Hello, it’s pretty clear I am not a scholar, nor an accomplished philosopher ( Well, beyond figuring out my own Self. ), - so what the heck am I doing here? What’s my hangup on the “Hard Problem” all about?
With the help of some feedback and finding a coach that possesses no ego, nor awareness of another’s ego, I’ve finally been able to get properly into the mind boggling teaser.
It has given much more texture to my appreciation of the problem, but hasn’t settled my issues, it sure helped me focus.
My starting position years ago was, the “Hard Problem” stands in the way of getting a realistic understanding of who, what the “Self” is,
My start comes from being a non-academic consumer of popular science and philosophy - and down at this level it seems to me that the “Hard Problem” gives the green light to an incredible array of basically nonsense speculation and claims, that need to be sorted out. Worst of them being along the lines of all the various flavors of dismissing the “Self” and cheering for mysterianism.
But now I’m wondering - do the two have anything to with the other?
So can anyone over here offer me an explanatory bridge between the Hard Problem and a humanity’s personal efforts to achieve a rational visceral understanding of Who Am I? Or am I simply barking up the wrong tree?
I commend your honesty and willingness for self-examination! As I think I’ve said in other conversations, I think you’re reading the debate about the ‘problem of consciousness’ the wrong way. The original paper by David Chalmers is aimed at a very specific issue, which is the tendency to prioritise objectivity as the sole criterion of fact.
This has been discussed ad nauseam in another recent thread you started, so let’s not open that whole can of worms again. I’ll simply reproduce the single paragraph from Chalmer’s original essay ‘Facing up to the Problem…’ which I think states the nub of the issue:
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.
So — how does this ‘dismiss the Self’? The whole point of the argument is that ‘the sense of being a subject’, or ‘what it is like to be’, is left out of the objective accounts of how consciousness operates. It is precisely the ‘visceral’ or felt nature of existence is that is ommitted from the objective accounts. How it feels is personal, subjective, derivative. Or so it is said.
The word visceral means ‘a deep, instinctive emotional reaction that comes from the gut rather than from logical thought’. But you’re not going to find that through the scientific examination of the intestines, are you?
The objection to Chalmers mainly comes from those who believe that the first-person sense of ‘being a subject’ is derived from, or is dependent on, processes which are in principle explainable in objective terms. Daniel Dennett, who was the principle opponent of Chalmer’s account, put it in no uncertain terms:
In Consciousness Explained, I described a method, heterophenomenology, which was explicitly designed to be 'the neutral path leading from objective physical science and its insistence on the third-person point of view, to a method of phenomenological description that can (in principle) do justice to the most private and ineffable subjective experiences, while never abandoning the methodological principles of science.
Many have accussed Daniel Dennett of ‘scientism’, the view that whatever is to be known can be known by means of science. Personally, I think it’s justified, although it’s generally regarded as a pejorative term and will mostly be rejected by those accused of it.
Might I suggest that the ‘visceral understanding’ you think you are finding through biology and popular science actually comes from within yourself? But the quest for that understanding is associated with philosophy more than science per se. That’s not to deny the scientific account of human ancestory, biology, metabolism, and so forth. But ‘who am I’ includes a great deal more than that.
So - your question, and my response, may be merged into your pre-existing Qualia thread by the moderators, but again, commendations for your wilingness to consider these deep issues.
I think that the hard problem and what you called “existential struggles” are not just related; the hard problem is the essence of existential research. But first of all we need a correct understanding of the question.
In my view, the correct understanding is in the context of objectivity and subjectivity. Objectivity is whatever you can describe. In this sense, even certain statements that are apparently subjective, such as “I like that song”, contain actually a lot of objective categories. Subjectivity is instead what you cannot describe. Wittgestein said that, about things that we cannot describe, we should be silent. I disagree, because language doesn’t contain objectivity exclusively.
Let’s start from objectivity, that is the easiest starting point. The most elementary starting point of objectivity is Parmenide’s being. Being is, not being is not. In this view, being is one, everything is one, all is one.
