CONSCIOUSNESS POLL: Three difficult problems - which one is least difficult?

Philosophy of Mind
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Which one of the following options is LEAST difficult?

It seems to me most theories of consciousness has to face one of these problems - if yours doesn’t do let us know. Even if that’s the case, please offer an opinion anyway on which of these three is least difficult.

  • The traditional ‘hard problem’ - the move from non-conscious to conscious
  • Panpsychism’s combination problem - getting big units of consciousness from smaller ones
  • Idealism/cosmopsychism’s de-combination problem - getting many private units of consciousness from one big one
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Imho, they are equally “difficult” because all three are pseudo-problems (i.e. “consciousness” remains an undefined – merely subjective – property).

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Thanks, could you give another example of an undefined subjective property?

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Bless you. Here goes.

Atoms aren’t conscious. The universe isn’t conscious. Animals or machines whose thought processes (e.g. brain shivers) cause them to confuse those processes with words and pictures are conscious.

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Another merely subjective, or vague, notion is “spirit”.

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Righto, so my guess is that you think the traditional hard problem is the least problematic of those three, as the other two are based upon false assumptions?

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In my view they are not “difficult” problems. They are impossible to solve and there reasons why.

There is an ambiguity on the meaning of consciousness at the very start. We can identify this ambiguity as medical vs philosophical consciousness.

Medical consciousness is when a patient reacts, shows behaviours that are related to the environment and to their body. For example, a doctor can ask a patient “Do you know where you are?” If the patient answers correctly, for example “I am at the hospital”, the patient is considered conscious. The problem with this kind of consciousness is that, being based on science, since medicine, doctors and hospitals are based on science, it is a mechanical concept. According to this definition, we can say that today all our smartphones have consciousness, because they have sensors and other advanced features, especially now with AI, that make them possible to give the correct answer “I am at the hospital”. Despite this evident flaw inherent in this concept, it is still in the background of many discussions on consciousness, making them very confused and difficult to deal with.

The philosophical concept is confused as well, because it mixes the “medical” concept with another concept that is connected to art, humanities and personal experience.

This means, in my opinion, that, if we want some philosophical clarity about consciousness, we need, once we have identified the medical meaning, to isolate the other one, that is the one connected to art, humanities and personal experience.

There is another ambiguity in this context, that is the ambiguity of the meaning of “subjectivity”. It reflects the ambiguity I have described about consciousness.

A simple way to understand subjectivity is temperature: feeling cold or hot is subjective, saying 36 Celsius degrees is objective. The problem with this distinction is that even feeling cold can be identified as objective, thanks to relativity. You feel cold because your natural body temperature is around 36 Celsius degrees, while external temperature is now 5 Celsius degrees. With this criterion, whenever we talk about any kind of subjectivity, it can always be reduced to objectivity. This false subjectivity, that actually is still objectivity, creates confusion in discussions.

There is another meaning of subjectivity, that is related, like consciousness, to art, humanities and personal experience. In this context consciousness and subjectivity are almost coincident. This particular meaning of consciousness and subjectivity exists just because some people have talked about it, but it is impossible to get any objective evidence of its existence. In this sense it is like ghosts, gods, spirits, angels and anything magic and supernatural: they might exist, just because there are people who talk about them, but we have no evidence of them.

I think that there is a difference between, on one side, the human experience of subjectivity and consciousness and, on the other side, ghosts, although we haven’t objective evidence of this difference either. We feel like we can feel our personal experience of self consciousness and subjectivity before any reflection, before any reasoning. On the contrary, talking about ghosts, gods, spirits, angels and similar things needs some mental elaboration, some reasoning to build the concept of them.

This makes me think that this other meaning of consciousness and subjectivity, that is related to art, humanities and personal experience, is true subjectivity. It is true because the other one, as I said, can be reduced to objectivity.

This true subjecivity, since it is pure subjectivity, is absolutely impossible to objectify. This is the reason why it is impossible to find evidence of it and even to talk about it. When we try to talk about it, as I am doing now, we can only rely in a hope that others will be able, successful, at finding in themselves a similar experience.

