What is the Hard Problem, Really?

Philosophy
1

I’m putting this in the Philosophy section, but as I’ll show, it crosses over to science and even pop culture. One of the difficulties of discussing it is semantics. The IEP helps with that.

It appears that even a complete specification of a creature in physical terms leaves unanswered the question of whether or not the creature is conscious. And it seems that we can easily conceive of creatures just like us physically and functionally that nonetheless lack consciousness. This indicates that a physical explanation of consciousness is fundamentally incomplete: it leaves out what it is like to be the subject, for the subject. There seems to be an unbridgeable explanatory gap between the physical world and consciousness. All these factors make the hard problem hard.

To argue for consciousness existing in simpler life forms or even at a cellular or near cellular level doesn’t solve the problem for me. Demonstrations of worms or roots appearing to decide to turn one direction or another don’t illuminate the mechanisms in those organisms that create them feeling that they made a decision. Even if it is the same chemical and physical forces that lead me to create something I call “artistic”, the nature of that chemistry and force is still left unexplained. The question remains;

What makes the hard problem hard and almost unique is that it goes beyond problems about the performance of functions. To see this, note that even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience—perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report—there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?

Rather than attempt to sort out Scientific Reduction, I’ll refer to section 4.4.2 there. And, I acknowledge that reductionism can focus too much on the details and miss the complexity of the whole that arises from the details. However that doesn’t relieve those who claim there is only the “easy problem” of consciousness from doing some heavy lifting to get from lower-level phenomena to the answer.

Since they retain their grip on philosophers, scientists, and lay-people alike, we can conclude that no functional characterization is available. But then the first premise of a reductive explanation cannot be properly formulated, and reductive explanation fails.

Perhaps, the “answer” or the “goal” is where clarity is needed, not unlike the question that was not properly formulated in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. We have not defined the mechanisms that create gravity, but we know it is a force and we can use it to land things on distant planets. If we have a formula that explains consciousness or can point out the parts that create it, does that bring us closer to caring about the future of life here on Earth?

2

No time,

The point is that it requires the entire living being engaged with the reality of the moment to feel. matter pushing against matter. What’s missing.

Energy and how biology has learn to manipulate it, is the magic. The moment can be no other way.

Not a single one of those question or observations addressed try reality of the moment and living biological being be a part of it. The difference between a postcard and being there. Feels to me a no brainer.

And I have more than opinions and words, and arguments from credulity.

3

I understand busy. I can’t really grapple with your comments if they are jumbled like this one, not to mention dismissive. It seems you might be arguing with this part of the IEP, discussing the first premise of scientific reductionism:

The first presents a functional analysis of the target phenomenon, which fully characterizes the target in terms of its functional role.

It’s in this entry, and it’s a valid critique that if it doesn’t apply that doesn’t mean we can’t still apply scientific reasoning. Reductionism is only one way of solving a scientific question, and it has its limits. As my last quote above says, the reductive explanation cannot be properly formulated. So, trying to move on from that, what do we do?

This offers some thoughts, but not much specifics. As it says, we may be looking at a phenomena like a cloud instead of one that fits the reductionist model, like a clock. We can’t break it down and then find the mechanisms, it has to be viewed as a whole. Consciousness is mentioned specifically in the list of “other phenomenon where an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own; properties or behaviors that emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole.” And it says these are important concerns to humanity. So, like me, it neither dismisses the science or the search for answers, nor does it give a complete answer.

It concludes,

We need to continue to work within the constraints of reality, as revealed by scientific thinking, while we continue to explore all that has meaning in life along with the meaning of life.

4

Oh the irony of you preaching to me about dismissiveness!

Let me be simpler, …

Please try to better define this “explanatory gap” that sober biological science is failing to get at? Specifically what is missing?

Because all I see hand waving.

5

If I could define it, it wouldn’t be a gap. You’re the one who says there isn’t one.