In a next step we realize that being is not one, there is a lot of multiplicity in our experience. Even logically, in Maths we don’t have just number 1, for sure. Once we agree that things are not just expressions of a universal one, we are forced to realize that each single thing represents a different point of view. As such, each single thing represents a different experience, a different subjectivity. In this context, it comes out as a very logical thing that my personal experience of my personal point of view
exists, definitely, because we are still talking in a context of objectivity, and
it has to do with expressibility and inexpressibility.
There is expressibility, because, from an objective point of view, we can understand the relative uniqueness of each perspective and how all unique perspectives are not so unique. They are not so unique, because they share a lot of aspects: they are all perspectives, they are all beings, they are all experiences, they are all immersed in the world of communication and language.
Apart from this “relative uniqueness”, there is a kind of “absolute uniqueness”. I can talk about absolute uniqueness in one way only: when I pay attention to my own uniqueness, that I experience always as an ongoing experience, whenever I pay attention to my own feeling of my being me. In this context, even if I can imagine that other people must have a similar experience, actually, whatever I can imagine is just the relative uniqueness, that is what other people, presumably, experience in way similar to me. I have absolutely no way to imagine or to talk about other people’s absolute uniqueness. Absolute uniqueness is only my one, because, from inside my experience, I am the only person who can experience my own feeling myself.
All of this is the basis of anything having to do with existential topics. Anything existential has no reason to exist in objectivity, because objectivity is what it is and has no need to find meanings, explanations, reasons to exist. Anything existential arises from subjectivity that is immersed in objectivity, like perspectives are immersed in the whole.
In this context, when we ask “what is my self, who am I?”, we are mixing subjectivity and objectivity. The question arises from subjectivity. But, since subjectivity is immersed in objectivity, it is immersed in an instinct to understand, to communicate, to express, to translate into words and concepts. This is finally an impossible task, because you cannot ultimately reduce subjectivity entirely into objectivity. Apparently you can, the moment you consider that all perspectives are parts of the whole. But actually you cannot, the moment you realize that, whatever you try to understand, this understanding happens always inevitably immersed in the context of your limited, particular, unique subjectivity. That’s why the hard problem is hard: it is not just hard, it is impossible to solve.
Figuring ‘that’ out could be considered by some as ‘the work’ of a ‘True philosopher’. But, then again, some might be wondering what did you ‘figure out’, exactly?
Also, what do you mean by “figuring out my own Self”. The word ‘my’ implies ownership. So, who is the ‘my’ who owns (that) Self, exactly.
Why would you even have a ‘hangup’ with some so-called “hard problem” anyway?
Would you first care to share what your own personal understanding of the so-called “hard problem” here is exactly?
Firstly, who and what ‘I’ am, exactly, can be very easily and simply understood with or without any so-called “hard problem” being known about.
Secondly, to offer ‘you’ any explanatory bridge between some so-called, “hard problem” and understand who and what ‘I’ am, then ‘we’ just first need ‘you’ to explain what this “hard problem” is, ‘to you’, exactly.
The hard problem is consciousnsss vis-à-vis science. I can tell you that when you look at a vase the light from it hits your retina, this elicits action potentials im the optic nerve, which through a series of relay nerves takes the signal to your optical center, but … I can’t tell you how the image of the vase is received by you. What it’s like to see the vase is unscientific in the best sense.
I recommend studying sleep for a better idea of consciousness. We know a lot about sleep. The brain has been investigated, people haven’t been lazying around.
That’s an excellent series of questions. Each requiring a bit of time. But I do appreciate being asked and will try not to waste your time, even if the first on seems a bit long.
Also I do this between a somewhat crowded day, so it’ll take a while to chew through these, but I look forward to it. I’ve got one down and some chores to attend to. Be back when I can.
Because of how others have presented it smacks up against what I’ve learned from a life time of engaged learning about evolutionary topics.
I will definitely like to share my current state of understanding regarding the Hard Problem, next.
For now
Me, myself and I.
I inhabit the realization that my body contains half a billion years worth of 100% successful generational handoff. Every incarnation (dependent on &) carrying with it the cumulative lessons of all the generations that came before.
