Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3

[Constance]

(3) The Hard Problem. This is distinct from the mind-body problem. My guess is that computer science and information theory allowed us to conceive how a physical system could possess information and/or mental states. These questions now became "easy."
[/QUOTE]


? Which questions become easy? And on what basis of reasoning in each case?

 

[Soupie]

@Constance said: Which questions become easy?

As has been mentioned Im sure numerous times, easy only in relation to the "hard problem." From Hard problem of consciousness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Easy problems

Chalmers contrasts the Hard Problem with a number of (relatively) Easy Problems that consciousness presents. (He emphasizes that what the easy problems have in common is that they all represent some ability, or the performance of some function or behavior).

• the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;
• the integration of information by a cognitive system;
• the reportability of mental states;
• the ability of a system to access its own internal states;
• the focus of attention;
• the deliberate control of behavior;
• the difference between wakefulness and sleep."

That wiki entry also has a list of other formulations of the Hard Problem. Plurality/individuality of consciousness is not listed.

 

[Constance]

I'm aware of that list. You used the phrase 'these problems', indicating that you were making some kind of statement about (or some reference to) the questions raised in your post, i.e.:

These questions now became "easy."

Additionally, I can't make any sense of the rest of what you write in the part of your post I quoted.

 

[Soupie]

I'm aware of that list. You used the phrase 'these problems', indicating that you were making some kind of statement about (or some reference to) the questions raised in your post, i.e.:

No, I used the phrase "these questions." It was in reference to the mind-body problem, ie, how can matter have mind.

Additionally, I can't make any sense of the rest of what you write in the part of your post I quoted.

The mind-body problem and the hard problem, while related, are distinct problems.

We can now conceive how matter can think, we still can't conceive how or why this thinking can be conscious.

 

[Constance]

Soupie, I think I've come across a philosopher or two that might be to your taste. Start with this blog and give it a try:

[url="https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/"]Larval Subjects . .[/URL]

 

[smcder]

@Constance
1. Neither answer to a) nor b) would give us any incling as to why I am me whilst you are you... just to make that clear.
2. Chalmers baptised the hard problem the Hard Problem by his definition of it. That definition is the Hard Problem. You can agree, disagree or disprove, but you cannot redefine it.

From Strawson's article:

"These are crude measures, but they’re significant. There was, certainly, an explosion of interest in the problem of consciousness outside the philosophy world, as Chalmers’s use of the phrase “the hard problem” became famous.

This was a great thing, but there was no important new idea, as David Papineau observed in his review of The Conscious Mind in the TLS (June 21, 1996). It’s unfortunate that the beautiful history of this debate has been lost

(many now write as if the “hard problem” of consciousness was discovered by Chalmers),

not just because it’s fascinating, but because almost all the best – most vivid, insightful – work lies in the further past. The “astonishing hypothesis” was the daily bread of the eighteenth-century French materialists and nineteenth-century German materialists. “That matter thinks [is conscious] is a fact”, the Italian Giacomo Leopardi wrote in 1827."

So you'd want to be sure that Chalmer's formulation covers all the historical ground ... maybe it does ... Strawson gives some examples of surprisingly modern definitions from the past ...

I'm still curious where so many have come up with the "why am I me" definition ... haven't seen it yet in Strawson's article..,

at any rate I'm wondering if you'd be better off not even referring to the hard problem?

 

[smcder]

This may be where some have connected "Why Am I David Chalmers and Not You" to the hard problem:

P85 the Conscious Mind:

The Conscious Mind : In Search of a Fundamental Theory: In Search of a ... - David J. Chalmers Assistant Professor of Philosophy University of Arizona - Google Books

We could just email him and ask.

 

[Constance]

Which reminds me, I am assuming you have had an email forwarded to you and soupie from Steve. Let me know if you have not.

Have not as yet received the emailed article.