Here’s a gap

[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:1, topic:11866”]

The first thing that tells me is that our body must possess enormous amounts of knowledge, agendas, and strategies totally beyond what my/our introspective mind can possibly comprehend.

[/quote]

Or, those pesky details

[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:1, topic:11866”]

What is that even asking? The experience that triggers the thought, the trigger itself, beyond what’s already diagramed? I don’t understand what’s missing, beyond more details.

[/quote]

Or the magic. It’s ironic here how you describe the problem of trying to do scientific reductionism and lose sight of the relevant components. That’s what I just described. That is the hard problem.

[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:1, topic:11866”]

It is a thing of awesome complexity, where much of the magic happens down in the microscopic world. The irony being the more we zoom in on one aspect of this spectacle (that is, our thought process), the more we lose sight of other equally relevant components.

[/quote]

Or here, what’s the something?

[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:1, topic:11866”]

Evidence for “consciousness” is found in single-celled creatures, indicating that something between awareness and consciousness permeates through all the cells of our body

[/quote]

Or this spectrum. I don’t know of one either. Maybe there isn’t one because it would have gaps

[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:1, topic:11866”]

I don’t know of anyone who’s done a simple, but informed spectrum, defining the various plateaus of consciousness — from the awareness in single-celled creatures, on up the biological complexity scale, to arrive at our fantastic memory and introspective consciousness.

[/quote]

6

You don’t need to get silly.

Are you saying philosophers don’t have any duty to define the gap they claim exists?

Not to mention that still doesn’t justify why evolutionary biology is persona non grata at philosophical discussion regarding the supposed question of the reality of our consciousness. Why because grand notions and panpsychism is so much more interesting than figuring out how our body produces our feelings?

I mean is that best philosophers can do is wonder at the “How it feels like something, to be something.” And people are suppose to be satisfied with calling that a mystery, rather than an argument from incredulity - which is what it sounds like to me, especially against the backdrop of all scientists of late have been adding to our understanding.

No wonder humanity has turned out to be such a mess.

Define where you perceive an evidence gap at this point in scientific understanding?

7

This is the something according to Dr. Nick Lane and many other researchers:

… Not only is electron transfer to oxygen implicated in consciousness, but the mitochondrial membrane potential is twice that of neural cell membranes, and the convoluted folds of the mitochondrial inner membrane (the cristae) offer a much larger total surface area of charged membrane.

¶9 Moving charge necessarily generates an electromagnetic field, and the mitochondria clearly do so – not only with the transfer of electrons to oxygen but even more dramatically in the circuit of protons across the membrane, looping from the respiratory complexes to the ATP synthase and back round. … Doug Wallace …

… there’s evidence that electrical fields can and do play a direct role in brain function.

…

If so, the key point is that the electrical fields generated by neurons do have motive force**. They are not too weak to change things physically, as long assumed.**

{From here Lane gets into more detail about what’s known and unknown about the source of EEG emanations.}

¶10 This kind of statement might have pushed the boundaries of respectable science until recently, but the extraordinary work of the developmental biologist Michael Levin and others shows that electric fields can control the development of small animals such as the flat worms known as planarians.

I suspect that twenty-first-century biology will be the biology of fields.

So, let’s take it to be possible that the electrical fields generated by mitochondria do have motive force.

What can that tell us about consciousness? …

Well for a start, it might tell us why the brain is so hooked on glucose as a fuel. …

{Thereafter, another dive into metabolism, calcium flux, pyruvate dehydrogenase, Kreps cycle flux, ATP synthesis - this is stuff that powers work, constructing and transforming molecules. Resulting in varying electrical field that create a “unifying force to bind the disperate flowing molecules of a cell together to make a self with moods and feelings.”}

Plainly that powers work, but it also gives scope to the full dynamic range of mitochondrial membrane potential. To the full range of electrical fields. To the full music of the orchestra.

Until now, biology has tended to study the materials that make up the instruments.

The time has come to close our eyes and listen to the music.