By my twenties I also had a keen realization that my body contains knowledge, protocols and strategies way beyond my conscious mind’s awareness. It instilled an appreciation that my body knows more than I do, and it would behove me to learn about it and pay close attention.
At about 4 years old I asked my mom: Who is God? - her answer: “A spec of dust that wanted to be more.” Blew me away in real time and it became a question, challenge that I would often chew on it as the years sped by.
So what? With the hindsight of over six decades, I realize, that moment, supported by my parent’s hands off agnostic approach to religion. ( although they would eventually send us to Sunday school because they felt they had an obligation to expose ourselves to it, then decide for ourselves. Eventually even sending us to Tabor Lutheran Church school (6th,7th grades) (Missouri synod - that suffix was very important to them, cause it proved we were better than the others ;-|) and for a while I fell in love with Jesus the way only a preteen can fall in love. Didn’t take too long to learn that the ideal of Jesus, had nothing to do with the business of religion and the petty people running it.
The upshot is that looking back from 71, I believe that Mom’s answer satisfied and filled that “longing for god” niche within our human heart and mind.
Instead, I’ve come to appreciate that ‘God’s psychic niche’ was filled and satisfied with that challenge. Because it conveyed the sense that it was up to me to do something with myself. That went down before I even entered kindergarten, so that all I’ve experienced in life is build upon that foundation.
When I say “I am a filament in Earth’s pageant of Evolution.” It’s backed up with a mindscape jam packed with biological evolutionary understanding and appreciation, including a sense for deep time. It’s difficult for me to look at anything without including thoughts of its past history and future trajectory.
I step onto a jet plane and I’m a ten year old again, head glued to the window striving to savor the landscape as it rolls by and enthralled by the magic of flight and the amazing organizational achievement that an airport is. While I look around, I see most people seem oblivious to all of it. > I find that sad and indicative of our general apathy, which explains the why/how we dropped the ball, that is paving the way for another failed empire.
I’ve wrestled with my demons, and died on that cross of my own making, and managed to be reborn a better person. That experience taught me what the passion of Jesus was all about, and why he has remained such a vital presence in people’s lives. It’s because he does represent the best in a human. What many of us would like to strive for. Jesus’s life’s lessons show us how to deal with our own life’s challenges.
Then about eight years ago walking my Maddy dog I was hit with another petite epiphany, the Human Mind(scape) ~ Physical Reality divide. Funny how that works, it’s not like I wasn’t familiar with the concept. I simply wasn’t prepared for its full import - until that day.
It was like a bolt of lightening thundering through my being. Of course, everything I experience, learn, know, has been processed through my evolved body, and gets processed into thoughts and mind.
Here again, it wasn’t like a new concept, I’ve known about it for decades - but my ground wasn’t fertile enough for it to take root. But continued experiencing and learning one reaches a tipping point, where the tangle of loose wires (facts) & experiences line up and burst into a knowing that permeated my entire being, thus the visceral understanding.
I literally finished my walk lighter than before, awash in a feeling of having “arrived”. The, “Oh, I get it!” reinforcing that intellectual oneness with the rest of nature I’d felt since Yosemite days, into something more emotional, deeper fuller, visceral, if you will.
How do I know “I’ve arrived” it comes from the feeling of peace and satisfaction in a life dedicated to helping this “dunce” (other’s label for me, not my own) figure out what life was about.
Of course you don’t know me, you about my tramping with thumb out and those learning experiences from the road.
Nor how I am with infants, babies, but I haven’t been branded and rebranded with my latest round of grandkid’s parents, and others, “baby whisper” for nothing. It’s because of how I can connect with infants, which simply comes from my gentler more holistic awareness and willingness to interact with the baby at their level - along with my ability to relate to that tiny person inside of that baby body. The person that is already present at birth.
You can’t imagine how much inner peace they bring to my hear, nor how they’ve literally reinvigorated this old body.
Of course, that doesn’t negate the little hot head who still lives inside of me, angry at the world for its self destructive folly and humanity’s self-absorbed minds and our vicious ruthless disregard for Earth’s natural systems and inhabitants.
