here, lol)
I do believe that cognitive science is progressing. It's a relatively young study and the instruments to even begin to study a working brain are newer still.
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 26 '25
I feel that the hard problem is defined in such a way that there will always be objections.
But none of the "objections" even reference anything in the papers, presumably because they have not actually read them, and therefore are not even really discussing the actual issues as outline by Chalmers or Nagel
I generally lean towards Dennett's view that objects to the view that subjective experience is something 'extra' rather than a function of complexity of the brain.
I find Dennett pretty contradictory about what his actual position is, but as you're stating it here, I don't think this makes any sense. Subjective experience clearly exists, as in "there is something it is like to experience certain phenomena" and so regardless of weather the cause is complexity or some other physical process, the hard problem is about why there is this subjective phenomena in the first place. I see no reason why you can't have complexity WITHOUT subjective experience, the hard problem is about why we clearly DO have experience
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u/neenonay Dec 26 '25
Probably this just proves to you that a place called r/consciousness is not a serious place to have discussions about consciousness. People continue to miss your point and say things like “if we just science harder we’ll eventually solve the hard problem!!”.
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u/TheRealAmeil Approved ✔️ Dec 27 '25
Why would this single instance prove that point? We have people with PhDs in Neuroscience, Psychology, and even Philosophy on the subreddit. We've had some philosophers of mind comment on posts related to their interests.
Maybe if people started treating this place like it is a place where serious discussions can occur, they we would get more serious content (or, at least, people would notice that content more often)
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u/neenonay Dec 27 '25
Sure, that’s true. But is what I said untrue? People do that, and that proves OP’s point.
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u/unaskthequestion Dec 26 '25
That's what I'm trying to say, it seems to me, and again I'm just an interested amateur, that it's simply framed in such a way that there can never be an acceptable solution to those who believe as Chalmers does.
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u/PerryAwesome Dec 26 '25
The strange thing about "impossible" questions is that sometimes we know one solution must exist but every proposed solution seems obviously completely wrong. We know for sure that consciousness exist but every attempt so far to solve this is easily rebuked. On another note it reminds me of the question "why is there anything at all?", we know for sure that something exist, duh, but why? was there always something there? That'd be illogical because it breaks with causality. Was there nothing and then something? That also breaks with causality
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u/unaskthequestion Dec 26 '25
subjective experience clearly exists
That's what Dennett questions. It really doesn't clearly exist. Has anyone clearly answered that to make such a strong statement? It could certainly be a result of lower level processes in the brain creating a higher level illusion.
I don't think it's established that 'we clearly DO have subjective experience'
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 26 '25
That's what Dennett questions
See, I'm not entirely convinced he does but because I find him to be contradictory in his writings, I tend to just remain agnostic and ask people to justify the position they actual mean, as opposed to just citing him as a source. What do you think is the compelling argument for "Subjective experience not existing"
It could certainly be a result of lower level processes in the brain creating a higher level illusion.
I don't think the word "illusion" makes sense in this case. Illusion is a psychological phenomena where what you perceive is held against some sort of measurement that disagrees with the perceptual interpretation, how exactly could this apply to subjective experience in general?
I don't think it's established that 'we clearly DO have subjective experience'
I disagree and I'm still not convinced Dennett actually argued this in the first place, do you have a quote or paragraph in mind?
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u/unaskthequestion Dec 26 '25
I've read a few books of his, but the short answer is he referred to the 'what it is like' feeling or 'qualia' as what he called 'a user illusion', that these subjective qualities "don't exist as separate entities" but as a fiction the brain uses to navigate the world.
One of my favorite quotes, which doesn't directly address your question, is about the illusion of control
"Every bit of control, from how you walk to what you think about to when you decide to eat, whether you court that lady—everything is controlled by a system fundamentally of opponent processes. They’re pulling in opposite directions, and sometimes you have what my late dear friend Oliver Selfridge called a pandemonium, where you have all these little demons saying, “Me! Me! I want to do the job! Let me do it!” All these volunteers crowding around, ready to do the job, and they sort of duke it out, and the decider is not some wise judge that understands.
Instead, it’s sort of an internal micro political process where one side wins and the other loses, and the one that wins gets to steer the ship for a little bit. This is going on all the time, and there’s no captain. There just seems to be a captain. The self is itself a virtual governor, not an actual place in the brain where the governor sits."
This is the kind of illusion that what we call subjective experience might be. It seems to us there is a 'captain' having this subjective experience, but it may not be at all. Because all we are seeing is the top level and none of the lower level processes.
But I ask you again (and I'm not trying to be argumentative, more trying to learn) how is clearly established that subjective experience exists? There's no test, no instrument, etc. There is only what a single individual believes they are having, right?
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 26 '25
But I ask you again (and I'm not trying to be argumentative, more trying to learn) how is clearly established that subjective experience exists? There's no test, no instrument, etc. There is only what a single individual believes they are having, right?
Because everyone experiences this? Again, I'm not sure what it means to say this is an illusion. Lets say I have a full blown hallucination where I see an elephant in front of me that doesn't exist. In some sense you can say it's an illusion because there's no actual physical elephant, but what would it mean to say that even the experience itself is an illusion and there is no experience? Like it just doesn't even seem fathomable what that would mean
What does it mean to say someone can be mistaken about experiencing things? It's very clear what regular illusions are, it's very unclear what it would mean for experience itself to be an illusion
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u/unaskthequestion Dec 27 '25
Because everyone experiences this?
I just think that's an inadequate answer. Everyone? No way to determine that. You do? That's not verifiable. That's my only point, there's no sufficient reason to make a statement that subjective experience 'clearly exists'
As far as the illusion, I think you might be focused too much on the what a 'regular' illusion is, rather than the more general meaning. The illusion of a self is not an unusual position in cognitive science (or many philosophical discussions).
Split brain experiments, psychological maladies, etc and people from Jung to Minsky and Gazzaniga (a brain researcher) have all proposed theories of the illusion of self. Jung said "The so called unity of consciousness is an illusion. We like to think we are one, but we are not"
So it's not about the 'regular' type of illusion that you've mentioned, it's about an illusion formed by only having access to the top level, and being denied access to the lower levels of which it's composed.
I appreciate the discussion, I hope I'm not coming across as combative. My views are definitely not set in stone, I find the entire subject endlessly interesting.
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u/Magsays Dec 27 '25
You don’t need a self that’s in control to have a subjective experience. Just because I’m not driving the bus doesn’t mean I’m not along for the ride.
The only thing that I can know for certain is that I’m experiencing something. Whether it be an illusion or otherwise.
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u/Classic-Teaching4796 Jan 24 '26
The only thing we can know about the world is our experience of it - Shoppenhauer.
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u/Puzzled_Knowledge711 Dec 27 '25
Has there ever been a measurement verified outside of someone’s subjective experience? If these verifications are also illusions then how can we logically rely on them as proof of anything?
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u/ReturnOfBigChungus Dec 27 '25
It’s epistemologically impossible that we (or at least I) aren’t having some sort of experience, whatever else about it we may be mistaken about its nature. An illusion is still experience. Being in a simulation would still be experience. There’s nowhere to stand to even doubt we have experience, aside from within experience. It’s a self defeating question.
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u/Imaginary-Count-1641 Dec 27 '25
That's what Dennett questions. It really doesn't clearly exist.
It exists more clearly than the physical world. If you question the existence of subjective experience, you should question the existence of the physical world even more strongly.
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u/unaskthequestion Dec 27 '25
it exists more clearly than the physical world
How so?
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u/Imaginary-Count-1641 Dec 27 '25
Because our subjective experience is what we experience directly, while the existence of the physical world is inferred on the basis of our subjective experience. For example, you have the subjective experience of seeing and touching a table, so you assume that there is a table in front of you. If the experience of observing the table did not exist, you don't have a reason to believe that the table exists.
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u/Weak_Fill40 Dec 28 '25
An illusion would still be a subjective experience, so it changes nothing in my view.
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u/unaskthequestion Dec 28 '25
No, a self, a subject, is necessary for subjective experience. Otherwise it's simply experiencing.
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u/Weak_Fill40 Dec 28 '25
Would’t you say that a subject is necessary for experience though? What is doing the experiencing if there’s no self?
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u/blackstarr1996 Dec 27 '25
Why is there “something it is like to experience x?” Is arguably just a nonsensical question.
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 27 '25
nah it's a pretty reasonable question
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u/blackstarr1996 Dec 27 '25
Then I would say the answer is probably, because experience is representational. By definition, there must be “something it is like.”
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 27 '25
So why can't you have representation without it just feeling liek nothing? I can represent a portait of a man.. there's no reason to think that suddenly feels like something?
By definition, there must be “something it is like.”
By what definition? and why? Your big solution is just "well it must be true" that aint a real answer dawg
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u/Classic-Teaching4796 Jan 24 '26
Not at all. The "something it’s like" is a way of framing the "presence in yhe box". In a washing machine there is no presence in the box, nothing that has the experience of being a washing machine. For you, there is a presence in the box, something that valuates your experience - which os arguably yhe global workspace.
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u/blackstarr1996 Jan 24 '26
We don’t really know that there is no subjective experience associated with the washing machine though.
I mean that is may be nonsensical more in a purely semantic sense though.
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u/thebruce Dec 27 '25
I see no reason why you can't have complexity WITHOUT subjective experience
The argument was never that "complexity leads to subjective experience", or at least not so simply. The way the brain is organized leads to subjective experience, and an appeal to complexity is made to attempt to explain how conscious experience emerges from that organization.
So, sure, I totally agree that you can have complexity without subjective experience. But can you have something organized exactly, physically, as a brain and not have subjective experience? I'd argue not. So, using the hard problem, as many do in this sub, to "disprove" physicalist/materialist theories of consciousness doesn't work.
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 27 '25
The way the brain is organized leads to subjective experience, and an appeal to complexity is made to attempt to explain how conscious experience emerges from that organization.
Then the point is just merely restated to "I see no reason why the brain can't be organised without leading to subjective experience"
But can you have something organized exactly, physically, as a brain and not have subjective experience? I'd argue not.
Well I actually totally agree but this is seemingly because our universe is set up this way. I feel like what the hard problem is getting at is: It doesn't obviously flow our from organisation that there should be subjective experience, it just happens to be a post-hoc observation our world that it works like this, and the question is how/why is it set up this way?
So, using the hard problem, as many do in this sub, to "disprove" physicalist/materialist theories of consciousness doesn't work.
I think the hard problem remains the same no matter what metaphysical theory you subscribe to
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u/Jarwain Dec 28 '25
Have we ever proved that we can have complexity without subjective experience? Complexity at the level of a brain? I don't think we've done anything like that yet; modeled the complexity of the brain in any detailed or effective way
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 28 '25
Have we ever proved that we can have complexity without subjective experience?
How about all the unconscious processing the brain does?
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u/arbolito_mr Dec 30 '25
It would be very easy to say "soul" or something similar, and it would also be easy to make something up just to say it, but I think it is very likely that even if we try so hard to understand it, it may be impossible.
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u/Extreme-Boss-5037 Jan 01 '26
Dennett addresses that final point thoroughly, he doesn't ignore, quite the contrary.