I want to suggest to you that this music is the stuff of feeling, of emotion.

What unifies the whole? What coordinates it as a ‘self’?

Once you think about electrical fields, it is hard to imagine anything else.

But then we are faced with another problem. …

Why would electrical fields in mitochondria, generated by flux through the Krebs cycle, equate to the strivings of the self? …

{To learn more you’ll want to read Nick Lane’s The Vital Question}

{Interestingly, mitochondrial membrane’s electrical potential is the same as the plasma membrane of bacteria. This relates to the primal origin of Eukaryotic cells when they engulfed a foreign germ without digesting it.

Instead, a mutual arrangement was evolved, cell provided a home and resources while the mitochondria focuses on becoming a factor to produce fuel and, it turns out, much more.}

Lane asks, “Why would electrical fields in mitochondria, generated by flux through the Krebs cycle, equate to the strivings of the self?”

{Which circles right back around to ramification from mitochondria electrical fields and potentially influencing the entire cell, and beyond, to neighboring cells.}

¶12

{Tells us more mitochondria details covered in detail in Lane’s book “The Vital Question”, including the importance of the membrane separating inside from outside.}

¶13 “Let me give you an example of how important this membrane potential is to bacteria. …”

{ p.216 - I won’t be a spoiler on this story. Too interesting and well told to summarize.

Main character ocean bacteria under attack by bacteriophages, evolved strategies for group survival. For more, there’s The Vital Question}

¶14 I have long wondered if that collapsing membrane potential ‘feels’ like something to a bacterium.

More than anything else, the humming electrical potential on the membrane betokens the living force.

And if it feels like something for a bacterium to die, its living force sucked away, …

… “All operate through much the same mechanisms, collapsing electrical membrane potential to induce death. Presumably, there must also be some ‘pre-death’ state, where the living processes are tenuous.

Beyond that, membrane potential is needed for far more than the basics of ATP synthesis and CO2 fixation. It powers the bacterial flagellum, allowing cells to move around and seek better conditions, as well as pumping all manner of things in and out of cells, maintaining their homeostasis.

Most strikingly, bacteria need their membrane potential to find their own midpoint, to divide in two and generate offspring.

Nothing in biology is more sacred than reproduction, and the simplest form of reproduction does not happen without an electrical charge on the membrane.

All these states of living and dying are linked with electromagnetic fields.

Do they all feel different?

How could they not?

Metabolism and electromagnetic fields on the membranes bounding cells are intimately entwined and intrinsically meaningful.

These are the living states of cells, the stream of consciousness in its most elementary form.”

Now can you define the outline of what you perceive is missing?
Why the philosophical passion to keep our consciousness a mystical unknowable?

8

I defined it by quoting you. “Magic”, “something", “beyond what my/our introspective mind can possibly comprehend”. How are those not “gaps”?

I’ve pointed out how Lane and Solms come up short, by their own admission, but you keep saying I’m the problem.

9

It’s not me. In this post above, you keep saying, “go read the book” just when you get to where you should be the filling gap. The gap is not filled by another electrical field generated by mitochondria. It’s filled when this wondering:

can be replaced by demonstrable evidence. My saying I don’t see that evidence is not holding back the scientific community.

In the link you provide, Nick says, “Bluntly put, we do not know why life is the way it is.” I’ve never seen a quote from that says he has solved the mystery of consciousness. But, you keep referencing him as if he did.

10

Some new ideas.

I’ve been an atheist all my life until this idea just fell into my head one day and ever since I just can’t shake the idea. So I’m just going to try and put it as simply as possible since the concept is simple enough for everyone to understand.

It’s always bothered me that we’ve had the greatest minds in scientific and mathematical history all trying to work out the how’s and why’s of the universe and yet it seems we’re no closer to understanding the universe as a whole. Still so many paradox’s remain after all these years of scientific research. As beautiful as mathematics is there seems to be something that we’ve been misunderstanding in the fundamentals. (You can be so blinded by the beauty of something it becomes impossible to see beyond it.) This, to me, would explain why we still have not come to some kind of consensus that actually makes sense.

