Perhaps your mention of pure consciousness is a good opportunity for some clarification.
I think that my way of referring to the experience of subjectivity has the advantage of being non-metaphysical. When I say that I feel myself, I am not stating that I exist, nor that this feeling exists, nor that this experience is something. What I do is just a description of a feeling, that doesn’t claim the existence of anything.
On the contrary, a lot of other concepts, such as that of “pure cosciousness”, or the “oceanic feeling”, or the Buddhist “oneness” where boundaries between the self and the cosmos get dissolved, rely on metaphysical constructions aimed to explain some kind of realities. As such, all these constructions are exposed to the criticism that metaphysics is exposed to.
My description of my experience of myself is not exposed to such criticism, because there is no construction of any concept. I expect my description to be interpreted in the mental context of art, literature, humanities, poetry. I think that this makes what I talk about true subjectivity that, as such, is invulnerable to objectification. People can completely deny the existence of this pure subjectivity that I talk about, but they cannot objectify it. You can try to objectify art, for example by saying that, after all, Van Gogh’s Starry Night is just a product of his neurons that commanded his hand and his brush, but this objectification gets instantly exposed to the criticism of metaphysical realism.
I clicked the Hard Problem button by mistake, sorry!
I think the Hard Problem is actually the MOST difficult problem as the options are presented here, because its level of difficulty can’t be assumed to be simply of a combinational nature, in the ways the other options are.
As an ontological physicalist monist you are faced with the problem of your fundamental physical stuff seemingly able to simultaneously have contradictory properties. Eg when I experience ‘seeing a red apple over there’ my physical brain doesn’t have the qualities of redness or apple-shape or being over there. Other qualities like the subjective, first person, private pov also need explaining. And the physicalist (scientific) explanatory methodology relies on publically falsifiable observation and measurement.
One Physicalist hypothesis might be that when certain combinations of physical stuff occur (eg in brains) then somehow these apparently contradictory qualities manifest. Which would seem to put it on a par with the Idealism option that physical objects like tables, brains, gravity and ‘Mes/Subjects’ are ways in which combinations of monist ‘mind-stuff’ works. But I think Idealism would have the edge in that all we can know for certain exists is the phenomenal (‘something it is like’) experiencing of the table, brain, gravity, being a ‘Me’, etc. And what we experience as tables, brains, gravity and Me-ness are just the different ‘flavours’ of experience.
Panpsychism too can simply hypothesise that certain combinations of physical and mental stuff work in such a way that the world of tables, brains, gravity and ‘Mes’ manifest. It doesn’t have this extra difficulty of fundamental stuff having simultaneously contradictory properties, if the fundamental stuff is both physical and mental.
You can undo it - I just tried with my vote. Welcome to TPF!
I agree that the hard problem is more conceptually difficult, but the other two are stinkers as well to tell a consistent story about.
I still don’t know where I stand on perceptual properties. After reading a few of @Michael posts I’m wondering if Locke’s old primary/secondary property distinction can be reanimated for an up to date take. But that’s probably a different thread.
I think the difficulty of each depends on your perspective. in an infinite creation you could go into infinite complexity or ridiculous simplicity with all three topics.
None of the above, because all three are equally impossible.
Mine doesn’t. It is a neutral monism.
Phase 0: 0| The Void | Two-Phase Cosmology Phase 1: the Pythagorean ensemble (neutral/quantum realm of information/structure, non-local, non-spatio-temporal, superposed possibilities) Phase 2: singular, actual, classical-relativistic reality, always from the perspective of an embodied observer)
Consciousness, free will and wavefunction collapse are three different name for the phase transition.
The traditional ‘hard problem’ - the move from non-conscious to conscious
Atman must equal Brahman – the Void is identical to the root of personal consciousness. So consciousness (Phase 2) is emergent from an interaction between Phase 0 and Phase 1. It doesn’t emerge on its own from any conceptual version of a physical realm (classical, relativistic or quantum).
Panpsychism’s combination problem - getting big units of consciousness from smaller ones
Consciousness is always unified. It only exists from the perspective of a single Atman, which needs a brain. Panpsychism is false – rocks aren’t conscious, and neither are plants.
Idealism/cosmopsychism’s de-combination problem - getting many private units of consciousness from one big one
Consciousness requires both Brahman (which is singular) and a Phase 1 brain (of which there are many, and they are private). Brahman (the Void) is not conscious on its own. Consciousness requires a brain - a perspective and something to be conscious of.