 

[smcder]

Short video on Continental/Analytic philosophy:

Reflects differences in approaches on this thread ... his remarks on Continental approach and "disruption" being informative really clicked for me.

 

[Pharoah]

Setting aside the special pleading in the last sentence, I object to the claim that we must be hidebound in our thinking by C's words, which were inadequate in the first place to define the hard problem of consciousness.

Ok. Fair enough.

In 'The Conscious Mind : In Search of a Fundamental Theory:'
Chalmers writes:
"…while an explanation of consciousness might yield an explanation of “points of view” in general, it is hard to see how it could explain why a seemingly arbitrary one of those points of view is mine, unless solipsism is true." [italics in original]

This quote expresses my view that consciousness can be explained but that the explanation would not resolve the mind-body problem. There is a distinction.

So when he is saying 'the hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience', he is not saying... which is also the hard problem of mind(/body).

Inevitably, when other people think about the mind and about consciousness, they miss certain distinctions...

What do you think?

 

[smcder]

Ok. Fair enough.

In 'The Conscious Mind : In Search of a Fundamental Theory:'
Chalmers writes:
"…while an explanation of consciousness might yield an explanation of “points of view” in general, it is hard to see how it could explain why a seemingly arbitrary one of those points of view is mine, unless solipsism is true." [italics in original]

This quote expresses my view that consciousness can be explained but that the explanation would not resolve the mind-body problem. There is a distinction.

So when he is saying 'the hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience', he is not saying... which is also the hard problem of mind(/body).

Inevitably, when other people think about the mind and about consciousness, they miss certain distinctions...

What do you think?

Email Chalmers and ask him.

 

[smcder]

Hard Problem of Consciousness | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

See Stating The Problem
a, b and c

 

[smcder]

Ok. Fair enough.

In 'The Conscious Mind : In Search of a Fundamental Theory:'
Chalmers writes:
"…while an explanation of consciousness might yield an explanation of “points of view” in general, it is hard to see how it could explain why a seemingly arbitrary one of those points of view is mine, unless solipsism is true." [italics in original]

This quote expresses my view that consciousness can be explained but that the explanation would not resolve the mind-body problem. There is a distinction.

So when he is saying 'the hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience', he is not saying... which is also the hard problem of mind(/body).

Inevitably, when other people think about the mind and about consciousness, they miss certain distinctions...

What do you think?

Here's the full context:

https://books.google.com/books?id=0...&sa=X&ei=BiP7VMLbJsWMNtfUgsgB&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA

Let's see the explanation for consciousness ... Question three?

"Inevitably, when other people think about the mind and about consciousness, they miss certain distinctions..."

Other people who? Any one person will probably miss certain distinctions - or dismiss or ignore them.

 

[smcder]

Where are the zombies? - Kar Y. Lee, Ph.D. - Google Books

A list of all the puzzles.

 

[smcder]

See if this sounds familiar, very familiar:

Why am I, me? And you, you? | Sciforums

 

[smcder]

Google

"Hard problem" "why am I me"

Lots of folks discussing one in terms of the other:

Why Am I Me and Not Someone Else.

Haven't been able to read this in full on phone .

 

[smcder]

@Pharoah

How do we best get to your solution of Chalmer's hard problem? Finish the 21 questions?

In the meantime I would like to go back to some of the links @Constance has recently posted.

 

[smcder]

I'll come back to these links:

Why I am me, and not someone else?: Philosophy Forums

RENEGADE TRADS: The (Long) Hard Problem of Consciousness, or: On the Nature of Spirit (and Existence Itself!)

 

[Soupie]

See if this sounds familiar, very familiar:

Why am I, me? And you, you? | Sciforums

I'll read this article asap, but in the meantime, can you outline this problem for me? I read the abstract of the above paper and it doesn't make sense to me.

The author says "I can imagine being someone else."

Haha, ok, then you would be someone else... But you would still be you, right? Albeit a different you. You'd still be you though. In other words, I could be my dad and my dad could be me, but then that would just mean I am my dad and he is me.