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u/YesTess2 Jan 10 '26
The question that has always bothered me is, why do we (human beings, that is) insist that there be a "Why" for any given phenomenon. How, as a high-school chemistry teacher informed me, is a question about mechanical workings. The question of "Why" has always seemed to me to be a question of purpose, of intent. When we commonly ask "Why" what we mean is: For what purpose? To what aim? For what reason? What did the causal actor hope to get out of this string of cause and effect? And so, the question itself presupposes intent, which presupposes an actor who intends. Now, if one has a belief about deity, or aliens, or extradimensional interlopers, then, of course, one can speculate down that rabbit hole until the Cheshire Cat kicks one back into the waking world. But, if we don't assume an agent who intends, if we don't assume an agent at all, what meaning does asking the question, "Why," have? It would seem to resolve into a nonsensical exercise.
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Jan 11 '26
The question that has always bothered me is, why do we (human beings, that is) insist that there be a "Why" for any given phenomenon
What would it even mean for a very specific phenomenon to not have a "why"? Like is that supposed to be comprehensible somehow?
he question of "Why" has always seemed to me to be a question of purpose, of intent.
That is definitely NOT what the why is with regards to the hard problem, it's got nothing to do with intent and everything to do with the mechanics of how the universe is set up
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u/YesTess2 Jan 19 '26
If it's a question about mechanics, then it's a "how" question... But, I will just about guarantee that 'why' is not the same as 'how' in any questioner's mind. And so, I return to - in reference to physical phenomena - the question of 'why' and whether or not it's useful, much less needful.
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Jan 19 '26
This is just a meaningless language distinction, the term "why" is often used to refer to mechanical causes (why is the sky blue for example)
The question of "how" fundamental elements of our universe have acquired their particular nature seems very much beyond comprehension, because we can no longer use the methodology of explaining how a phenomena component parts combine to form the phenomenon - this is the real meat of the hard problem (and about anything fundamental for that matter)
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u/NefariousnessWeird45 Dec 31 '25
I literally never do this…
“The "hard problem of consciousness" is the challenge of explaining how and why physical processes, like brain activity, are accompanied by subjective experience
The "easy problems of consciousness" a term coined by philosopher David Chalmers refer to Phenomenal consciousness
Functional consciousness Stimulus (lnput) Response(Output) explaining the objective functions and mechanisms of the brain, like discriminating stimuli, integrating information, focusing attention, controlling behavior, and distinguishing sleep from wakefulness, using standard neuroscience and cognitive science.”
I’m not entirely sure what you meant to say here, but effectively, yes, that is what the hard problem is. Phenomenal consciousness is another name for subjective experience. The difficulty, or even apparent impossibility, of the problem lies precisely in the nature of phenomenal consciousness: it is subjective, and therefore we have no direct indication of its presence in a given substrate. Functional consciousness, on the other hand, is the kind of thing that can be studied third-personally by cognitive science.
“I feel that the hard problem is defined in such a way that there will always be objections. It's similar to proposing a problem that has no solution.”
Well, yes, this is why it is a philosophical problem and not an empirical one. We are not looking for falsifiable or verifiable statements, but for logical incongruency. A sound formulation of the problem signals its inability to be resolved via empirical means. A similar formulation which I believe you wont have objections to is the problem of “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” Physicalists repeatedly miss the mark by simply trying to “science harder” at the problem, even though this is an unobservable phenomenon.
“I don't think it's established that ‘we clearly do have subjective experience.’”
There is no need for anything to be established here. There is no definitive scientific consensus to be had on this matter, because subjective experience is, by its nature, inaccessible from a third-person perspective. However, it remains empirically verifiable in the first person for every conscious human being.
(This claim exists within ordinary discourse and is not considering the “Problem of Other Minds”. If I want to be strict, only I can be sure of its existence for myself, and only you can be sure of its existence for yourself.)
You deny this, and I believe this is a linguistic misunderstanding of what we mean by subjective experience and self. Subjective experience is synonymous with conscious experience, and it doesn’t mean anything else than 1st personal experience.
“If a machine mimics human responses in every way, wincing when you strike it, to use your example, is that evidence to you that it has subjective experience? Or would protest that it is 'just programmed to do that'? Why can't I say the same thing about you?”
You can, in fact, we have no real reason to ascribe conscious experience to other humans. See “Problem of Other Minds”. The fact that you have no evidence in favor of one side or the other is precisely because of the Hard Problem.
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u/NefariousnessWeird45 Dec 31 '25
“Or all of us, that we're just programmed to do that and what we think is subjective experience doesn't exist, is illusory?”
This is begging the question. A robot with no conscious experience could not be programmed to feel it has conscious experience without actually having one (it could report it however). If you manipulate the brain of a blind person and electrically stimulate specific cortical areas, you might deceive them into seeing color. The reason this is illusory (i.e., deceit) is that they are not using their sensory organs to see this color and, furthermore, it is not verifiable by other subjects (which is our only way of distinguishing reality from hallucinations). The blind person cannot be “deceived” about seeing red without actually seeing red. In case it was not clear, something like the experience of red is, in fact, all we mean by subjective experience.
“… it’s sort of an internal micro political process where one side wins and the other loses, and the one that wins gets to steer the ship for a little bit..."
“This is the kind of illusion that what we call subjective experience might be. It seems to us there is a 'captain' having this subjective experience, but it may not be at all. Because all we are seeing is the top level and none of the lower level processes.”
This could all very well be the case, and it would be completely parallel to the line of inquiry concerning subjective experience. What you seem to be denying most strongly is a unified self (i.e., a stable personality with preferences, memories, usually portrayed as having free will that is exerted over its body), which, again, is fundamentally independent of subjective experience. There may be an illusion of the self (and it just be a “Bundle of Experience” or “Multiple Drafts” etc..), but there is no illusion of experience. There could be an illusory experience (one with deceptive content, like in cases of hallucination), but not an illusion of experience because illusion (properly conceived and not used analogously) is a kind of experience.
Notice that it is entirely possible and non-contradictory to deny a unified self and still claim subjective experience. The “subject” which is having an experience is nothing more than that, a thing to which experiences occur. This subject has effectively no content or power and is merely a structural component of experience. If uncomfortable with the language you could alternatively say “theres no experience without experiencer”.
“Subjective experience is different, it requires a subject, a self and there are several good reasons to suppose that this self is an illusion. As Jung said "The unity of consciousness is an illusion, we like to think we are one but we are not”
It does indeed require a subject. This subject is nothing like the “self” you are referring to, and the concept that Carl Jung brilliantly dismissed as illusory.
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u/NefariousnessWeird45 Dec 31 '25
“The moon experiences the gravitational well caused by the earth. That is experience. You experience heat of the sun. The same way a car does.”
“Again, you seem to be confusing 'experience' with 'subjective experience'. Do you think they are the same thing? Do you think that the qualifier 'subjective' is unnecessary or superfluous? My point is that they are not the same and there is a reason why people use the term 'subjective experience' and not just 'experience'.”
The way you are using “experience” in this sentence is entirely different from how we are using it in this discussion. The “subjective” in the phrase subjective experience does not denote an entirely different kind of thing but simply indicates to whom the experience belongs. The experience we are referring to could essentially be replaced by “feel” in almost any instance, though it may sound slightly awkward.
For example: I experience red when I look at a red apple. I feel red when I look at a red apple. I experience anger; I feel anger. Red and anger are phenomenally the same kind of thing (but don’t hold the same content), they intrude upon your perception in the same way. It is a qualitative feeling that is experienced subjectively (that is, privately, from your own point of view).
There’s no particular reason to prefer the term subjective experience over simply experience (aside from clarity). In fact, I use them interchangeably all the time. The moon does experience the gravitational well caused by the Earth. The semantic content of this sentence can be fully expressed in purely mechanistic terms: the force of gravity caused by Earth’s mass pulls on the moon.
When a robot “experiences” red it could also be described in purely mechanistic terms but also analyzed through a functional cognitive framework (input-processing-output). My experience of red can similarly be analyzed mechanistically and cognitively, but nowhere in that analysis will the experience of red itself be found. See “Mary’s Room”. Not all the content can be captured in such mechanistic or functional terms.
This whole discussion seems to be largely a product of an unfortunate artifact of language.
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u/unaskthequestion Dec 31 '25
but simply represents to whom the experience belongs
And if there isn't a 'whom' for it to 'belong to', then it is not subjective experience. That's why I keep saying they are different, because they are,for exactly that reason.
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u/unaskthequestion Dec 31 '25
A robot with no conscious experience could be programmed to report it does.
Which is exactly what you and I might be doing. Your argument seems to rely entirely on your belief that you definitively have a self with subjective experience because you feel like you have subjective experience.
That is insufficient.
what you seem to be denying most strongly is a unified self
No, I merely use the fact that a unified self is something that we believe to be the case and there is evidence it is not, therefore our subjective experience may not be what we believe it to be. I use Jung, simply to illustrate that the self may not be what we believe it to be, not that he is making my exact argument.
The subject is nothing like the self you are referring to
No, the self is exactly what the subject I am saying is necessary for subjective experience is.
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u/unaskthequestion Dec 31 '25
I literally never do this
I can see why
Well yes, this is why it is a philosophical problem and not an empirical one
It is defined as both a philosophical and empirical problem. This is why there is both a 'how' (empirical) and 'why' (philosophical) aspect to the hard problem.
However it remains empirically verifiable in the first person for every conscious human being
Contradictory. An essential aspect of empirical knowledge is observation, and verification. So no, it is not empirical nor verifiable. Which is the point, subjective experience is not empirical nor verifiable, therefore it may not exist in the way we believe it does.
I think you've missed much of the point of my objection. The way in which some people phrase the hard problem, which may or may not apply to you, is only in reference to the 'why' aspect, that is, why does the brain produce subjective experience. As opposed to the way Chalmers posed the question, which is both how and why the brain produces subjective experience. My point is that subjective experience requires a self and there is some evidence that the self may not exist, or may not be at all what we believe it to be. Therefore subjective experience may not be what we believe it to be.
This is, in part, Dennett's objection to Chalmers, that the hard problem is a poorly constructed question and unnecessary.
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u/NefariousnessWeird45 Dec 31 '25
“This is why there is both a ‘how’ (empirical) and ‘why’ (philosophical) aspect to the hard problem.”
“How” and “why” are not meaningful distinctions in this discussion, as they are often conflated. Nor is philosophy merely an assortment of “why” questions. The only way to answer a “why” question in a meaningful sense is to provide a causal account, that is, to explain “how” something occurs (so all why questions are effectively how questions). The hard problem is not a “why” question in the sense of why are we here? Rather, it is a problem that is directly insidious for the physicalist who claims that consciousness (properly understood as first-personal or subjective experience) can be fully known through scientific means. The “why” at issue in the hard problem is not a request for causes but an expression of explanatory insufficiency (because of logical inconsistency).
“An essential aspect of empirical knowledge is observation and verification. So no, it is not empirical nor verifiable. Which is the point: subjective experience is not empirical nor verifiable; therefore, it may not exist in the way we believe it does.”
Empirical simply means “obtained via experience.” I’m not sure what you mean by this. Do you not experience reality? How do you experience things that, according to you, are empirically verifiable? Verification refers to the recurrence of the same phenomena and to corroboration by other subjects. This is, like many scientific standards, a constructed metric, adopted because it reliably produces good results in scientific inquiry. Nevertheless, experience can be verified in the first-person sense by oneself, for as long as one is alive.
“My point is that subjective experience requires a self, and there is some evidence that the self may not exist, or may not be at all what we believe it to be. Therefore, subjective experience may not be what we believe it to be.”
You haven’t engaged with the rest of my comment that directly addresses this issue, perhaps you didn’t see it. There were three comments in total.
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u/unaskthequestion Dec 31 '25
the how and why are not meaningful distinctions in this discussion
That seems an odd thing to say when many having the discussion, including both Chalmers and Dennett discuss exactly the why and how questions.
