So you can observe consciousness indirectly, as you describe, and you believe this is adequate to enable further analysis and reasoning? As I assume you aren’t claiming telepathic powers, I suggest that these VERY (IMO! 
) indirect observations are not fit for that purpose. They’re built on sand, it seems, or maybe on air?
Sorry, it’s whatever you derive from your analysis of your highly indirect observations, that the above comment is aimed at. 
My perspective describes science as studying apparent reality, that may or may not be an accurate representation of 𝐎𝐛𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲. A metaphysical slant, perhaps to complement your own perspective, as you describe it here? 
Yes! And the “reason” centres on the complete lack of evidence (of a suitable standard) on which to base any scientific investigation.
That may be a hurdle for some philosophers, though offhand I can’t think of anyone who’s actually asserted it. Certainly not Nagel or Chalmers. Taken as given, it’s a huge over-generalization. Chalmers has devoted his life to trying to understand consciousness. And you know about phenomenology, right? An entirely different but equally valid approach.
We can observe the consequences of consciousness.
Of course, there are limits to the detail of such understanding.
Adequate? Sure become familiar with the work being done - adequate to what level?
Explaining how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective, inner experiences like feelings and colors?
Seems to me brain scientists have learned an amazing amount about how the interior of the brain - in cooperation with the body and interacting with life - produces our thoughts and feeling - but philosophers who reject the relevance of biology aren’t even familiar with the scientific landscape because they’ve labeled that “the easy problem” and “uninteresting”
Sure there’s more to learn, but scientists have enough to arrive at some solid conclusions, with realistic limitation.
But philosophers seem intent on demanding the only thing that will do, is to actually climb inside of another creature’s mind and actually experience that creature’s conscious state.
Isn’t there something decidedly disingenuous about such an outlandish expectation?
Then please explain what else the “Hard Problem” is about?
I have read Thomas Nagel’s, “What is it like to be a bat?”
It seems to me he spells it out.
What do you read in those words?
Please outline this lack of evidence that you feel exists?
Perhaps also a summary of what it is you want to find, or have answered? (by scientists, not by me) 
Both Chalmers and Nagel point to difficult problems involved in sharing subjective experiences of consciousness. Neither one says “we must be able to personally inhabit another’s inner mental state before we can say anything about it.” We say true things about it all the time; what they question is whether we can share, either imaginatively or in reality, our experience of being conscious, especially with a consciousness far removed from our own.
BTW, “the hard problem of consciousness” as Chalmers frames it isn’t primarily about the recalcitrance of shared, “objective” subjectivity. It’s about why and how consciousness accompanies physical states of an organism in the first place. Many believe – though I’m not sure that I agree – that to solve that problem would provide a way out of the objectivity/subjectivity puzzle.
More importantly, neither philosopher believes that “understanding consciousness” requires the sort of personal inhabiting you reference. Again, it’s the difference between knowledge and experience. We may eventually understand nearly everything there is to understand about consciousness – except “what it’s like” to be a bat, say, because “what it’s like” is meant to refer to a subjective experience, not a piece of knowledge. But to say that, absent such experiential knowledge, we can understand nothing is a big exaggeration, and I’m sure Chalmers and Nagel would agree. The “hurdle” you’re referring to is real, but it doesn’t actually prevent us from inquiring into consciousness both scientifically and philosophically.
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Well stated. But first, at least a modicum of philosophical education is required.
In his mostly philosophical 2020 book, Helgoland — about Heisenberg’s radical solution to the quantum Wave-Particle dilemma — physicist Carlo Rovelli, in the last chapter, addresses the similarly vexing Mind-Body problem :
“Who is the “I” that has the sensation of feeling, if not the integrated set of our mental processes.”
“the “I” is the residue of a metaphysical error . . . . mistaking a process for an entity.”
“. . . some vaporous supernatural substance that remains alive after death.”