The only way this question makes sense is if we assume dualism. If it's a question of "why is my incarnate mind attached to this carnate body, " then that makes sense.

However, if one assumes mind-body identity, then the question is moot. Then as you said Smcder, it becomes question of why anything is anything. Why is my phone my phone? Why is my arm my arm? Why is my mom my mom? There seem to be very practical answers to those questions.

Again, I'm not sure why a non-dualist such as @Pharoah would struggle with this question. Although Pharoah's has noted in the past that HCT is compatible with dualism and monism.

So it seems Pharoah's is open to the fact that some aspect of the mind may be incarnate or non-physical.

 

[smcder]

That might refer merely to your experience of your current weather conditions, but it likely signifies more. In either case, here's a poem by Stevens to contemplate while your feeling the chill:


The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.


I think we're going to have to read Deleuze, not only to interpret that poem but to continue in our exploration of consciousness as informed by phenomenology and post-phenomenological Continental Thought. It seems the best place to start reading Deleuze is with Difference and Repetition. I've located a few pages of that book , available at Google Books, that are enlightening: Follow this link:

Difference and Repetition - Gilles Deleuze - Google Books

This will take you either to three extracts from the book obtained by searching by the name Merleau-Ponty, or directly to the second extract, going to page 77. Scroll up a few pages for orientation and then read pages 77-80, if you will. I am interested in what you, @Pharoah, and @Soupie think of this.

Are you relating the discussion of problems and ideas (from the first link, foot note to the hard problem? ... oops, I followed your link again to get the foot note # for reference but this time I can't seem to preview the material, it says "no preview available" ... strange because I saw long list of footnotes before ... ? Anyway, here is a quote:

".. the undetermined is not a simple imperfection in our knowledge or a lack in the object: it is a perfectly positive, objective structure which acts as a focus or horizon within perception."

The phenomenology of the hard problem? Of aporia? (just thinking out loud)

Another thing that struck me is:

I shall not here dwell upon the service which philosophy has done to human reason through the laborious efforts of its criticism, granting even that in the end it should turn out to be merely negative; something more will be said on this point in the next section.

[651] But I may at once reply: Do you really require that a mode of knowledge which concerns all men [652] should transcend the common understanding, and should only be revealed to you by philosophers? Precisely what you find fault with is the best confirmation of the correctness of the above assertions. For we have thereby revealed to us, what could not at the start have been foreseen,

namely, that in matters which concern all men without distinction nature is not guilty of any partial distribution of her gifts,

and that in regard to the essential ends of human nature the highest philosophy cannot advance further than is possible under the guidance which nature has bestowed even upon the most ordinary understanding. - Kant

Now what does this mean?

There is this explanation:

"One final implication of Kant's philosophy is that its insistence on an area of necessary human ignorance keeps the philosopher humble. This might seem surprising, especially for those of you who have read some of Kant's own writing, since Kant was certainly not ignorant about the
greatness of his own achievement! For on several occasions he proudly explained why his system is superior to those of all past philosophers.
But my point here is that, whereas most philosophers' ideas are based on the assumption that philosophers have access to some kind of special knowledge to which the man on the street is blind, Kant's philosophy puts philosophers in general on an even par with non- philosophers when it comes to their ability to gain knowledge about the most basic metaphysical issues. Because Kant used such complicated terminology to express his ideas, this implication of his philosophy is often overlooked, even by those who spend years studying his writings. Yet Kant stated this "humiliating" aspect of his Critical system clearly enough on several occasions. One of the best examples, near the end of the first Critique (pp. 651-2), is worth quoting in full:

So, humility as a philosophical tool, arrogance as an intellectual fault.

namely, that in matters which concern all men without distinction nature is not guilty of any partial distribution of her gifts,

Kant's philosophy puts philosophers in general on an even par with non- philosophers when it comes to their ability to gain knowledge about the most basic metaphysical issues.