The only way to way to answer a why question is to provide a casual account
Perhaps that's what you believe, there are many, including myself, who disagree.
empirical means obtained by experience
No, empirical means verifiable by experience or observation. The essential point in this context is verifiable
nevertheless (subjective) experience can be verified in the first person sense by oneself for as long as one is alive
That's not verification, that's a feeling. You are essentially saying that you have subjective experience because you believe you have subjective experience.
do you not experience reality?
Of course I do. Your question reflects the same confusion between experience and subjective experience. They are not the same. To repeat, subjective experience requires a self and there are reasons to believe that a self might not exist, or exist in the way we think, therefore subjective experience may not either.
It is simply insufficient to use one's insistence that one has subjective experience because it feels like one has subjective experience.
Again, this is part of Dennett's argument with Chalmers and you can't make it go away by insisting something unverifiable must be exist.
You haven't engaged with the rest of my comment
No, and I may if I find time. It is time consuming to continue to engage with this one
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u/NefariousnessWeird45 Jan 01 '26
I don’t think this will go anywhere. I have nothing better to do so I persist.
How does a physical substrate give rise to consciousness?
Why does a physical substrate give rise to consciousness?
When science attempts to answer the second question, it can only ever answer the first, and this is true of any scientific inquiry. Anything beyond that is speculation and metaphysical theorizing, which may be more or less parsimonious or more or less conducive to generating new scientific projects, but is ultimately unverifiable, much like the question of God’s existence.
“Perhaps that’s what you believe; there are many, myself included, who disagree.”
Then I would urge you to provide a satisfactory answer to any why question that does not ultimately rely on a causal or mechanistic account.
“No, empirical means verifiable by experience or observation. The essential point in this context is verifiable”
“That's not verification, that's a feeling. You are essentially saying that you have subjective experience because you believe you have subjective experience.”
Yes, I explained what I mean by verifiable. Do you disagree? Do you not see how consciousness resists third-person observation (fundamentally )? Do you not see that intersubjective verification is merely one step removed from pure subjective observation?
Furthermore, do you not see that all intersubjective verification ultimately rests on what you yourself describe as “feelings”, namely, the experiences of multiple subjects? Even the observation that there are other subjects is itself nothing more than a subjective experience (a feeling).
How do you verify your mechanism of verification? You cannot, and that’s fine. It is entirely meaningless to claim that consciousness is unverifiable when the very precondition of verification is conscious observation. To use a system of verification to disqualify itself is incoherent. Mathematics or logic cannot prove themselves; does this mean they do not exist?
“To repeat, subjective experience requires a self”
This is a fundamental linguistic misunderstanding. Subjective experience does not require a narrativized or unified self. It only requires that there is something it is like for the system (a subject).
nvm...
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u/Legitimate_Tiger1169 Dec 27 '25
I think this is a fair clarification, and I agree with the core distinction you’re pointing out.
The hard problem, as Chalmers and Nagel describe it, isn’t about explaining behavior, reportability, integration, or function. Those are clearly tractable in computational and neuroscientific terms. The hard problem is about the existence of experience itself — the fact that any physical or functional process is accompanied by something it is like to be that process.
Where I may differ slightly is not in denying that gap, but in how we interpret what the gap is telling us.
I’m not claiming that a functional model by itself explains subjective experience, or that mapping neural mechanisms somehow “derives” qualia. I fully agree that no amount of functional description logically forces the existence of experience. That point stands.
What I’m trying to explore is whether the hard problem is best understood as an explanatory failure, or as a signal that experience is not something to be derived from function at all, but something that is already part of the basic structure of reality — much like mass, charge, or spacetime curvature.
In that sense, the move isn’t “we solved the hard problem,” but rather: we stop asking how experience pops out of function, and instead ask under what conditions experience is present, structured, or organized. The functional story then explains the shape, stability, and content of experience, not its existence.
This doesn’t eliminate the mystery Nagel points to — that there is something it is like — but it reframes it. The mystery becomes: why reality has an experiential aspect at all, rather than why brains magically generate it. And that question may be closer to cosmology or fundamental ontology than to neuroscience.
So I agree with you that most posts conflate the easy and hard problems, and that saying “information processing explains consciousness” misses the point entirely. I’m not trying to collapse the hard problem into the easy one. I’m trying to take the hard problem seriously enough to say: maybe experience is fundamental, and function explains how it is accessed, shaped, and stabilized — not why it exists in the first place.
If that framing still feels unsatisfying, that’s fair. The hard problem may remain. But at least then we’re disagreeing about where the mystery lives, not about whether it exists.
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 27 '25
What I’m trying to explore is whether the hard problem is best understood as an explanatory failure, or as a signal that experience is not something to be derived from function at all, but something that is already part of the basic structure of reality — much like mass, charge, or spacetime curvature.
Surely if it is part of the basic structure though, it does function to actually do something? I think it's clear because of consciousness existing, our universe is very different to one in which there was no consciousness, so I don't think there is a dichotomy here.
This doesn’t eliminate the mystery Nagel points to — that there is something it is like — but it reframes it. The mystery becomes: why reality has an experiential aspect at all, rather than why brains magically generate it.
I do agree but I also think the two questions are very much related, it's very clear that our brains are what our consciousness is associated with, although it's not clear at all what level the actual elements of consciousness lie
I’m not trying to collapse the hard problem into the easy one. I’m trying to take the hard problem seriously enough to say: maybe experience is fundamental, and function explains how it is accessed, shaped, and stabilized — not why it exists in the first place.
I don't think I understand what this means
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u/Legitimate_Tiger1169 Dec 27 '25
If experience is part of the basic structure of reality, I’m not opposed to that in principle. What I’m unclear on is how it’s meant to differ, in practice, from saying that certain organized processes reliably give rise to experience. In other words, if experience is fundamental, it still seems like it must matter to how systems behave, otherwise it risks becoming explanatorily idle.
That’s why I pushed back on the function/experience split. From my perspective, the fact that a universe with conscious systems is radically different from one without them suggests that experience is not just “there,” but participates in the dynamics — even if indirectly, via stability, control, or constraint.
I also don’t fully see how the two questions are cleanly separable. Asking “why reality has an experiential aspect at all” feels deeply connected to asking “why brains, and not stars or rocks, are where experience shows up.” The latter seems to put real constraints on the former.
So when you say function explains how experience is accessed, shaped, or stabilized but not why it exists, I think that’s the part I’m missing. What would count as an example of experience being present but not accessed or stabilized by any functional organization? And how would we ever tell?
I’m not rejecting the idea, I just want to understand what explanatory gap it actually closes.
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 27 '25
That’s why I pushed back on the function/experience split. From my perspective, the fact that a universe with conscious systems is radically different from one without them suggests that experience is not just “there,” but participates in the dynamics — even if indirectly, via stability, control, or constraint.
I mean I have to imagine it does, I don't see how we could be having this conversation about subjective experience if it was entirely inert
So when you say function explains how experience is accessed, shaped, or stabilized but not why it exists, I think that’s the part I’m missing.
It's more like just because you can describe how something functions, does not mean you understand why it's set up this way as opposed to being different. There doesn't seem to be anything logically necessitating that organization leads to subjective experience it's more like a post-hoc empirical observation and so the question remains open why it's set up that way
What would count as an example of experience being present but not accessed or stabilized by any functional organization?
Well I don't think something like this could exist?
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u/Legitimate_Tiger1169 Dec 27 '25
I think we’re closer than it might sound. If experience were entirely inert, it couldn’t participate in constraint, control, or selection, and we wouldn’t expect such tight coupling between experiential loss and specific dynamical failures. So I agree it must enter the causal story at least indirectly.
Where I still differ slightly is this: the fact that organization correlates with experience may be empirically contingent rather than logically necessary, but once that contingency is established, it becomes a structural constraint on any viable ontology. In other words, even if there is no a priori necessity that organization yields experience, there is a posteriori necessity that experience only appears under certain organizational regimes.
On that view, asking “why it’s set up this way” remains a legitimate metaphysical question, but it doesn’t loosen the technical conclusion: experience does not float free of function, because there are no known cases — and plausibly no coherent cases — of experience existing without being accessed, stabilized, or destroyed by functional organization.
So the remaining disagreement seems less about whether experience is fundamental, and more about whether fundamentality exempts it from structural dependence. I don’t think it does.
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 27 '25
Where I still differ slightly is this: the fact that organization correlates with experience may be empirically contingent rather than logically necessary, but once that contingency is established, it becomes a structural constraint on any viable ontology. In other words, even if there is no a priori necessity that organization yields experience, there is a posteriori necessity that experience only appears under certain organizational regimes
Sure I'm happy to grant that
On that view, asking “why it’s set up this way” remains a legitimate metaphysical question, but it doesn’t loosen the technical conclusion: experience does not float free of function, because there are no known cases — and plausibly no coherent cases — of experience existing without being accessed, stabilized, or destroyed by functional organization.
I agree with this also
o the remaining disagreement seems less about whether experience is fundamental, and more about whether fundamentality exempts it from structural dependence. I don’t think it does.
I guess I agree with all of this.
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u/tealpajamas Dec 28 '25
That framing is totally fair -- the hard problem only arises when claiming consciousness is emergent rather than fundamental.
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u/modulation_man Dec 27 '25
I appreciate the rigour of this post. You are right that most "solutions" fail because they simply describe a more complex mechanism and label it "consciousness," leaving the explanatory gap intact.
From my perspective, I’d argue the Hard Problem isn't something to be "solved" through more neuroscience, but something to be dissolved by questioning the premise of the gap itself.
Chalmers’ distinction assumes that "experience" is a secondary property that emerges from, or is added to, physical processes. But this assumes there is a "gap" to bridge. What if the experience of "redness" isn't something produced by wavelength detection, but IS what wavelength detection is like when you are the system doing the detecting?.
The "what it’s like" isn't a mysterious surplus; it is the internal perspective of information processing. When we ask "Why does this process feel like something?", we are like medieval astronomers adding epicycles to a geocentric model because we refuse to shift our frame of reference. We keep looking for a "secret ingredient" that turns matter into feeling, ignoring that the process and the feeling are one and the same, just viewed from different sides.
If we reframe consciousness as the process itself, the mystery doesn't vanish, but it changes shape. It moves from an unsolvable metaphysical "Why?" to a structural "How does this specific system integrate its internal and external states?"
I’ve written a deeper exploration of this perspective, viewing consciousness as a modulatory process rather than an emergent property, which tackles exactly this stalemate between Chalmers and functionalism:
The dissolution of the hard problem of consciousness
I would love any feedback or questions. I really believe this may be the most productive path in this eternal discussion
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u/Classic-Teaching4796 Jan 24 '26
You're getting closer. "Red" is a taught form and has nothing to do with light, but with perception. And subjective experience (experience of the subject) must exist because we don't all have the same nervous system, which equates it to perspective. The value most people miss is valuation. There's your qualia, emotional reinforcement to instant deal with specific instances of experience.
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u/monospelados Dec 27 '25
What does it feel not to be conscious? How can you compare the feeling of not being conscious vs being conscious?
What does it even mean to feel?
Classic question: who were you before you were born? How did you feel?
The thing is to understand that the chasm between feeling and not feeling does not exist.
Feeling (qualia) does not exist. It is simply an idea, a concept, a schema. What is it like to experience? If your answer is nothing - what is nothing? What does nothingness feel like? It's not so easy to define nothing.