Yet, it may be mostly a language problem. In A. N. Whitehead’s Process Philosophy, the “Self” is not a substantial thing, but an ongoing progression ; a series of experiences. In our own minds though, we tend to group those processes & experiences into a single subjective Experiencer, the Self. Since we cannot experience the sensations of other minds, we distinguish Subjective (first person) views from Objective (second or third person) views. And our notions of Soul and Spirit and Mind are simply metaphors1 for those immaterial non-entity concepts. It’s not a “reality divide”, but an Ideality distinction. 
1. Metaphors : Experts in cognitive science explain that we rely on metaphors to reason about the unknown using our everyday, concrete experiences. For instance, framing “life as a journey” or “love as a battlefield” instantly contextualizes how we should think and feel about those concepts.
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Is there really such an expectation? I think philosophers seek knowledge and understanding, just as scientists and other serious thinkers do. Your bold text describes an ideal, that if we could somehow experience anothers consciousness, we could understand it better. Of course we could. But we all know that is currently impossible for us, and may remain so. Philosophers know this as well as anyone, I suggest. I have no knowledge of the “demanding” you describe, from philosophers. Or from anyone else, as far as I am aware.
If a scientist wants to investigate, say, the acceleration due to gravity. They will conduct experiments, and record their results. Probably a wide variety of experiments, each examining a particular aspect of gravity, and how it works. And so data are gathered, that’s the first step. Then the data are analysed, and the scientific process proceeds as usual.
Scientific investigation is heavily focussed on evidence. Direct evidence. And in the case of consciousness, or any mental process, the evidence is nearly always subjective, as it must be reported by the patient. So the evidence is indirect too. We can’t see consciousness, but only its effects.
Taking all this together, I think this explains and clarifies the point I was making, yes? That there is insufficient evidence of a suitable standard for the scientific process to deliver the result(s) we hope for.
If science says there is no consciousness, is it worth believing? Is it the right method of science?
It’s true that there is consciousness, some of us, and I, experience it.
It’s compulsory to conduct any science.
If you respond with questions aimed at ‘no consciousness’, isn’t that laughable?
I will say I don’t agree with the current scientific method, nor what is or what isn’t accepted as science.
It dismisses consciousness as fake, that in my opinion is evidence of an incorrect method or incorrect definition/understanding of science.
Are conscious people meant to think ‘consciousness doesn’t exist’?
It’s because we override brain-power with the tool of science.
Philosophers should over-rule scientists, but they lack confidence in brain-power.
Can we just agree that consciousness exists, and it is fact, through brain-power?
It would work out- I know this.
We shouldn’t have to dismiss it as fake while we wait for science to find a way to prove it. It should be left to philsophers.
I find myself in general agreement with what you say, @Garon. But I fear the world is not as simple or straightforward as it could be…
Does science (or scientists) say “there is no consciousness”? I wasn’t aware of that. Scientists, many of them, do not like to admit that there’s any subject that their beloved discipline cannot usefully investigate. This is just silly, IMO. No tool, no matter how amazingly capable it is, is the best tool for every task.
And I think it is the case that science has no useful insights to offer about consciousness, or indeed about any other human-related topic, such as mental-health conditions, social conventions, and other cultural matters (politics, etc). Once humans are involved, reason and rationality are demoted to second place, or dismissed altogether. Feelings and emotions take up their priorities, and perhaps other influences do too.
With little or no evidence of a scientific standard, there is little the scientific method can do.
As for just agreeing that consciousness exists, yes, we could do that. But philosophers tend to get a bit pernickety about agreeing to things that aren’t clearly described first. And, try as we might, we can’t seem to agree what consciousness is, or even how it might work.
Finally, we don’t have to dismiss consciousness “as fake”. Where did you get that idea? Perhaps a post farther back that I haven’t read?
I agree with this.
Sorry, I was just assuming that’s what people were doing. You may not have made that impression. It was completely innate. However it does tell a good story of what scientists are like in the worst case scenario, saying ‘wait thinking that’s fake until I prove it’s right’.