For me patterns are important, I see some simple patterns accruing all over nature in various forms but the one I see the most is it usually takes 2 to create 1. My idea is based on this. Mathematics is A language of nature and not THE. There’s 2 languages fused together. Pure mathematics to me seems very linear and beautifully symmetrical so curves, spirals and circles are not native to pure mathematics.(They just seem to not be needed in such a system. Do we really need odd numbers, can’t we just invent a symbol that means in between and only use even numbers ) Actually just think Ying and Yang and you’re pretty close. The other language is an idea with in mathematics that we call Prime. (All primes are odd) The core of the whole idea is that matter is prime matter with an axiom that says nature can not replicate prime matter. In order to replicate prime matter you would first have to measure it to 100% accuracy, which we know is impossible. In this idea the only place a prime can exist is within a prime , 3 dimensions fits nicely. So take a guess what I think dark matter is and also what happens to matter when it falls into a black hole. The really interesting things start to happen when you exchange the word Prime with the word God imo. One God who sacrificed herself and combined with mathematics in a final act of desperation and hope. Why do we cross our fingers again? The human male chromosome is endangered , on earth as it was in heaven is a better translation. All people start as female and if you now consider that what makes a person is a body and a mind, you see that the 2 can act independently but are always combined into one entity. You become a man in every sense of the word. What would an intelligent being do if the males disappeared? It’s not a stretch to imagine they would experiment with the animals around them, of them the most intelligent would be the best hope say elephants and octopus’s ect. It does not take long to end up at the Hindu gods, go a little further and the desperation should become clear. The mutations would become so bad they would have become shadows of their former selves, if this was the case you would expect to see an anomaly that would have the potential to appear in everyone. There’s a type of cancer for every kind of cell. Also within this whole context if you really wanted to praise God walking in a circle around a cube is probably a good idea. Also consider God would know pain suffering and self sacrifice since God would be all things. you are all that’s left of our God. All life becomes God reborn and the rest, unfortunately , just corpse. (A lot of rockers have long hair…..just saying.) But we have reached a point in our evolution where intelligent males have evolved naturally with out interference, It didn’t work out great for them last time. (The Pagans are pretty close if you just invert the idea of the green man.) You end up at a God that is all knowing and all things but unable to change or alter nature. This would give intelligent life purpose, and if nature is all intelligent then at the very moment (or close to it) of the big bang nature would know instantly where and when would be her best shot. “Where is everyone.” We are all that god once was is a better description. God is in a constant battle with pure mathematics, 2 opposing sides that create a zero sum game, which we call the balance of nature, It’s more an evenly matched contest, think virus’s and cells. The information in our genes actually says it’s ok to sacrifice our selves under 2 conditions, to protect our own or to destroy others. (Unless you’re Jesus and others who transcended their genes and sacrificed themselves for an idea and not because their genes told them too, and intern become true sons of God, as she ultimately did the same) This explains the idea of racism to me, It’s a feeling that bubbles up , in regular intervals as it happens, that we attach stories to to justify acting upon them feelings. “They come over here, stealing our jobs……ect” Because warfare is a sure fire way to reach intelligence. How do you get a species that are fundamentally the same to fight each other for long enough to reach the ultimate intelligence, to infer indirectly the meaning of life from just that which is around them. We are the first living thing to ever fully understand their own reproductive cycle, to develop a method of observing and describing the universe around us. We also have a super power, we can create more of God. We can take a seed, give it everything we now know it needs and grow more of her. Or we can carry on acting like animals only guided by instincts and feelings, that ultimately were the only way nature has to make stupid animals do anything s at certain times. Until now, I believe that the human consciousness can best be explained in an analogy. Think about the white light coming from the sun and passing through a prism until the colours separate out. Now invert the idea, The light of God is a rainbow and radiates through out the whole universe until it interacts with our, now sophisticated brains. Humans can be a lot like other animals consciously and socially and yet be very different. We can only be one colour at a time, colour being another word for mood. Inside our prism there’s a whole climate contained inside, the earths climate is one of the only things I can see comparable to the complexities of the human brain. In this case the climate is made up of a jumble of things, left over evolutionary defense mechanisms, the impact of ones surroundings, the information in our genes and not to mention love. The best way I can see to describe how we move between “moods” is the electron cloud around and atom. We have moods that want to jump to others, sadness to anger or happiness to loving. The key is to feed the good and starve the bad, (Best argument for prayer there is.) we are all the same in varying amounts or variations on a theme but we are not static, we have the ability to change and each of us do everyday in different ways. No body is an individual, we all share a rainbow of personalities that our brains constantly make up stories to let us know what all the others are doing, we are all like this, we all share the same rainbow its only our brains that are different. It’s also like we’re constantly searching for something we just don’t know what we’re look for. This becomes amplified with the invention of the internet with us doom scrolling, constantly taking in information in a hope finding something significant. There’s something in us that wants to beak these cycles in our nature, something that tells us “I wonder whats over there? Let’s go have a look.” In our evolutionary history there were 2 types of people, those who came to an obstacle and stopped, settled, made a life there on the edge and those who found a way to over come that obstacle, find new lands and new opportunities. I believe we are again at that point, the obstacle of overwhelming complexity now lays before us. Can we now see the order through the chaos, can we not be blinded by beauty to not be able to see through it. For me doing more for others than you do for yourself but not taking any more than you need is all you really need to live by. Nature provides everything for free all she asks is that we protect her and now more than ever, from our selves. Honestly I can talk and talk and talk about nature until the cows come home but I’ve got a painting to finish so this is all i feel like explaining right now. When in Rome.