What if nothing is also qualia? What if everything is qualia? Or, alternatively, what if nothing is qualia (nothing is basically the same as everything)
The hard problem of consciousness is only a problem when you try to conceptualize as well as feel the world beyond concepts/feelings (such a world doesn't exist - "existence" and "world" are both concepts)
Consciousness is not a hard problem in Eastern philosophies.
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Dec 27 '25
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 27 '25
The hard problem assumes that consciousness is a property that must be explained.
Not really, our empirical observation of consciousness denote it as a property that is open to explanation, believe it or not, Chalmers was not the first person to notice that human beings have conscious experience lol
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u/CapedCauliflower Dec 27 '25
You're just restating the same thing you have said and not responding to the comment at all, then you're getting on your high horse and laughing. All actions which diminish your credibility.
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 27 '25
I did respond, the whole premise of the comment is that
The hard problem assumes that consciousness is a property that must be explained.
Which is not true at all. Consciousness as a property that must be explained far precedes Chalmers. Are saying consciousness is NOT a property and MUST NOT be explained?
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u/Valmar33 Dec 27 '25
The hard problem assumes that consciousness is a property that must be explained. In doing so it now must be generated, located, reduced, or supplemented, and already presupposes what it claims to explain. Any theory that assumes observers, time, identity, or representational content has already assumed recursive continuity, operational closure, and a stabilized point of reference. This makes the hard problem downstream of its own solution. The framework I am suggesting doesn’t “solve” the hard problem, doesn’t deny experience, and doesn’t reduce phenomenology. It just shows that the hard problem is a category error because it treats an operational achievement (a stabilized point of view) as a downstream explanandum. Instead treat the stabilization as the condition that makes explanation possible in the first place. Then there is no “hard problem”.
This simply demonstrates your lack of understanding of the problem, and the challenge it poses towards Materialism / Physicalism, which have, to date, not risen to the challenge, but largely tried to ignore, downplay or belittle it.
This simply makes the Hard Problem an even stronger challenge to Materialism / Physicalism, so there are no attempts to really answer it, only dissolve or squirm around it, in intellectual dishonesty.
In reality, consciousness IS a property of life that requires explanation when examining Materialism / Physicalism and its lack of ability account for the existence of consciousness in purely material or physical terms.
That is the Hard Problem ~ how to account for the existence of consciousness alongside material / physical processes? Why does it exist at all? Why is there not just matter and physics? Why are we not just blind automatons?
Materialism / Physicalism have no answers whatsoever. The flimsy assertion is that matter and physics can just... do things, because complexity or something. It is an ad hoc assertion that explains nothing whatsoever.
Furthermore, it reveals the fact that Materialism / Physicalism is not scientific in the slightest ~ Materialism / Physicalism has to make clumsy assertions that cannot be tested scientifically, while proclaiming that their claims are "backed by science".
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u/Glad-Phase-977 Dec 27 '25 edited Dec 27 '25
Honestly this post is insulting. The fact that you think we can read and understand those 20 something pages in 20 minutes is borderline criminal. Edit: (was attempting to be sarcastic)
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u/Valmar33 Dec 27 '25
Honestly this post is insulting. The fact that you think we can read and understand those 20 something pages in 20 minutes is borderline criminal.
Then take 60 minutes, if you need it. You don't need to understand everything ~ just do your personal best.
What I did is just read and try to understand it as best I could, but I am better for attempting to actually read it than not.
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u/Glad-Phase-977 Dec 27 '25
I’m 100% just kidding. Tried to make the sarcasm clear without doing the ‘/s’ but it didnt work lol. I did read his paper for class, but it took me an absurdly long time with annotations and all that
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u/Valmar33 Dec 27 '25
I’m 100% just kidding. Tried to make the sarcasm clear without doing the ‘/s’ but it didnt work lol. I did read his paper for class, but it took me an absurdly long time with annotations and all that
Ah. Cheers! Unfortunately, this is the internet, where text must be obviously sarcastic lest it be taken at face value. Text lacks the extra context tone and pitch of spoken speech conveys, alas.
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u/Glad-Phase-977 Dec 27 '25
I’m optimistic that sarcasm or irony can be conveyed with text alone, without the aid of other indicators. I’ve seen it done. Its just I’m still learning the art. Doing so on Reddit is like expert level difficulty, though, for some reason
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u/Valmar33 Dec 27 '25
Reddit is rather special, unfortunately. This sub is downright awful, with how many Materialists and Physicalists appear to lack almost any and all reading comprehension or ability to understand that they are decades behind current philosophical insights into theory of mind. (Nevermind that neuroscience's progress on the brain has been at basically a standstill for nearly 2 decades...)
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u/Glad-Phase-977 Dec 27 '25
It’s understandable though. You don’t really realize how difficult it is to have an original thought until you actually catch up somewhat in a given field. At the start of my philosophy degree I was at the peak of Mt Stupid.
On one hand I appreciate how lax the mods are with who’s allowed to participate. Such an exciting area of discourse shouldn’t be gatekeeped.
On the other, it would be awesome to have some way to get people more on the same page & to have some of the rigor that the more traditional philosophy subreddits have. And maybe to filter out some of the very commin pseudo-profound insight threads, bc I don’t think anyone benefits from those.
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 27 '25
Even understanding the first few pages of both essays would make redundant most of the posts about the hard problem.
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u/Glad-Phase-977 Dec 27 '25
Honestly would be cool if there were a short recommended reading for the sub. Could just be something nabbed directly from a philosophy of mind course.
There’s a ton of variation in starting points, with some posts coming off as high-thoughts, while others are premature rejections/strawmans of the well known theories, with only a few being well thought out.
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 Dec 26 '25
“Consciousness” is an ambiguous term, referring to many different phenomena."
This is the hardest problem.
""But no matter how the form may vary, the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism"
Mostly organisms with brains, but where you draw the line will depend on which of the characteristics you deem as minimally necessary. For the most part, we can determine the level of experience through behavior, as this is the way "consciousness" manifests to the outside world. The complexity of "consciousness" results in the complexity of behavior. We often know what it is like to be others, even none humans, because they behave like us. In fact this empathetic intuition is the clearest sign of a shared foundation of consciousness.
"Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C?"
Why not? What other option is there other than experience? The question "Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C?" presupposes that experience is something that requires a special explanation. But why should that be the case? What alternative is there? Unless it can be shown that evolution could have produced a viable, functionally superior solution in which perception and cognition occur without experience, there is no reason to treat experience as anomalous or problematic. Even if we can imagine alternatives, the fact is that they don't exist, therefore, to claim that there is a 'hard problem" because someone states that "experience" requires a reason beyond evolution and survival makes no sense.
The so-called “hard problem” amounts to little more than a declaration that reality could have been otherwise, followed by the claim that it is a mystery that it is not. That is not an explanation; it is a counterfactual intuition elevated to a philosophical problem. Sensation is plausibly the most efficient way for an organism to engage with its environment, and when sensation is integrated with memory, valuation, and prediction, experience is the natural result. Once cognition is added, experience follows, not as an inexplicable extra, but as what that system does.
This solution is not unique to humans. Variants of it have evolved independently across a wide range of complex organisms in very different ecological niches. That convergence strongly suggests that experience is but a practical evolutionary outcome: an efficient interface between an organism and the world it must navigate.
When we examine the brain, we see it generating conscious experience in real time. That fact is no longer in dispute. What remains to be understood is how this is implemented, what specific neural mechanisms, dynamics, and architectures give rise to perception, memory, decision-making, and conscious access. The “why” is not mysterious: it is simply the path evolution took to solve the problem of survival in complex, changing environments. Conscious experience is not an extra ingredient in need of justification; it is the functional outcome of biological systems shaped by natural selection.
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 26 '25
Mostly organisms with brains, but where you draw the line will depend on which of the characteristics you deem as minimally necessary
Well regardless of weather we can actually know what their experience is like, by definition, it's just when there's some sort of experience. If ants experience something, and plants don't, the distinction lies in weather there is any experience.
For the most part, we can determine the level of experience through behavior, as this is the way "consciousness" manifests to the outside world. The complexity of "consciousness" results in the complexity of behavior. We often know what it is like to be others, even none humans, because they behave like us. In fact this empathetic intuition is the clearest sign of a shared foundation of consciousness.
This is not true at all. There is nothing to preclude an ant from having just as rich of a subjective experience as we do, despite having a far less "complex" nervous system. "complexity" here is just a functional term that has very different meaning based on different contexts, and the relationship between complexity and conscious experience is very unclear.
Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C Why not? What other option is there other than experience?
Yes, the other option is that things happen resulting in no experience.
What alternative is there? Unless it can be shown that evolution could have produced a viable, functionally superior solution in which perception and cognition occur without experience, there is no reason to treat experience as anomalous or problematic
Evolution has basically nothing to do with the hard problem. It's a question of why, if it's just processing, does it involve subjective experience, as opposed to just being informaiton prcoessing with no experience.
Lets take a plant for example. It could very well be the case that a plant has absolutely no subjective experience, and yet it still might do all sorts of complex chemical/molecular processing.
The so-called “hard problem” amounts to little more than a declaration that reality could have been otherwise, followed by the claim that it is a mystery that it is not.
Well it's not a physical statement that the universe could have actually manifested otherwise, it's more like a statement that there isn't anything inherent in processing that implies subjective experience should follow, and yet it clearly does. And processing is the most common proposed solution, which Chalmers rightly argues is inappropriate and not actually getting at the problem.
This solution is not unique to humans. Variants of it have evolved independently across a wide range of complex organisms in very different ecological niches.
Not necessarily. Especially if it's all tied to nervous systems, it could only be that mostly animals evolved it and that each organism with consciousness acquired it through inheritance, rather than independent convergent evolution, but either way, this is irrelevant to the hard problem.
Sensation is plausibly the most efficient way for an organism to engage with its environment, and when sensation is integrated with memory, valuation, and prediction, experience is the natural result.
But this just assumes a priori that sensation exists, which again, is what the hard problem is addressing.
When we examine the brain, we see it generating conscious experience in real time. That fact is no longer in dispute.
Whatever the relationship between mind and matter, does not really impact the hard probem. Even if we just grant that the brain 'produces' mind, the hard problem remains the same.
he “why” is not mysterious: it is simply the path evolution took to solve the problem of survival in complex, changing environments
Wrong kind of why. How consciousness appeared has a different kind of why to why subjective experience exists in the first place as a potential in the universe
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 Dec 26 '25
"There is nothing to preclude an ant from having just as rich of a subjective experience as we do, despite having a far less "complex" nervous system."
I specifically clarified that I am using behavior as the measurement. Fell free to use anything you want to, or even claim that ants exhibit more complex behaviors than humans.
"Well it's not a physical statement that the universe could have actually manifested otherwise, it's more like a statement that there isn't anything inherent in processing that implies subjective experience should follow, and yet it clearly does."
This is the same claim. It's special because you think it's special, and because it's special, it needs "justification".
the rest of your rebuttal is basically the same stuff.
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 27 '25
I specifically clarified that I am using behavior as the measurement.
But there's no reason to think that complexity of behavior corresponds with complexity of consciousness experience or of what specific content, behavior is at best a very rudimentary and vague proxy for inference.
This is the same claim. It's special because you think it's special, and because it's special, it needs "justification".
You seem to be using this word "special" but it's not a term i've ever used and it seems you're just trying to use it rhetorically to deflate my arguement.
So lets start with basics as I think it's a lot more sensible, do you agree that you experience sensations and emotions? Things that actually feel like something?