I think the correct scientific attitude is to consider any question that has not yet been conclusively understood, to be ‘undecided’ (as yet).
Some people have a sharper focus on binary thinking. For those poor unfortunates ( ), saying “I’m not convinced that X is TRUE” has EXACTLY the same meaning as “X is FALSE”. Of course, that is an erroneous conclusion, made plain when we openly and explicitly adopt the Law of the Included Middle — that there is usually a number of other conclusions that we might reach, not just TRUE or FALSE. MAYBE is one obvious example… 
Jay thanks for making the effort to respond.
Six of one, or half a dozen of another?
Where’s the distinction?
Science and evolutionary biology is doing an excellent better job of discovering those details, using solid evidence. What’s missing?
Well then why the obsessive focused on the human brain, when that mind is the product of half a billions years worth of creature development.
Why not a recognition of where the origins of consciousness- and understanding - are be found?
Why no explicit recognition that consciousness is on a spectrum - and that we should be more careful with our wording? Or the matter that our introspective consciousness depends on a myriad of interwoven “subconscious” consciousness bustling away to keep our body functioning and in homeostasis and aware of its environment, so that our upper level introspection can unfold to begin with.
Which I can only translate as, get inside the skin of another, to experience from within the flesh of another is like. How else to extract that information?
Right, through honesty rationality of science and not human introspection alone.
There is no hard problem around that! Awareness of self, whether through chemotaxis in the most primitive, but quickly evolving into more complex self referral systems - is the first requirement for survival in a complex environment full of creatures looking for something to eat!
Why does that not compute? Please offer some detail?
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That’s poetry that ignores that you are a specific biological being, not of your choosing, but that’s how it is. Your body is doing all the interacting and experiencing of the world, while your brain helps to conduct the whole and keep it moving - Dr. Nick Lane like the metaphor of a symphony full of musicians and a conduct. When you close your eyes and let the music carry you off an emotional dream world, who produces the music? The conductor? or The orchestra. As any music lover and they’ll tell you it’s a worthless question, because the music intimately depended on all the components the symphony working together in flawless homeostasis.
That would be the describing of it, but not the clarity of the biological processes at work.
Right it’s not a reality divide, it’s the most fundamental an observation on the human condition we can make.
Physical Reality ~ Human Mind divide.
It’s at the root of our body-brain / mind.
I find it’s significant because it puts guardrail on how much we let our imaginations run away with us. Or at least it keeps reminding us that we perceive our reality - we do not create it. A subtle but oh so important distinction to keep close to heart if one are seeker.
Exactly. Thus, why it’s important not to be sloppy about it.
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Sure look that way from here.
That sounds good, but philosophers are given license to boundless imagination, and are afforded opportunities to let ego run amok - in a way that the scientist could never dream of. Also philosophers can get away with bluster in a way a scientist never could.
And why is that such a problem?
But I asked:
No because that’s only part of the formula.
Sense + Body + Brain + Interactions (interior & exterior) = the consciousness (I Am) continuum, which gets more complex as creature and environments became more complex.
Also evolution hardly ever gets mentioned, what’s up with that?
OUCH !
OUCH !
How much might our human preconception have to do with that?
Harsh. I haven’t found Earth and natural sciences to be like that.
But of course corporate interests have an inordinate influence on funding, so I would start looking at that as a problem, not to mention our general human self-absorption and self-serving nature, before I start fitting Science for the hangman’s noose.
Because the answers we get are indirect from the beginning, being uncorroborated and subjective statements. Thus, the standard of evidence is rather less than the scientific method requires. And it isn’t necessarily repeatable, another requirement of the scientific method.
Fair enough, I suppose, but the words you have chosen to express your thoughts are a bit biased (in favour of science and scientists), wouldn’t you say?
Egos running amok? Yes, I have noticed this, but it seems to apply (pretty much) universally to humans, not just to philosophers … and scientists too, come to think of it.
Maybe quite a lot? I don’t know. None of us do; that’s the problem isn’t it?