11

Oh okay then. Thanks

12

You’re playing games.

Nick Lane is a serious scientist - don’t pretend he’s going to be anything but extremely conservative in his utterance. Go read his epilogue Self and spend a little time with it. Nick is not a philosopher, with license to say anything that his imagination can conjure up.

Plus you are ignoring my number one complain is about philosophers doing next to nothing to explicitly acknowledge and address today’s hard won biological realities about the origin of our consciousness and our bodies.

**All you’re doing is playing defensive end for the status quo - that status quo would be the current hopeless circle jerk around the Hard Problem, or the “Does a bat feel like a bat?” challenge. That sort of self indulgence hubristic bellybutton gazing, needs to give way to striving to understand what our observations about Earth and ourselves has been showing us.

{Well okay nothing “needs” to happen, and then we die.}

13

I wouldn’t expect anything less. That’s not playing games, that’s letting the data determine your conclusion. Why you want to interpret it so liberally and arrive at a conclusion you prefer, I have no idea. And, beyond that, you want me to follow you. I don’t cheerlead for Lane or for Chalmers.

14

Sure, although seems to me we create our own God already, it would be nice if we could take responsibility for God, but that doesn’t seem on the table.

I would suggest a lot of people earn a lot of money convincing people scientists know very little.

It offends me personally because I was born in 1955 in circumstances that had me aware of science from an early age, and I’ve spent the past seven decades a passionate enthusiast, soaking up and thinking about science news.

The beauty in my timing was that I learned about the amazing march of science during a most amazing period, because I was made aware of countless questions humanity had always been asking ourselves. I was inoculated with that ageless curiosity, that we’ve lost over the past few decades.

I had a deep appreciation watching as those question were answered one by one, with evolving stories a fun as the best who-done-it. Ever more clarity in the wonderful stories of Earth’s complexity, interwoven folds within folds of constructive harmonic poetry in motion. And so on.