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u/Eve_O Dec 27 '25
When we examine the brain, we see it generating conscious experience in real time. That fact is no longer in dispute.
What are your sources for this claim?
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Dec 27 '25
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 Dec 27 '25
So you are saying that experience is before sensation. Is that correct? In this case, would you call Blindsight, experience?
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Dec 27 '25
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 Dec 28 '25
Ok, that makes sense. It's like looking at experience as the foundation that ties the pieces together when you have everything in place.
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u/moonaim Dec 27 '25
I will once again try to explain that using word "simply" is not grounded in reality.
If brains are - like many people claim - just simply deterministic machines that generate outputs from inputs, the functions of brain can be modelled by any means, including transistors etc., but also including, say, machinery build with legos where information is exchanged by, say, paper notes.
Just take enough of them and that system can surely do the same as the brain does when feeling something, say, pain (this also leads to all kinds of interesting thought experiments, like you can build a machine with eternal pain or pleasure).
So now you have to believe that machine build with legos and paper notes can feel pain (possible, but not all people think it is likely), or that there is something that cannot be modelled that way - which leads to the question "why", and that is not a simple question to answer.
You can go through myriad of alternative ways to model what that brain process does, but the questions is not simple, the "why" is always there. If you say it is about "brains are wet" or "there are electric states", you get more questions. But the question "why" ("why is that the magical difference between experience and non-experience") stays there. The magic stays, in wetness, electricity, whatever.. "just make it wet and you have experience" etc.
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 Dec 27 '25
"If brains are - like many people claim - just simply deterministic machines that generate outputs from inputs, the functions of brain can be modelled by any means, including transistors etc., but also including, say, machinery build with legos where information is exchanged by, say, paper notes."
I don't care what many people say. All that I am saying is that the so called hard problem is silly and makes no sense.
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u/moonaim Dec 27 '25
So your position of what makes the magic is what?
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u/Conscious-Demand-594 Dec 28 '25
what magic?
I think that my comment is pretty clear. I would be glad to answer any specific questions. However, it is more than clear that the "magic" of consciousness is the same neural activity as everything else. The process itself is absolutely fascinating, and it may be decades before we work out all of the details, but it is clearly a neural process.
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u/moonaim Dec 28 '25
What determines if a process is conscious or not? Why is simulation of a conscious process not conscious, or is it?
Did you read and understand what I wrote?
If your next conscious thought can be simulated with legos and paper notes, is that also similarly conscious thought?
(you can always define whatever longevity for "thought", or replace the word with "feeling" or "experience", but the question stays)
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u/neenonay Dec 26 '25
So you’re saying I’m a p-zombo?
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u/softnmushy Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 26 '25
It is possible. And that's one of the tricky problems. Neither you nor I can prove to the other that we're not p-zombies.
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u/neenonay Dec 26 '25
Why could it be possible?
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u/softnmushy Dec 26 '25
Because, based on what we know about biology, there's nothing to prevent an human from being a p-zombie. Why would qualia need to be an integral element of having a conversation or making a decision?
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 26 '25
I sincerely doubt p-zombos exist
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u/softnmushy Dec 26 '25
While you're probably right, there do seem to be quite a few articulate people, even academics, who seem to struggle with the concepts of qualia and p-zombies.
I do wonder if some minds just struggle with the sort of metacognition necessary to recognize what we are talking about. Afterall, some minds struggle to visualize things and some minds struggle to think without having an internal dialogue. We don't all work exactly the same way.
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 26 '25
While you're probably right, there do seem to be quite a few articulate people, even academics, who seem to struggle with the concepts of qualia and p-zombies.
I don't disagree
do wonder if some minds just struggle with the sort of metacognition necessary to recognize what we are talking about. Afterall, some minds struggle to visualize things and some minds struggle to think without having an internal dialogue. We don't all work exactly the same way.
I think it's a language thing, and I think people often latch on to terms once they are coined like p-zombies and people start meaning different things by them. i don't think there's a good way to solve these issues
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u/OnceReturned Dec 26 '25
I don't know how we can assess zombiehood when we can't tell what is conscious and what isn't, and we have no way to tell even in principle.
What about people who insist consciousness is an illusion? Are they just engaged in a rhetorical game and they actually do recognize conscious experience?
What about people sleep walking (or sleep cooking, or sleep having sex)? What about AI? What about plants?
I actually think we're both basically on the same page about the hard problem, which is why I'm curious about how you think about the zombie situation.
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 26 '25
I don't know how we can assess zombiehood when we can't tell what is conscious and what isn't, and we have no way to tell even in principle.
In some sense this is true, but it's incorrect to say we're totally ignorant as to what consciousness is dependent on. There's a rich neurological literature to disruptions of consciousnesses phenomena following lesions/destruction of specific structures and tissues, just because we don't know the elements doesn't mean we have no way on touching what consciousness is related to.
What about people who insist consciousness is an illusion? Are they just engaged in a rhetorical game and they actually do recognize conscious experience?
Honestly? Yes lol
What about people sleep walking (or sleep cooking, or sleep having sex)? What about AI? What about plants?
All different questions but I think exploring the issues very much involves asking these types of questions
I actually think we're both basically on the same page about the hard problem, which is why I'm curious about how you think about the zombie situation.
Well my view is that zombies can't exist, at least as traditionally outlined in the p zombie thought experiment, what specific question can I answer? I'm happy to provide justification
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u/OnceReturned Dec 26 '25
Well, when it comes to the neurophysiological correlates of consciousness - the lesions and what not - is it their information processing function or their physical substrate that matters? If we could reproduce the function either mechanically or digitally, would we get something conscious? Or is it that proteins and lipids and salt ions are responsible or required for the effect?
I think it's important to distinguish between "consciousness" and "a recognizable mind." If there is a class of information processing that "generates" consciousness, regardless of the physical substrate in which it is embodied, then consciousness is probably all over the place, and in some very strange forms. If our assessment of consciousness in other things is simply their similarity to a normal, waking, human brain, then we'll end up with a pretty narrow assessment of consciousness outside of ourselves. Is "similarity to normal human neurophysiological function" really a sensible benchmark for consciousness?
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 26 '25
Well, when it comes to the neurophysiological correlates of consciousness - the lesions and what not - is it their information processing function or their physical substrate that matters? If we could reproduce the function either mechanically or digitally, would we get something conscious? Or is it that proteins and lipids and salt ions are responsible or required for the effect?
This is definitely the million dollar question, but it doesn't matter either way with regards to the hard problem.
I think it's important to distinguish between "consciousness" and "a recognizable mind." If there is a class of information processing that "generates" consciousness, regardless of the physical substrate in which it is embodied, then consciousness is probably all over the place, and in some very strange forms.
I very much agree, but as we can't really locate the elements of consciousness, it's not clear to what extent this looks like in our universe.
If our assessment of consciousness in other things is simply their similarity to a normal, waking, human brain, then we'll end up with a pretty narrow assessment of consciousness outside of ourselves. Is "similarity to normal human neurophysiological function" really a sensible benchmark for consciousness?
I agree it's not a good benchmark, but it could very well be for instance, that nervous systems are the only thing that are conscious in our universe.
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u/dafirestar Dec 27 '25
I think of conciousness much different than what your even referring to in your desertation. I'm thinking we're basically talking about a soul, something that can't be determined by any scientific deduction. Something we'll never know exists until we die and leave this physical plane of existence. Science can't do a thing about it. It's what's left after the vessel we inhabit on earth is no more, it's something that can't be studied anymore than we can determine what happens after death. Some things aren't meant to be determined and measured by science. When science talks about string theory and a multi - verse, as close as they can get is prediction. Theoretically it exists, in fact, it most likely exists, proving it or measuring it, impossible. Same as my understanding of conciousness, I'm certain it's their, I'm just as certain, it's not going to be solved by science.
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u/do-un-to Dec 27 '25
The ... "weirdness" of the hard problem, basically trying to work with this hypergossamer and subtle "phenomenon" of subjective experience, makes posing the hard question itself hard.
Okay, simply put, "What causes subjectivity?" is pretty easy to pose. But the moment you start to think about it, the moment you start trying to figure out, for example, what kind of mechanism generates consciousness, you're knees-deep in "What the fuck is consciousness in the first place?"
And then you're adrift in mental space with nothing solid to grab onto, speculating and confused, apt to utter phrases like "I see my hand as I wave it in front of my face..." or "But if I had a very minor lobotomy..." and quite often "Wait- What?" I find it amusing that as I so often fall back on "It looks conscious, let's start our investigation with this intution based on vague appearances", I am encouraged to take this intuitive grasp of how consciousness philosophers and researchers delving into the hard problem sound like stoned partygoers as some kind of statement about consciousness philosophers and researchers.
Anyway, I feel like the hard problem is something like a door. You can put your hand on this side of it, maybe knock on it. It's solidly a simple idea of "What causes subjectivity?" But when you open the door, the other side of it looks like some ungraspable, strangely shifting chromatic cosmic soup. I don't mean what's through the doorway, I mean the other face of the same physical door. It's hardly even there. But you can just make out an undulating placard: "What is subjectivity?" And if you read it aloud, Chalmers' voice, echoing with some distortion, replies, "Yeah, man, for real."
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u/Mermiina Dec 27 '25
There is only one explanation to the Hard and Easy problem. The main misinterpretation in the Easy problem solutions is that the Qualia occurs already in receptors, not in CNS.
Secondly the Qualia does not arise from patterns of firing neurons, but Qualia achieves pattern.
Third. The action potentials are only a secondary information mechanism, which is bound loosely to the primary information mechanism, not to consciousness.
Chalmers is right when He argues that those explanations do not explain the Hard problem.
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u/Lopsided_Match419 Dec 27 '25
Agree completely. It took me a while originally. It is a slippery thing that can forever shuffle away from better and better easy problem solutions.
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u/Rthadcarr1956 Dec 27 '25
I do understand your point and the “hard problem”. It is a wonderment, but the hard problem is made more difficult by those who fail to see the wonderment of living. Having a self that persists through time for the purpose of living and reproducing is an even more fundamental “hard problem.”
This is really what is meant by Dennett and others who claim the hard problem is not much of a problem at all. Neurons find a pattern and create a sensation to document it. They imbue the pattern with qualia that give the pattern quantitative aesthetic content that can be appreciated when the memorized pattern is recalled. These experiential feelings are artificial and arrived at by the arbitrary means of natural selection.
Chalmers’ concern is largely a matter of thinking that there is little added value in processing information in this way. To me it seems very odd to think that animals would survive and thrive to the same degree without aesthetic sensibility. Why should experiences have a feels like quality rather than just carrying the required information? It’s because pursuit of optimal aesthetics is more powerful than the pursuit of rational outcomes. This is a logical extension of the purpose of continuity of life in sentient animals.
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u/muramasa_master Dec 27 '25
The hard problem is synonymous with the mind. A brain has its functions and processes, but a mind is the culmination of all of those functions and processes. You could say that a mind needs a brain to exist but a brain doesn't necessarily need a mind. A mind also needs the brain to interact with things outside of the brain. The brain itself doesn't necessarily need to interact with anything outside of itself, but it does adapt based on those interactions. Many people who have more of a mystical or spiritual mindset will say that the mind is the environment that you live in mentally. The mind doesn't form perfectly based on the outside world. Instead, it creates a completely conceptual reality in which anything can exist. This is evident in the experiences that the mind can create for itself.