This impossibility to objectify is a limit, but is as also, actually, a tremendous resource. It is a limit, because we will never be able to “touch” or “see” each other’s experience of subjectivity. We can only trust, hope, believe in the existence of it in us and in other people. But it is also a tremendous resource, because it is what makes you a non-object, which mean a person, with a particular dignity. The moment you work on this kind of consciousness, try to cultivate it, to have some intuitive understanding of it, try to share it, listen to it, you are cultivating your being a human, a being that can hope to be “not-just-an-object”. The moment you just do a job, work like a machine, or even do philosophy with a mind centered on objectivity, you are being an object, just an object, that is on the way of loosing any higher dignity, humanity, empathy, growth, hope, art. That moment you are just a machine.

This means that the moment you try to understand subjectivity asking “What is it? How does it work? What makes it exist?” you are a machine that tries to objectify everything. But, as I said, true subjectivity is impossible to objectify, so that you will always feel that it is a “hard” problem. It escapes, and always will, your attempt to imprison it into a cage of concepts and reasoning.

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Agree! Robert Lawrence Kuhn, architect of the Closer to Truth series of interviews, published a major work last year on 37 (I think it was) ‘theories of consciousness’ (details) which, while interesting in many ways, also shows the shortcomings of what is really a pseudo-scientific enterprise. As you point out, subjective consciousness is never something we’re outside of or other to, so is never an object of analysis in a way that the objects of science can be.

But then, this is something that is well understood in other domains of discourse particularly phenomenology and existentialism. And also in many forms of Eastern philosophy with their emphasis on insight and self-awareness.

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In the philosophy of mind this is often referred to as ‘phenomenal consciousness’ and is the sense intended in the OP.

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I think that, by talking about “phenomenal consciousness”, we build just another disguised objectification, pretending that we are talking about true subjectivity, while actually we are talking about just another object, another objectivity.

Language is made of shared meanings. If a meaning is not shared, but belongs to, or is understood by, just one person in the world, then that meaning cannot be carried by a word.

What I mean by “true subjectivity” is your experience of having an “I” that is unique in the world. We all in the world are able to say “I”, so that we think each of us has an “I”. However, we can say this only by imagining ourselves outside ourselves, like me imagining how you see me. This way I understand that, to you, I am just another one. But to me I am not just another one, because I feel my subjectivity from my inside, while other people do not feel my subjectivity from my inside. This makes me feel unique in the world. I guess that something similar must happen to you as well, so I imagine that you must be able as well to feel yourself unique in the world. However, I think it would be wrong to deduce from this that we are a lot of uniquenesses in the world. This would be again the result of putting ourselves in a perspective that is outside ourselves, it would be another objectification of all uniquenesses.

Since my feeling myself is unique in the world, there cannot be a word to identify it, not a definition, not a description. This means that the expression “phenomenal consciousness”, since it refers to what we all share in our feeling ourselves, doesn’t refer to true subjectivity. True subjectivity is only when we keep in mind that we are talking about something that, being truly unique, is impossible to be carried by words. Whenever we rely on words and we leave aside, ignore or forget the inexpressible absolute unique experience of single persons, we are talking again about just another objectification, not about true subjectivity.

If the shared meaning is the sense intended in the OP, then I think that what the OP is talking about, as well as the expression “phenomenal consciousness” talks about, is not true cosciousness, but just what I called “medical consciousness”, which is objectified consciousness, objectified subjectivity.

Perhaps this situation can be made clearer by considering a kind of turns in talking. Let’s consider that now it is my turn. Well, in this moment I am the only person who can talk properly about my own subjectivity and my consciousness. You can’t, because, as soon as you would try to do it, you would objectify it. A shared talking about my consciousness cannot exist. If I talk about it, all other people must be ignored, they must be silent. The same applies you. You are the only person able to talk about your own consciousness. When you talk about it, I must be silent, not only with my mouth, but also, as much as possible, with my thinking. I must, as much as possible, just listen. It is similar to the chess game. When it is your turn, there is absolutely nothing that the other player can do, they can only wait.

We might consider that written conversation, since it drives our attention towards the content, the concepts, rather than the unique person who is speaking, is not experienced as an event, a unique event, like speaking is. Written conversation, including books, makes us forget the uniqueness of subjectivity.

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I can talk about your consciousness. I can’t know or experience what you experience, because I am not you. But I can refer to your consciousness successfully. Lets say I taste a banana. You can refer to my experience without yourself experiencing my tasting of the banana. The point you are at pains to make is exactly what gives rise to the problems. Consciousness can’t be shared. That gives rise to the traditional hard problem - because non-conscious objects are public and shared, and we have to somehow get subjectivity from that. Micro-psychists have lots of individual consciousnesses which don’t share, so how do many individuals become one? Cosmo-psychists have to somehow create an other from pure self-ness. It’s this privacy you point to that generates these philosophical difficulties.