I’m in awe, I have a feel for the Earth below my feet, the planets that orbit above my head, human history and origins, animal stories, understanding my body to perviously never imagined, utterly mind boggling detail. My mindscape even encompasses the past billions of years of Earth’s evolution, and other off horizons on many levels and in many directions. All build on scientific understand. Sure provisional understanding, still for me it’s better than our human unbounded florid imaginations, and our penchant towards talk for talk.

Unfortunately, I live in a world where people are conditioned that too much is never enough, the moment the surprise wears off, the latest wonder is forgotten, as we panic for the next greatest thing ever. Nothing is ever enough, and there’s no time to stop to enjoy and think about what one has.

I thank the universe I got off that treadmill rather early.

It all started with a speck of dust that wanted to be more, but that’s for another time.

The wonder is all around us, even as we are destroying it as fast as our gluttony can manage. What will you be present to.

Cheers.

That got a bit confusing and jumbled, but plenty said that I could agree with, though in my own way.

“A painting to finish” sure sounds more fun, than my occasional:
Some painting to finish." :wink:

Enjoy.

15

What?
That our physical body is fully capable of creating our sense of experience out of its biological construction ?

The evidence is speaking for itself.

Although it requires an interest in becoming familiar with the available evidence, TLDR, isn’t much of a justification for attacking what I’m sharing.

Especially (and this is what irks me and demands I keep pushing back) when you deliberately misquote me, then ignore my corrections - add to that, how you keep muddling up the difference between philosophy and data driven science.

Which is an excellent example of why a little more attention to the Physical Reality ~ Human Mind is called for.

. . . and why philosophy has turned into a failure when it ignores modern biological understanding.

16

I didn’t do that

We have a valid difference of opinion on those terms. You didn’t get to say I “muddle”.

You’ve been doing this for over a year. I say something, you don’t really respond to it. Later you rephrase it completely different than I did. I have agreed 100 times that our sense of self, our minds, emerge from our physical body. I’ve made my own posts that rest on that principle. I’m not going to untwist your comment any more than that

17

Okay, so why you so upset?
Once again, what I’m writing isn’t about you.

This is about the process of learning, thinking, being able to explain important ideas that are way too neglected., and it’s taken years, decades of effort and I’m finally getting to where I’ve been trying to get.
.
As they say, rewrite, think, rewrite, think, rewrite, think, rewrite, think, . . .
I don’t want to argue about what I’m doing, I want to discuss the actually ideas I’m striving to define.

I have no idea what you think, just that you spend a lot of time bitching at me, and little time actually dealing with the writings I’ve been sharing.
Repeated telling me and others what I’m saying, and getting fundamental stuff backwards, and muddled. Then you resent me for correcting you. That’s the way it feels from this side. No biggy …

.

(from Considering Things Science Can Explain About Consciousness) Parting Thoughts

All of us look at this information through our own eyes, filtered through our own experiences and learning. That’s why working in a bubble isn’t good. We have our bandwidths and need others to help us expand them. Fortunately, I’ve had some damned good authors for company, still, discussion would be fun.

These things matter, especially in these weird days heading at us. For starters we need to get a healthier grip on who ‘ me, myself & I’ actually is. I firmly believe only through a serious personal connect to the Evolutionary process and learning about how our bodies were developed, do we have a chance of getting a bit of a foundation under one’s Self . While rediscovering our personal link to Earth.

At least it has worked for me, the Earth Centrist. What’s really cool is that it is all based on bona fide scientific evidence and findings. No need for magical thinking. What it needs is a sober new found respect for Earth and her systems. The answers are in Evolution and science, and every season brings new lessons for us to add into our respective mindscapes.
It’s the process of building new stuff on top of old stuff, along with repurposing old stuff and ditching useless stuff. That is how we came to be. Creating a heritage, to hand down as a legacy, for your child to take that heritage and in turn, turn it into a legacy to pass on to the next generation.**

As they say, what will you be present to?

18

I’m not upset.

I don’t bitch.

19

Wonderful.

That is good to know.

And I believe I’m doing a good job of rationally explaining myself and opening up my ideas to rational good-faith interrogation.