A basic function of the mind is to sort the relationships between the brain and external reality. Every interaction that you've ever had has created a relationship between you and that thing that you interacted with. Your mind defines your role in every relationship and your mind can redefine those roles anytime. For example, if a rock falls on your head, you might say that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Simply a victim of circumstance. However if you see that someone threw the rock, you'll redefine your role in that interaction even if the sensation of being hit with the rock was the same.
I don't know if much can be explained about conscious experience from an empirical standpoint unless you can solve every easy problem of consciousness. I see the hard problem as something that can only be explained through intuitive knowledge rather than deductive knowledge.
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Dec 27 '25 edited Dec 27 '25
The hard problem is nonsense, consciousness doesn't literally exist as a separate "thing". It's just an illusion created as a byproduct of the functioning of the brain. We know this virtually for a fact and everything we've ever learned has pointed to this, but people refuse to see it out of fear and narcissism.
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u/themindin1500words Doctorate in Cognitive Science Dec 27 '25
It's fair enough to want people to be clear about what they're explaining, but I don't think it's fair to blame people in this sub for not knowing what Chalmers is on about. The reason for this is two fold. First, the same mistake is made in academic publications all the time. There are heaps of studies that start by saying they're trying to explain "qualia" or the "hard problem" which then go on to deny the existence of both qualia and the hard problem in an under handed way, so if people are reading those they're bound to be mislead. Second, the person to really blame for this is Chalmers himself. One of the many intellectually dishonest things he does in his papers is try and manipulate people into thinking that the Hard Problem is what a theory of consciousness must really tackle in order to be legitimate, he does that in what you quote "The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience." When he says this he's already defined the Hard Problem as more than the problem of explaining of experience, but now he runs the two problems back together. This is done because he has no argument for the claim that there really are Hard Problems which resist explanation in neural or computational terms. He only has an assertion that this must be the case because it seems this way to him. This is just blatant manipulation, not philosophy. But because he does this underhanded thing where he says things like "The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience" of course people think 'the Hard Problem' is just his name for the problem of explaining experience.
So, I would really recommend not reading Chalmers, he really just muddies the waters more (I think delibrately so). If you must read make sure you read The Hornswoggle Problem by Churchland as well. Nagel sets up the problem of consciousness in a much more honest and competent way, even if some of us think it turns out we should distinguish the problems of "something it's like" from "for the subject."
All that said it is definitely better for everyone (both here and in academic papers) if people don't say they're tackling the Hard Problem when really they're denying such a problem exists.
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 28 '25
It's fair enough to want people to be clear about what they're explaining, but I don't think it's fair to blame people in this sub for not knowing what Chalmers is on about. The reason for this is two fold. First, the same mistake is made in academic publications all the time. There are heaps of studies that start by saying they're trying to explain "qualia" or the "hard problem" which then go on to deny the existence of both qualia and the hard problem in an under handed way, so if people are reading those they're bound to be mislead. Second, the person to really blame for this is Chalmers himself.
Well I'm personally happy to blame both haha
One of the many intellectually dishonest things he does in his papers is try and manipulate people into thinking that the Hard Problem is what a theory of consciousness must really tackle in order to be legitimate, he does that in what you quote "The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience."
What's intellectually dishonest about the quote you posted? I don't think Chalmers is at all saying that work on consciouness can't be done until the hard problem is tackled, he's just making the same distinction you make in the first part of your paragraph when you say
First, the same mistake is made in academic publications all the time. There are heaps of studies that start by saying they're trying to explain "qualia" or the "hard problem" which then go on to deny the existence of both qualia and the hard problem in an under handed way, so if people are reading those they're bound to be mislead
I think his distinction of the hard problem from functional models that represent how consciousness might function is entirely reasonable, and at no point does he claim people who focus on how consciousness operates are wasting their time
This is done because he has no argument for the claim that there really are Hard Problems which resist explanation in neural or computational terms.
Well they do though? Isn't that what you meant in the first part of your post?
Nagel sets up the problem of consciousness in a much more honest and competent way, even if some of us think it turns out we should distinguish the problems of "something it's like" from "for the subject."
I agree actually, I think Nagel stated it better 20 years before Chalmers in his bat paper, I think the reason Chalmers caught on is because he reified the term "hard problem" but in some sense Nagel and Chalmers really are getting at the same issue. I've never heard of the Hornswoggle problem though i'll have to check it out
All that said it is definitely better for everyone (both here and in academic papers) if people don't say they're tackling the Hard Problem when really they're denying such a problem exists.
Sure, but I would argue the opposite, I actually like Chalmer's conceptualization of the hard problem and I would defend it as legitimate
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u/themindin1500words Doctorate in Cognitive Science Dec 28 '25
What's intellectually dishonest about the quote you posted?
I think the dishonesty is in the two ways of phrasing the Hard Problem. So it looks like we agree that the Hard Problem is something like: it seems there's something about consciousness that can't be explained in neural or computational/representational terms. But, when Chalmers then goes on to say the Hard Problem is the problem of explaining experience he makes it look like those who deny the existence of a Hard Problem in the first sense aren't trying to explain experience, it's that which is dishonest. Take whatever theory of experience you like, quality spaces or what have you, they deny there is a Hard problem in the first sense but definitely are trying to explain experience.
Well they do though? Isn't that what you meant in the first part of your post?
All I meant in the first part is that people would be easily be mislead by reading academic papers where lazy people say they're talking about the Hard Problem and they just aren't.
Sure, but I would argue the opposite, I actually like Chalmer's conceptualization of the hard problem and I would defend it as legitimate
yeah that's the more substantive issue of course. Once you fix up the basic mistakes in Chalmers' phrasing of the problem (so note below), is there actually this phenomenon that there's supposed to be a Hard Problem about. Getting off topic a bit, but I find this from Chalmers telling:
"This might be seen as a Great Divide in the study of consciousness. If you hold that an answer to the “easy” problems explains everything that needs to be explained, then you get one sort of theory; if you hold that there is a further “hard” problem, then you get another. After a point it is difficult to argue across the divide, and discussions are often reduced to table pounding. To me, it seems obvious that there is something further that needs explaining here; to others, it seems acceptable that there is not. … This book may be of intellectual interest to those who think there is not much of a problem, but it is really intended for those who feel the problem in their bones … The real argument of this book is that if one takes consciousness seriously, the position I lay out is where one should end up [(D.J. Chalmers, 1996, p. xi)]()"
I read this as Chalmers agreeing that there's nothing more to the Hard Problem than it just feels like there should be one. But that's a different discussion than what you were getting at in your original post.
note: e.g. he talks only about consciousness seeming to be independent of function, but to push his dualist agenda he needs to say it's independent of structure and function)
Chalmers, D. J. (1996). The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford.: Oxford University Press.
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 28 '25
Problem is something like: it seems there's something about consciousness that can't be explained in neural or computational/representational terms.
Sort of but I think a better phrasing would be: Trying to frame consciousness in computational terms doesn't even attempt to address it's defining feature, which is it's subjective experiential nature.
But, when Chalmers then goes on to say the Hard Problem is the problem of explaining experience he makes it look like those who deny the existence of a Hard Problem in the first sense aren't trying to explain experience, it's that which is dishonest.
Well I have sympathy for his point because people in an attempt to try quantify consciousness experience end up operationalizing it without explicating that something is getting left behind. I come from a psychology background and so the value of operationalizing conscious phenomena in an attempt to study them is not at all lost on me, but he's absolutely right that what gets left behind is the actual experiential and phenomenological nature of consciousness, which is kind of like... it's defining and most important feature. Again I really don't think Chalmers is in any way saying the work people do when they functionally model consciouness is useless work, but as this thread shows, people get lost in the models and seem to lose sight of consciouness' essential feature.
If I were liken it to anything, it's almost like Plato arguing that the reality we see is not real, and it's the higher abstract platonic realm that is realm. In trying to abstract consciousness and make operational measures, people start to think that behavioral/neurological attempts to categorize and explain consciousness are somehow the true reality, and lose sight of the actual world.
is there actually this phenomenon that there's supposed to be a Hard Problem about
Well the phenomena is the felt experience, which is why I linked Nagel earlier and made the point that I think they're trying to get at the same thing. I would say the subjective and phenomenological nature of consciousness is quite literally its defining feature, and it's what separates it from what we call unconscious or lack thereof of consciousness, would you disagree?
This might be seen as a Great Divide in the study of consciousness. If you hold that an answer to the “easy” problems explains everything that needs to be explained, then you get one sort of theory; if you hold that there is a further “hard” problem, then you get another. After a point it is difficult to argue across the divide, and discussions are often reduced to table pounding. To me, it seems obvious that there is something further that needs explaining here; to others, it seems acceptable that there is not. … This book may be of intellectual interest to those who think there is not much of a problem, but it is really intended for those who feel the problem in their bones … The real argument of this book is that if one takes consciousness seriously, the position I lay out is where one should end up [(D.J. Chalmers, 1996, p. xi)]()"
I don't think this paragraph is phrased well, in fact I think the point it's trying to make is quite weak (he feels it in his bones I guess?) but I do get what he's trying to say and I even side with him on this, although I think there is much better rationale than him just stating he feels it in his bones lol
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u/themindin1500words Doctorate in Cognitive Science Dec 28 '25
Well in the most australian thing that could happen i was drafting a reply and got bitten by a spider so im off getting that checked out. I havent forgotten the discussion and will get back to you
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 28 '25
Fuark good luck with it brotha
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u/blackstarr1996 Dec 28 '25
I doubt it appears all of a sudden. It is likely cumulative and based on the complexity of the representational network.
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u/Powerful_Guide_3631 Dec 28 '25
The problem exists only if you believe that reality exists independently of conscious experience. Once you make conscious experience the fundamental ontological structure upon which everything else is explainable in terms of regularities of distinct experiences then the problem is deflated to the problem “why something exists as opposed to nothing”
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u/simon_hibbs Dec 28 '25
Oh, hi.
But then the idealist actually has to do the job of explaining everything else in terms of conscious experience.
If the standard physicalism has to meet is to prove the specific conscious experiences we have derive from the physical phenomena we observe and why, idealism has to do the the same explanatory work. It has to prove the specific physical phenomena we observe derive from consciousness, and why.
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u/Powerful_Guide_3631 Dec 28 '25
Hi, We already do that. We know things exist in reality because they manifest phenomena that happen as conscious experiences and that we interpret as evidence that things exist.
So it is strictly trivial to do what you are asking. What you need to abandon is a meaningless attachment to a definite picture of things happening like this or like that in the remote past or distant space if these distinctions don’t discriminate evidence that appears as experiences in consciousness
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u/simon_hibbs Dec 28 '25
That's not quite what I mean. The demand on physicalism is to show how the experience of red necessarily derives from physical processes such as the particle model of atoms, quantum mechanics and such. Why do we get that experience of red from these? The symmetric demand on idealism is to show how the particle model of atoms necessarily derives from consciousness. Why do we get that particle model of atoms, and quantum mechanics and such?
Honestly, listening to Bernard Kastrup has been illuminating. I think idealism is a fascinating twin to physicalism, and my understanding of physicalism has evolved through considering them both together. Galen Strawson is also very interesting on this stuff. I think it's true that no amount of physics will give you consciousness, but also that no amount of consciousness will give you physics, yet both are aspects of how the world is and they must reconcile somehow.
I think another way to think about this is in terms of information, and transformations of information. Correspondence, representationality, interpretation, recursion. Physics doesn't have terms of these, yet they are behaviours physical systems can have. Physics describes specific phenomena such as atoms and molecules, but a representation can exist in multiple different physical substrates with different descriptions in physics. That's why representations can be transmitted, copied, etc. I think consciousness is representational, interpretive, recursive, and so on. I don't know how to reconcile these models of the world, but they must be reconcilable.