The greatest piece of counseling advice I ever received was: “Ask yourself - What Will You Be Present To?” It’s made a great guide for me. Appreciating the full spectrum of what’s inside of oneself, learning to be present and to compartmentalize.
Understanding that a good cry, does the body well. Face it, let it crush you, absorb it, then when you’ve had enough, get back up off the dirt, and keep on going, the way people have always done.
Reenergized by allowing the bad steam to blow off, as it adds another layer of scar tissue that builds up like so much armor, and then get back to the job of dealing with the rest of one’s life.
Under it all I have the peace of knowing I have only one life to live, and one death to die, same as it ever was.
The peace comes from knowing I followed my hero’s journey (Joseph Campbell anyone?), and was a very lucky dude, despite a habit of shooting myself in the foot. I think part of that was to keep me honest and undistracted by bling and egotism.
I’m sure I missed a few items worth adding, but this has gone long enough. It comes down to internal peace, despite all the horrors. The Serenity Prayer I find as valid a piece of philosophy as any.
Guess that’s another thing I have going for me, at 71 I can get away with it, that is, of living one day at a time, tomorrow will take care of itself, worry about not screwing up today. Plus the luck of sweet memories, enough pain and screw ups to keep it real. Learning to own that pain and screwing up because they also provided learning/growing opportunities for those willing to face the unpleasant along with their demons and have it out with them.
I think my disagreement is different from his one with himself. Essentially, as I understand, he kept the idea that the two worlds of precise ideas and non physical ideas should not be mixed. This way, the first Wittgenstein thought that we shouldn’t try to express what is not precise, not physical. Later, he added that non physical concepts can be expressed, but only if we keep ourselves in a context of gaming, so that we should anyway avoid trying to give precise meaning to words that are just a game.
My idea considers two aspects.
We can try to force language to do what it in theory can’t, because listeners are able to go beyond literal meanings and even beyond language itself. For example, I can ask listeners to find the meaning of my expression “my self consciousness” not in the analysis of my words, but trying to find in themselves an experience that is raised, evoked, suggested, by my words. Obviously, what they will find is out of my control, but, curiously, I think that this gives many more probabilities that the listener will really find what I really wanted to mean, because my intention was for the listener not to stick to my words or to my experience; rather, I want the listener to find their own experience inside themselves.
The second aspect is that, since the speaker is a subjectivity, that subjectivity will always be present in whatever they say; this means that language always carries subjectivity even if subjectivity is impossible to express. For example, it is impossible to you to say 2+2=4 without putting in that statement something about your emotions, personality, subjectivity, because we are never pure calculators, it is impossible to us to be what we are not, impossible to be non-humans. This means that, even if one’s experience of their own subjectivity can never be explored from inside by an external person, any expressed word contains something of it. As a consequence, I can try to always improve my inner sensitivity, to be more and more able to get, as much as possible, the subjectivity that is always carried by other people’s words.
The problem for early Wittgenstein is not that something is non-physical; it is that it cannot be represented as a fact among facts. Logic isnt physical, and yet is sayable.
The early Wittgenstein says that ethics is “higher” than the facts of the world, not that it belongs to some separate non-physical realm.
As far as the later Wittgenstein, you assume that for him that precision is the ideal and that language games are a concession to unavoidable vagueness. But Wittgenstein explicitly attacks this assumption.
A famous example in Philosophical Investigations concerns the word “game” itself. There is no precise essence shared by all games. Yet we use the word perfectly well.His point isnt that the word lacks precision, so we must treat it cautiously. Rather, the demand for a hidden precision may itself be a philosophical mistake.
Language games are not fictional games, arbitrary games, or merely subjective games. They are the ordinary practices in which language has meaning, including language about physics.
But isn’t that because the “objective account” is the language of science, and it is based on physical stuff. The mind was cut out because it exceeded science’s “portfolio”.
When it’s looking more and more like awareness is woven right into the very texture of cells. It exhibits itself in creatures as a holistic being competent enough to compete and win in life’s game.