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If I, right now, pay attention to my consciousness, to my current ongoing experience of it, what I feel makes me easily, instantly think that you cannot not only experience my consciousness, but not even refer to it, not even talk about it. You can refer to the shared aspects only of my consciousness.

Also, I think that what is unique in my experience of my cosciousness is not completely disconnected from what is shared. For this reason, when you talk about the shared aspects of my consciousness, somehow you are also touching my unique consciousness. However, my unique consciousness keeps its uniqueness, that makes me 100% sure that you cannot absolutely talk about it. Even if you refer to my “inner experience of my unique consciousness, that I experience from my unique inner perspective”, actually this expression, since it is made of words, is language, it still refers to the inner experience of their unique consciousness that anybody can experience. But I am not just anybody to me. I am inevitably anybody to you, but inevitably not anybody to me.

As soon as we use words, we cannot but refer to what is shared. This means that actually the very word “unique” is itself contradictory, is an oxymoron. It is again another shared objectivity disguised as subjectivity, as ability to refer to uniqueness.

You think of my unique experience of consciousness after getting a concept of the word “unique”. But your concept of “unique” has been built upon a shared use of it. You think of me as a unique person after getting a concept of “unique person” that actually is a shared concept. In other words, it is completely impossible to you to think of me truly as a unique person. You cannot but objectify me. The moment you said “I can talk about your consciousness”, you have inevitably objectified me, despite your good intentions, about which I have no doubts. It is language that forces you to objectify me. In this sense, Sartre’s statement “Hell is other people” is tragically and deeply true and inescapable. Hell is other people because you have no way to think of me truly as a subject. Your only way to respect my subjectivity is to take yourself as a reference point and believe, imagine, that I must have some kind of uniqueness, of subjectivity, similar to the one you feel in yourself. Other than this belief, imagination, based on yourself, on a decision that you make, there is nothing you can do. Anything else will inevitably objectify me.

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Yes, other people are objects whose subjectivity is inferred, not experienced. I don’t think we disagree. We are insulated from one another. The nature, extent, and possibility, of this insulation interests me.

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It is the subject-object split that is coming under scrutiny here. I’m no philosopher so don’t put too much store in what I say, but I’ve reached the conclusion that it isn’t a rigid “split” at all. We are each subjects for ourselves and objects for each other, leading to a variant of dual aspect theory. What this yields is a relational network where external relations have been replaced with internal relations. But to conceive it as such is to believe you can adopt a “view from nowhere” upon the network, and there is no such vantage point, so all attempts at discerning an ontology eventually fail. We try to find somewhere solid to stand and survey our ontology as though it were something distinct from oneself (the subject, with the “metaphysically real world” rigidly separated from the subject), but the subject can’t remove itself from the network like that. So metaphysical realism is the culprit, and is the ground in which Chalmers’ “Hard Problem” germinates and flourishes.

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About a decade ago, I changed my mind from indirect (or kantian) realism to direct (or naive) realism.

Assuming direct realism, you get the following:

The experience is the object.

Qualia, or what the experience is like, is what the object is like under various conditions of observation.

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I totally agree. I think that it also depends on how we conceive metaphysics and how we deal with it. My idea of metaphysics is structures. Whenever we build mental structures, we build metaphysics. Whenever we use the verb “to be” we build structures, so we build metaphysics. Being this the situation, we cannot escape building metaphysics. We build metaphysics as soon as we start thinking. We can make a difference in how to deal with it.

If we treat metaphysics like a weapon to capture reality, gain control on it, encage it into our mental frames, to get conclusive, final, definitive ideas about what things are and how they work, then we are condemned to fail, because things and the world are not designed to be encaged in our thoughts and conceptions, actually they look like designed for the opposite, to escape any mental frame, to look contradictory, changing, challenging any thought. There are several reasons why things are like that. One reason is that our thoughts are part of them, so how can a part of something expect to encage the whole?