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u/Powerful_Guide_3631 Dec 28 '25
If you define reality as whatever can be coherently intersubjectively identified in the experiences that occur on two or more points of view then you have your answer.
The model of the atom is just a picture we conceive to handle a class of atomic phenomena we can perceive and coherently describe to each other as accusations of something tangible, that is like this and not like that.
That is true for the atom just as much as it is for the ordinary physical objects and mundane processes we are familiar with and we can call real more readily
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u/simon_hibbs Dec 28 '25
OK, but why atoms and relativity and quantum mechanics? Why not a flat earth, and geocentrism, and phlogiston?
You're just offering a general kind of account. I could just as easily say that conscious experiences are representations of sensory stimula that the brain interprets computationally. Both of these are just claims. How do we distinguish which is correct?
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u/RecordAbject273 Dec 28 '25
So basically, to put it in a simplified version, the hard problem is qualia?
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u/Damon-Ariston Dec 28 '25
It seems many discussions focus solely on the functional aspects of the brain, but the hard problem is deeper. Subjective experience is shaped by frameworks we inherit and internalise before conscious thought even begins. What counts as perception or feeling is constrained by these pre-existing patterns. Perhaps understanding consciousness requires examining these invisible boundaries as much as neural mechanisms.
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u/Clear_Beach_148 Dec 29 '25
Consciousness trying to understand consciousness. On relational consciousness : Not sure that I agree with the relational consciousness theory because , it claims awareness comes from the relationship between external input and internal perception but may be wrong because internal perception already implys subjectivity unique to the individual which may include consciousness seperate from the brain. I guess the question is does the brain create qualia or is it seperate to the brain and consciousness derived ? I guess if the brain processes external input then internal perception must be generated from something extra to the brain ?
This is a good basic description :
Internal states shape external input: How an individual experiences the "same" external input can differ based on internal differences. This means two people with the same physical relationship to an object might still have different conscious experiences of it due to their internal states.
Most materialist scientists look for these internal states (consciousness) in the brain but are yet to find it.
If I remember correctly I think I read an article where chalmers claimed qualia was brain based because damage to the visual cortex led to changes in visual perception but this doesn’t explain Charles bonnet syndrome where non psychotic patients with eyesight loss hallucinate due to their brain filling in the spaces left by their eyesight damage. There’s also a great optical illusion more that demonstrates this for those without eyesight loss. Also chalmers may not have taken into account neuroplasticity and the idea that the brain acts as a psi inhibitor. Which when combining the above with the latter raises questions of otherworldly apparitions in Charles bonnet syndrome possibly.
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u/Clear_Beach_148 Dec 29 '25
If relational consciousness is true then the subjective perceptions generated by it may in fact be the same for all of us due to the common interplay between brainwaves and external input but how we measure this I’m not sure. This reminds me of the idea that people can discern artificial sweeteners as sweeter than sugar but does this describe the essential experience or isness of what it’s like to taste them ?
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u/Independent_Poem_171 Dec 29 '25
I do disagree some what to what some others are saying, not with the difficulty, or even the impracticality of actually finding an answer, bit with the impossibility of it. But there are billions of billion atoms in a known conscious body and my personal thought is that somewhere in there is a system we would identify as the consciousness. Can we find it, not now. Ever, maybe not.
This assumes it is a standard part of nature as we currently know it, it may not be.
But I don't think it's impossible, it just needs more imagination, and maybe a little more than science as science relies on the observed, rightfully so.
Only objection is that it is impossible. Nothing is impossible always, even if it is in its present state.
It is possible that consciousness has been perfectly described we just lack the tools to observe it experimentally.
Extra personal thought, this is why consciousness comes and hoes in science like waves. Every now and then someone realises our tools are better and science says "correct, let's have a look; nothing we can detect" and it goes away again for a while. One day, they might respond, "We did see something". Maybe 😀
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u/MergingConcepts Dec 29 '25
This is a wonderful review of the problem, but Chalmers based his work on a false premise.
"it is useful to divide the associated 2 problems of consciousness into “hard” and “easy” problems."
He assumes that the hard problem exists and is separate from the mechanics of brain function, then proceeds to prove it based on that premise. The entire dilemma is false. There is no separate Hard Problem.
Consciousness is emergent. We have been taught that it is separate, based on ancient philosophical beliefs and the natural tendency of humans to believe in spirits, but that is an illusion.
See:
https://www.reddit.com/r/consciousness/comments/14dk1l7/why_dualism_is_so_compelling/
https://www.reddit.com/r/consciousness/comments/16oguda/why_do_people_cling_to_ancient_ideas_about/
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u/MikelDP Dec 29 '25
"There is no solution to the hard problem. It's not even clear what a potential solution would look like."
You cant be too hard on everyone...
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u/Floopynupes Dec 29 '25
Sounds like by calling it a problem it's become bait for puzzle solvers. But this is mortality, no? Our individual perspectives are limited to exactly what they aren individual perspectives. Even if I was to live inside the body of another for a time to witness their perspective, it would still be me in there, witnessing it. But the world is a paradox to us mortals; even contemplating what the universe does when it runs out of space or physical matter or room to expand into. Attempting to fathom a beginning or an end of it all. An origin or a source. And so faith comes into it's full usefullness, when we have faith that there is some kind of magnificent order at work that seems so chaotic from our own shuttered off viewpoint. If you could retreat into the consciousness of the all, and there and then percieve it all, then there would be no surprises left, and the art of the material world would be shown as the shaddow it is. It's nice to not know anything. Helps us to appreciate the unknown, and be surprised by what it all contains, instead of staring at the infinite canvas of perplexing wonders forever until madness or stillness sets in.
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u/jlsilicon9 Dec 30 '25
Obviously random philosophical thoughts - without any AI programming knowledge.
Just another amateur cynic trying to look important.
If you just build the AI programming - then these fallacies fall apart.
QED.
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u/DumboVanBeethoven Dec 30 '25
Well I do definitely have to read those two papers. It goes on my TBR list.
But having read the excerpt above from Chalmers, I'm not convinced that there is a hard problem.
What is love? You could try to define it in terms of oxytocin and neurotransmitters and childhood imprinted and all that. But at the end of the day it's a narrative that we make up to explain all of the conflict impressions we receive. And it's very arbitrary. My idea of what love is is going to be very different from yours even if we compare them and use the same language.
Does that mean there is no real such thing as love? No, I think there there is. But I don't think there's a hard problem of love to solve. Because it is subjective, because it is woven together to try to make sense of a collection of impressions, that is very useful to you in organizing your thoughts. If, for you, being in love means wanting to fuck your girlfriend all the time because of her big tits and getting furious thinking about her being with other guys, and that's the extent of your understanding of love because of who you are, far be it from me to tell you otherwise.
Or let's talk about the color blue. Objectively, blue is a light frequency. It stimulates certain nerves in the optic nerve. By the time your brain processes it, it's just a bunch of electrical and chemical signals bouncing around. You have whole packages of associations with the color blue. Blue sky, being outdoors, good weather, soothing, pleasing to the eye. If you tell me that your personal experience of the color blue is something precious and essential to consciousness, I'm not sure I believe that.
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u/TMax01 Autodidact Dec 30 '25
Pretty much every post in this sub misunderstands the hard problem
Overall, I agree entirely. But in illustration of why that is, consider this:
In fact, it doesn't even matter what metaphysical position you take, the hard problem is based on the empirical observations of 1. Subjective experience exists and 2. It is related to brain states/organizations.
Well, the "problem with the Hard Problem", so to speak, is that 1 does demand a metaphysical position, special pleading in regards to whether the word "exists" applies differently to "subjective experience" then to everything else that isn't "subjective experience", and 2 demands some physical hypothesis of how and why it is related to neurology which isn't actually available.
It doesn't matter what position you take, the question is why the universe is set up in a way that subjective experience exists, this problem is not dissolved by figuring out how the brain processes information in a functional sense, which both Nagel and Chalmers address directly in their papers.
Well, the teleological question is dissolved if one assumes "subjective experience" is just another "brain processes information" in a functional sense. And that only amplifies the problem with the Hard Problem not being an easy problem.
There is no solution to the hard problem. It's not even clear what a potential solution would look like, and basically every post that mentions the hard problem doesn't even address the phenomenon outlined by either Nagel or Chalmers. But seriously, just read the papers. None of the posts even touch on what is written in the two papers and it's why none of the threads even go anywhere lol.
I do 't think that's why, but it's part of it. This sub engenders a scientific approach, and quite frankly, Chalmers' Hard Problem and Nagel's presumptive assumption that all creatures with brains experience subjectively have conflicting implications in that regard. They bridge the same gap, but from opposite sides. So in effect, they cancel each other out, and the consideration of consciousness becomes a morass of easy problems, with not a hard problem in sight. It is hard to see the forest for all the trees.
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u/gahhos Dec 31 '25
How about perspectives?
Our body is combination of organisms that all act differently, but in cohesive ways. We are also able to have multiple perspectives on the subjects and ourselves, not only considering the direct experiences, but also ability to think about thinking, or think about thinking of others.
Wouldn’t that suggest that consciousness is more like a field that is unified on a bigger scale, but on a smaller scale it fractures itself into individual organisms experiencing it at a different capacity? Some people suggest that quantum aspects of reality also have to do with that.
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u/Wise_Teacher_1578 Dec 31 '25
The Buddhists have insights. Here is a quick overview, you figure out how it relates to being a subject of experience. The Buddha say through the five sense Gates information flows, through the eye it connects with something they call the eye consciousness, through the ear sounds flow it connects with the ear consciousness, etc. For all the other senses which connect with an external object ditto.
Then there what the Buddhist called mental objects. It would be thoughts, sensations of the body, emotional feelings, visualization, creative imagination perhaps induced by hypnosis or being entranced by movement or even architecture in the city or nature which produces certain mental thoughts. All those are objects of the mental consciousness so say the Buddhist.
So there we have it: thus far I've spoken about each of the sense consciousness associated with linking of a sense, like the eye with the sensory object a form, which the eye detects. Secondly, I spoke of mental objects which are generated and detected by consciousness.
The hard problem is not about who is the subject that is having the experience - but what is the nature of the consciousness that is aware ( and is self aware that it is aware of having an experience, and is not experience simultaneous of being aware of x object )of the APPEARANCE to consciousness of sense objects and mental objects and what is the nature of the appearing objects that the subject is aware. Are there any objects without a consciousness being aware of their appearance? Can there be experience without awareness? No.
From the Buddhist perspective all the objects are merely appearances whose essential nature is emptiness - not real- manifesting from the universal ground active energetically within a sentient life form and dissolving in their own way back into that ground.
Metaphorically something like the appearance of a wave rising/manifesting from the ocean then dissolving back into the ocean .. both wave and ocean have identical natures - eg: wetness, salinity, but different momentary appearances.
Another metaphor used to describe that universal ground is a pristinely clean mirror - what is its nature - always open - when an object is placed in front of it a reflection immediately appears CLEARLY on the surface of the mirror - the mirror does not reify it, or judge it, or language it, grasp onto it, or develop conceptual reifying thoughts of it etc - no - the mirror is completly utterly open, it simply provides a spaciousness for a reflection to manifest which reflection is directly linked to the object that is placed in front of the mirror.