Bringing modern sophisticated evolutionary biological science back into the game. They said we’d never figure out life, look at where scientists have gone with that.
Seems to me to truly understand consciousness would require grappling with that uncanny Drive to Thrive, that ineffable something all living organism down to microbes (that scientists have studied) do display.
But the standard response is that biological complexity and mechanics can never explain the spark of consciousness - why so sure? And if so sure, aren’t you limiting your options?
I’ll bet that’ll have lessons applicable to bridging the explanatory gap via deeper biological understanding.
YES! OF COURSE! But I don’t think you’re seeing the point of the critique.
David Chalmer’s criticism is basically pointing this out. Same too with Thomas Nagel. Please don’t labour under the mistaken idea that they are pushing some kind of religious agenda, because they’re really not. Nagel has often stated that he’s atheist, but he thinks that the ‘scientistic’ mindset leaves something vital out.
Yes again! But this is just what the essay that you responded to on Medium, that led me to invite you to philosophyforum says.
That essay starts with the mainstream science view: that consciousness is a late arrival, the product of a long evolutionary process, which is in some basic sense unintentional or unguided. The book mentioned at the beginning is called Chance and Necessity, published by French biochemist (and Nobel winner) Jacques Monod, in 1970. Monod’s book was a big seller and highly infliuential in both science and culture. It is unsparingly materialist: life began by chance, it can be entirely understood in terms of biomolecular interactions
matter comes first, life appears almost as an accident, and consciousness gradually emerges over aeons — but still reducible in principle to the same physical and energetic forces that govern the motions of inorganic matter. …In this picture, mind is what matter produces when it reaches a sufficient threshold of biological complexity — a late and contingent arrival, but derivative, a product rather than a principle. It implicitly understands life as an anomaly against the backdrop of a Universe primarily comprising lifeless matter. As the remainder of Jacques Monod’s quote above says, “Our number came up in the Monte Carlo game”
Notice that consciousness (or mind) is treated as byproduct (epihenomenon in technical terms) which is derived from and dependent on physical and chemical interactions.
So then I move to Nagel, who says:
‘The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order — our structure and behavior in space and time — but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view’ ~ The Core of Mind and Cosmos, New York Times, August 18th 2013.
So, he is pointing out that the subjective dimension of existence, the ‘what it is like to be’, is also a fundamental aspect of existence itself. This is something which materialism leaves out as a matter of principle, because it’s intended as a solely objective account of how atoms and molecules interact.
Right! So then I bring in Hans Jonas’ book The Phenomenon of Life: Towards a Philosophy of Biology. His argument is that jacques Monod’s attitude, and materialism generally, leaves out exactly that which makes beings alive:
…in living things something novel appears: systems that are unities for their own sake, by their own activity, sustained in existence by themselves. Form here is not the result of material organisation — it is its cause. Jonas describes this as an ontological surprise. The organism doesn’t simply have a form; it enacts form against entropy. This active self-integration is what gives real meaning to the concept of ipseity (being a subject of experience). It is not simply a phenomenological unity but an ontological one: a being whose existence is its own continuous achievement.
I’ve read the Mark Solm’s paper you referred to above, particularly his emphasis on affect and how maintaining homeostasis gives rise to affect. And I think it dovetails very well with phenomenology! Remember, phenomenology is the approach which puts emphasis on the first-person nature of experience.
Solms actually accepts the phenomenological datum rather than trying to reduce it to the biomolecular level. His abstract says he is concerned with why existential imperatives “feel like something to and for an organism.” That’s phenomenology!
And his dual-aspect monism is important. He explicitly rejects the crude idea that the brain produces consciousness in the manner that the liver produces bile (i.e. Jacques Monod). His proposed solution is that there is a common underlying organisation having both physiological and psychological manifestations.