But we can use metaphysics as provisional mental instruments instead, with a much humbler attitude of playing with them, like toys, or temporary tools that seem to help our mind to go on in our pleasure of thinking and finding ways in our existence, instruments to listen to what happen in our life. This is the mental context how I conceive the dialectic relationship between subjectivity and objectivity.

Moreover, I conceive objectivity not from a realistic perspective, but from a subjective point of view. This means that, in my view, nothing is real or objective, but in my subjective experience there are a lot of things that I experience as if they were real and objective. I don’t think that a stone falling on my head is something real, but, in my subjective experience, such events force me to deal with them as if they were real, irresistibly objective. As such, they force be to behave like an object, to conceive myself like an object, to be an object. This is what happens when a stone is falling on me: it has the power to turn me into an object, force me to behave like an object and even think that I am an object. The moment the stone is falling on my head I cannot think of my self consciousness, my uniqueness, the mystery of me feeling as me. I am forced to just move away.

But there are other moments of rest, when life allows me to pay attention to my consciousness. I think that these moments are what allows me to be a non-object, a person, someone who has a dignity and is able to do things that are much better than just trying to encage the world, things like loving, being empathetic, building peace, justice, well being, generosity. I think that the starting point for these good things is our consciousness of being, each of us, a unique “I”.

In this situation I think that the best to do is to cultivate a continuous dialogue between subjectivity and objectivity. Objectivity doesn’t like this dialogue, it tries instead, continuously, to force me to be an object. However, there are moments when something more positive, something good is possible, which is a dialogue, rather than a fight, between subjectivity and objectivity.

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Can you give any details to your experience of your consciousness? I’m wondering what you mean.

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Self-objectification – the propensity to conceive oneself as nothing more than an object in the world, on the same level as all the other people that appear in one’s subjective world as objects. Relations become external, and in the ensuing metaphysical paradigm of physicalism, no place can be found for the subjective perspective from which the endeavor began. This is what Chalmers is highlighting with his Hard Problem – that physicalism is necessarily incomplete because it starts at the wrong place. It starts, not at the subjective perspective, but at an assumed “metaphysically real world,” – a world in which we can endeavor to take a “God’s-eye view” that will answer all of our questions, and that will allow us to “explain away” the subjective perspective. I’d be inclined to think it perverse if it weren’t for the fact that it’s a cognitive error we’re all destined to develop early in life, and that few ever question.

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My experience of my consciousness starts when I look at my body and I see that I can decide what to do with it. I move an arm, a finger, a foot, and I get surprised, thinking “Wow! Moving this arm is up to me! I can decide if and when I want to move it! I am the master of this body, this body is my turn in life, in this world!”

Then I realize that this works with my thoughts as well: “Wow! I can decide to think of a number, I can decide which one! I can decide what to think of!”

Then I think about my childhood, my babyhood, my memories of that distant past. This makes me think “How is that who was born from my mum that time was me? Billions of people are born continuosly in the world, were born in the past, how is that this one that I am mastering is now precisely me? Why did nature decide to make to exist precisely me this time? Why is this consciousness not just another consciousness in the world, but the one that now I experience directly, the only one in the world that to me is really alive?”

Then, but only then, I realize that all these thoughts can also be the thoughts of each other person as well. However, in my case they are my room, the dimension I live in, the perspective from which I consider other people.

Sometimes I asked other people about feeling the same, but I realized that, even when they say “Yes”, I am still unique to me, I am the only one who perceives everything from inside me. It is impossible to me to think that I am just another one. My perspective is the only one in the world that I experience in first person, live, current, ongoing. This makes me even think that I must have a unique role in this world. It is the external perspective that reminds me that I am just another one, tells me that, from that external perspective, I have no way to show others the difference that I feel in myself. But, from inside me, it is impossible to ignore this total difference. I am different, I am totally different (from my internal point of view).

I see that I have said again things that everybody else is able to say, but this happens to me in a second moment only. This makes me realize that it is ultimately impossible to me to let others make any idea of my uniqueness. Obviously, this is again another statement that everyone else can say, so I conclude that what prevents connection is the condition of language. Language is made exclusively of shared things, so it is completely impossible to me to communicate my feeling of my uniqueness. Language instantly transfers, moves whatever I say about this feeling of mine into the realm of shared concepts, so that language immediately removes, kills any meaning, any content of uniqueness that I can try to communicate, to put into my words.

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Ok. I didn’t know if you meant something like the “pure consciousness” people sometimes talk about.