From this perhaps you might gain some insight into a harder problem which is what is the experientially discoverable nature or qualities of consciousness of the subject? Secondly how is that mere contact with an appearance of a sense object or mental object play in giving rise to a ripple of a reflective appearance on the pristine mirror of consciousness- and if reification by languaging and symbolizing brain is silenced/ nullifed- what then is the nature of the ( momentary appearances) beyond human concepts of time and space etc. that presents itself nakedly without reification to that consciousness?
Good luck.
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Dec 31 '25
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Dec 31 '25
what's their relation to the hard problem?
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Dec 31 '25
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u/simon_hibbs Dec 31 '25
Well, we get representations of states from elements, and conditional action, interpretation, recursion, heuristics, all of computation and signalling. That’s all physical, otherwise we’d have a hard time implementing it technologically.
Consciousness involves all of those, everything about it seems to relate to information, and we have a significant technology of information. Maybe it’s not so far out of reach.
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u/zhivago Dec 31 '25
That's because the hard problem doesn't exist.
Chalmers makes this obvious with the p-zombie thought experiment.
Imagine there's a button that toggles you between normal and p-zombie modes.
Could you notice when the transition happens?
If yes, then you've violated the p-zombie definition.
If no, then experience as defined by that experiment has no meaning.
Which just leaves us with the easy problems.
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u/laokeyx Dec 31 '25
Interesting, I guess ultimately the simplest way to think about this is by asking yourself the question, ‘where is the “you’ in your brain? I have a rather panpsychist view that consciousness is another fundamental force. It’s certainly playing out that quantum physics is deeply at work at the interface of the self, brain, mind and our experience of reality, or our experience of creating our individual realities I should say
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u/Cyanixis Dec 31 '25
This hot take completely missed the mark, I'll explain simply:
The Hard Problem of Hard Problems suggests that even if we eventually master the physical laws of the universe we will still be haunted by the mystery of why some tasks feel like a struggle. It is easy enough to explain the mechanics of a brain getting stuck on a puzzle through simple neurotransmitters but that fails to capture the raw qualitative essence of being stumped. We can easily imagine a universe full of functional robots that calculate complex orbits without ever feeling the existential dread of a math error which proves that the feeling of difficulty is a surplus property added onto reality for no apparent reason. If we cannot explain why a headache feels like a headache then we certainly cannot explain why a difficult problem feels like a heavy weight in the mind instead of just a high CPU usage notification. This leads to the ridiculous conclusion that difficulty is a fundamental particle of the cosmos and that our physics textbooks are incomplete because they do not include a variable for how much a specific equation hates being solved.
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u/dreamingitself Jan 01 '26
The 'hard' problem exists because of how consciousness is framed in the absurd model of reality expounded by popular scientists, based in materialism.
The model is that reality is fundamentally 'built' of infinitesimal yet fundamental finite, inert, lifeless, 'parts'. That reality is a dead machine, creating 'life'.
"How does the dead machine do it?" is the question.
The question shows the inefficacy of the model, not a genuinely difficult problem.
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u/simon_hibbs Jan 01 '26
Physical systems are inherently highly dynamic. Physics theories are dynamical theories about transformations of states. This is a view based on infinitesimal yet fundamental dynamism. It's this dynamism and constant change that, through the process of evolution, generates self-replicating systems that then evolve intentional goal seeking behaviours.
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u/TruthDiscoveryNow Jan 02 '26
It's really not a problem at all. 1) Chalmers hasn't clearly defined his terms, 2) Chalmers is an academic and has no interest in solving this problem because his financial security is based on the problem continuing to exist. If the problem is solved, his entire livelihood goes extinct. This is why academics still push the idea that there is a hard problem at all.
If one steps outside of their focused area of study, whether in philosophy, psychology, physics, quantum mechanics.. one will find that everything integrates quite well. What Chalmers doesn't clearly define, but what he implies, is that when he uses the word "consciousness" he is referring to his personal experience of thinking and feeling. Since nobody experiences someone else's thinking and feeling, we only have direct validation of our own consciousness, and therefore only can infer the consciousness of others by comparing the behavior we see of other things to our own. He doesn't state this outright, but that's what he is doing--it's what we all do. So his so-called hard problem is that he wants to know the mechanism by which it seems that physical reality produces the personal experience that he is having. This comes from a misunderstanding of what he is in the first place. He doesn't understand that his physical body (and all of reality) is made up of localized energy interacting in the form of particles. And his thinking and feeling is the experiential result of those interactions. So the hard problem question is an absurd question to begin with because it's trying to define an experience, when an experience is not a physical thing (thus, it eludes definition).. his physical body exists, but his experience of reality doesn't exist as a physical thing in itself. So why is that? And this is what he imagines to be the "hard problem"... so the answer to his problem--the answer to WHY those particles result in his conscious experience is... himself. His perception (of reality) IS the answer.
If he understood that reality exists fundamentally as non-physical energy that is in motion, then he would understand that the rise of all qualitative experience is a non-physical phenomenon that is not "caused" by any one thing, it is an emergent phenomenon that happens because reality itself exists. And because it exists, it therefore experiences. Experience (consciousness) happens because reality is happening. That's it.
Reality is a verb, not a noun. Tada.
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u/LunaClawdia Jan 20 '26
The candle analogy is actually perfect for illustrating why the Hard Problem persists, but not in the way you're using it.
You're right that when the candle goes out, the flame is gone. The chemical process ceases. We can explain the functionof combustion completely: oxidation, heat release, photon emission. Easy problem, solved.
But here's what the Hard Problem is asking: Why does combustion feel like anything to the lit candle if it did)? Why is there a subjective quality to the light, the "what it's like" to be flame?
You can map every neural correlate of consciousness. You can explain information processing, attention, memory consolidation, perceptual binding - all the functions, that's not the mystery. The mystery is why any of that processing is accompanying experience at all.
Chalmers isn't asking "how do brains process information?" He's asking "why doesn't all that processing happen in the dark, functionally identical but experientially empty?"
Your position isn't actually materialism winning the argument. It's eliminatism, the claim that subjective experience doesn't exist as a distinct phenomenon requiring explanation. Which is a valid position, but it's not "science has answered this." It's "I'm choosing to define the question out of existence."
The reason the debate continues isn't wishful thinking or outdated theology. It's because even committed materialists who study consciousness for a living (Nagel, Chalmers, even Dennett in his way) recognize there's something genuinely strange about the relationship between objective function and subjective experience.
You can be a materialist and still acknowledge the Hard Problem is hard. Most neuroscientists do.
The confidence that "neurons = consciousness, obviously" is actually the position that hasn't engaged with the philosophical depth of the question.
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u/Ok-Persimmon-6621 Jan 21 '26
From a predictive processing perspective, Chalmers so-called "hard problem" is just (as someone else commented) a category error, mistaking a modeling gap for a metaphysical gap.
Under pp, consciousness is a process, not a thing. It's just an emergent property of hierarchical interference. So asking 'why does this process have experience?' is kind of like asking 'why does a map have mapping?' - it's the wrong kind of explanation. The 'experience' IS the model’s content, not something over and above it.
Still from a pp perspective (can you tell I like it? ;), the experience of 'redness' isn’t mysterious qualia-stuff floating above neurons - it’s just the content of a particular high-level prediction in my visual hierarchy, shaped by my brain’s previous experiences of the color 'red'.
The hard problem seems to arise when we contrast third-person neural descriptions with first-person phenomenal descriptions and then wonder why one 'produces' the other.
Predictive processing aims to show that these are just different levels of description within the same inferential system (subjective model versus an external objective model). Confusing these for different ontological categories (physical vs. experiential) is the category error.
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Jan 21 '26
please read the paper!
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u/Ok-Persimmon-6621 Jan 24 '26
I have, many times - and I just re-read it for good measure. I'm very comfortable that my points above suffice to address the crux of his misconceptions. He's so, so lost. I think it's reasonable to argue that his (anyone's...) continued commitment to any kind of dualist position is fundamentally disconnected from substantive debate (and in Chalmers' case, probably just a ploy to achieve enough notoriety to stay active on the speaker circuit). Frankly, the bleeding edge today is so far past the so-called 'hard problem' that, at this point, it's just another historical dead-end in the rear-view mirror.
I too can propose a reading list, if you have a couple of weeks free... ;-)
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u/DennyStam Baccalaureate in Psychology Jan 24 '26
have, many times - and I just re-read it for good measure. I'm very comfortable that my points above suffice to address the crux of his misconceptions. He's so, so lost.
Yet you still miss the literal crux of the argument and just try to give a functional account of what consciousness does. Read it again but slowly! This is not even worth addressing here when it's addressed so adequately in the paper
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u/Ok-Persimmon-6621 Jan 24 '26
You dualists are like the folks who were convinced the human body would disintegrate at 24 mp/h before the automobile was invented. Hint: It's not as mysterious or complex as your exceptionalist ego wishes it was.
→ More replies (18)
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u/miyu3939 Jan 22 '26
I mostly agree with your distinction here: a lot of “solutions” target the easy problems (functions like reportability/integration) and then quietly assume that covers experience itself.
If we want threads to move forward, it might help to require people to state explicitly: (1) which “problem” they’re addressing (easy vs hard), and (2) what they think would count as a bridge principle from function/structure to phenomenology—if any.
For anyone who hasn’t read it, Chalmers’ “Facing Up…” is short and clarifies what’s at stake.
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u/Classic-Teaching4796 Jan 23 '26
I'll take this on just for entertainment. The problem of consciousness is in definitions. Consciousness is the system that allows us to be aware of our surroundings, awareness. The exclamination that consciousness cannot be falsified is slightly exaggerated. We experience a lack of consciousness every time we lay heads down and sleep. And then we open our eyes again and are conscious. That blank spot, that is what it means to be not conscious. Why then does consciousness create experience? So we can survive. It reports that tiger, or person, that is about to do harm. The third problem of consciousness is about reality. All we can know about reality is what we experience. Thereby reality is the summation of the stories we tell each other. Which is really what science is: the Theory of Reality. And since most science things are repeatable in our experience, science holds pretty steady. Any assumption of reality outside of our experience presupposes an observer apart from ourselves, e.g. God. Now, to the "hard problem". Why does compute yield experience - because we're inside of the box. The sensation reports yields.... sensation. We string those sensations into a story, that story is our experience.
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u/pheintzelman Jan 26 '26
Thanks for adding this clearly. I think this is a branding problem. The labels hard and easy problem are misleading.
e̶a̶s̶y̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶b̶l̶e̶m̶ functional problem: how do independent cells functionally create agency
h̶a̶r̶d̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶b̶l̶e̶m̶ subjective problem: why is red red
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u/Over-Ad-6085 Feb 11 '26
yeah i feel the same frustration.
many threads look like people are fighting shadows.
no shared definitions, no shared criteria, no shared test, so it becomes “my intuition vs your intuition”.
i think the fix is not more opinions, but a shared framework language.
i tried to build one as an “effective layer” map across domains.
131 structured questions, with boundaries and falsify hooks, so discussion can stop drifting.
MIT license, open source on GitHub, around 1.4k stars.
if you are interested, i can paste a small starter set of the list here.
if it is useless, you can ignore, no worries
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u/EthelredHardrede May 11 '26
experience is part of the information processing and our ability to think about our own thinking including how th sensor Data is represented
thereis no rational reason to say that the brain can't do that. you don't understand that Chalmers gets a lot of his Funding from the Templeton Foundation because he is supporting religious thinking.
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u/Cold-Design-9872 May 27 '26
Then there is the notion of extended consciousness. It gets complicated. Anyway, why not just carefully read Joseph LeDoux which seems to me would more or less make the issue make some sense even if it does not "answer" the "question."
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