It seems to me that while he thinks he’s arguing against Chalmers, he overlooks the fact that in the Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness essay, Chalmers doesn’t rule out a ‘science of consciousness’. He doesn’t say it’s an unsolvable problem -— only that it can’t be answered in terms of a solely objective analysis. Chalmers never said that consciousness cannot be the subject of a science. He said that the hard problem cannot be solved by the kind of reductive, third-person explanation that works for many other scientific problems. In fact, the second half of “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness” is an attempt to sketch what a science of consciousness might look like if we take phenomenal experience seriously rather than trying to explain it away.
I’m not saying biology can’t account for consciousness. I’m questioning whether molecular interactions alone can provide a complete explanation. Consider this quote from Daniel Dennett, like Monod another committed materialist:
Love it or hate it, phenomena like this (i.e. actions of biomolecular molecules) exhibit the heart of the power of the Darwinian idea. An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe (from Darwin’s Dangerous Idea).
But the basic issue actually arises before sentient consciousness has evolved. With homeostasis and self-organisation, something new appears: an organism can maintain its identity while continually exchanging its material components with the environment. Memory, anticipation and adaptation become properties of the organism as an organised whole. Nothing in the Periodic Table does that.
This is fundamental to autopoiesis, and there is a much older philosophical intuition behind it in Aristotle: the identity of a living thing cannot simply be reduced to the matter of which it happens to be composed. The whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts.
So my argument is that life introduces a different level of being. Consciousness may introduce another, and rational sentient consciousness another still.
That isn’t élan vital, and it isn’t an argument from mystery. It’s an ontological claim: if materialism means that there is ultimately only one kind of substance — matter-energy — then the question is whether the distinctive properties of living organisms can be fully accounted for at the level of their material constituents. I say not.
The issue Chalmers brings up is whether awareness of our experience can be reduced to a function of a system that is not an expression of that awareness.
What is to be called “physical” is itself a problem of reduction. The effectiveness of doing science is the perseverance of certain results. To that extent Kant has to agree with Hume.
Which I’ve been doing thoughout but which I think you’re now beginning to appreciate. I think that you thought that the ‘problem of consciousness’ was anti-science in the way that ‘intelligent design’ is. But it isn’t!
Actually, to be honest, it has more to do with human hubris, than anything else. It’s harsh, it’s not claiming bad faith, it does imply trapped within a mindset .
From an Earth-centrist perspective, it makes more sense that consciousness must be the product of a whole body/brain experience, (beating away moment by moment). A holistic interchange of information and feedback - the reflection of our body communicating with itself, as it’s dealing with life.
I mean it is not trivial that our body is doing pretty much all of the direct interacting with actual living, sensing, etc.
This seems the only way consciousness makes any internally consistent sense, at least in my estimation.
Of course, the brain is HQ (conductor in the orchestra metaphor), creating many communication networks and conducting the whole show, but it is equally dependent upon the body’s end of the “conversation” - why isn’t such a perspective being more explicitly discussed?
I’m sorry this will piss off, but that sounds smug and dismiss, makes it easy to wonder if it isn’t simply intellectual gamesmanship? It’s like there’s no appreciation for the scope of the tremendous advances in every field of evolutionary biology and information processing, there’s no reason to predict regular serious scientific methods won’t be enough to point at the source of awareness.
Okay.
Key quote, that one.
Serious in what way?
Okay question it. That quote of Dennett’s … never mind, I don’t think it helps.
Well put, I tip my hat.
Of course not, that is exactly why the Krebs cycle is such a big deal. It created an altogether set of building blocks, energized. Of course, it took billions of years to bear fruit.
Point is, that Drive to Thrive originated early, and became the seed that turned into channels of communication, that turned into a sense of self and more over the course of time.
The point being, using Occam razor, it seems most likely that sense of self was part and parcel of early competent cells, the others got eaten up. Everything that followed built upon that foundation, as biological complexity increased.
What got added along the way was a parade of biological milestones, and Earth going through it’s geophysical roller-coaster, which in turn pushed and pulled Evolution and the biosphere all over the range of possibilities.
And mine alines with Dr Arthur Reber, namely that “the feels like something” is an inherent part of cellular life from the beginning, and that “consciousness” grew out of increasing biological complexity and specialization, building upon that primal foundation.
But the science is pointing towards answers, it shouldn’t be shrugged off.
I think perhaps conscious awareness can be seen as a product — but that raises another question: is mind only consequential, or is it also causal? What if the appearance of organic life — something able to remember, respond, anticipate and regulate itself — is already the first rudimentary manifestation of consciousness, rather than consciousness being something that suddenly appears much later as a product of increasingly complex brains? That’s what Is Mind Cause or Consequence? is about.
It is inherent? Can you explain that? First, in wondering which characteristic of life is the important one, regarding consciousness. Reproduction? Metabolism? Something else? A combination of two or more? I guess it would have to be characteristics of life that all living things share, since, if all life is conscious, vision (for example) which not all life has, could not be a necessary ingredient.
Something is coming more into focus for me that I think speaks toward your question.
We can contrast “mouth belief” with “meat belief.” Meat belief is not typically verbalized. We “do” or “enact” our “meat belief.” We might also call it “flesh-and-bone” belief.
OK, so I think the “hard problem” is generated by a version of “the physical” that is “alienated” from flesh-and-bone or meat belief.
The “physical world” of flesh-and-bone belief is the experienced empirical world or unwelt. Things in this world show up in terms not only of “sensory quality” but more importantly in terms of “value.” I am thirsty and I want that water over there. That water is “good.” Maybe I played a game of “alienated mouth belief” a few hours ago, where I sincerely felt compelled by “pure objective reason” to declare experience an “illusion.” But that was then, and now I’m back in “real” reality, and not in alienated mouth belief’s theoretical fetish. That water is “over there.” I don’t have it. It’s not in my head. My “meat” does not believe that.
Mouth belief is “alienated” when it floats above and disconnected from “meat belief.” This alienation is an inherited tradition. The alienated are not only not stupid but all too clever. A skill with words contributes towards a prioritization of mouth belief. The good-with-words person wants a domain where only words count. My words have to fit together with my other words. But my words don’t have to fit with my non-verbal conduct. From the neck down is off limits. That stuff is all “below” the “purity” of “pure reason.”
But that means that “real reality” is obscured. Even though we enact a strong meat-and-bone belief in the reality of the experienced environment, we become “blind” to ourselves in “theory mode.”
Part of this is the utterly insincere and confused notion of “objective reality.” An animal in the world is not “objective” in the sense of unbiased. This hurts and that feels good. The pragmatic concept of reality is based in expectation. All experience is “there” and some of it is called “real” honorifically. A “hallucination” is “not real” because it leads me toward pain. Science is “real” because it tends to lead me toward a future of “good experience” rather than “bad experience.” In other words, technology has proved itself to the “primate” in me. Now I drive over the bridge without worrying at all about drowning.
The “real” is what I can count on in general as an animal with strong preferences. Science is fundamentally a tool. The prestige of science is grounded in its service to the animal in us. The “deep” or “genuine” concept of reality is grounded in “caring.” I “carefully deliberate” primarily because I give a damn about what happens to me as body. Hobbes is great on this stuff.
In the game of alienated mouth belief, this prestige contributes to a “science flavored” but trans-empirical replacement of the animal-lived empirical object with a “theo-physical” object. The theo-physical object is sincerely understood as the genuinely physical object by alienated theorists.
The theo-physical object is almost always just a disavowed mathematical platonism. A “world of pure math meaning from no point of view” becomes the “true reality” that hides forever behind the “veil” of experience-as-inside-stuff. The quality of genuine physical objects has to be scraped off as “from a point of view” and “therefore unreal.”
Now the world is bifurcated into “outside math meaning from no point of view” and “inside qualia.” This vision floats as mouth belief far above the neck. The “hard problem” is taken seriously within the “seminary for research into the trans-empirical.”
Within this seminary, the theo-physical object is “easy and obvious” and so unquestioned. But the “inside qualia stuff” is a mystery if not an embarrasment. A bit like the problem of evil for some flavors of theism.
To me this presentation of “radical pragmatism” is not an attempt to prove a “mouth belief theorem” in “mouth belief logic.” It is just an attempt to point at what our meat already believes.