The Hard Problem of Accepting Physical Reality

General Philosophy
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(Update 9/11)

Philosophers challenge us with the Hard Problem of consciousness: “Why does processing feel like anything?” — “Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life?” — “Why is any physical state conscious rather than nonconscious?”

They call it the “Explanatory gap” — here I strive to flag the missing something between “no awareness” and “felt like something” based on understanding gleaned from scientific evolutionary insights of recent decades.

From a science-respecting, Earth-centrist perspective it’s not that difficult. Though it requires evolutionary background to, get it.

It starts with subatomic particles that exist at the very boundary between matter and energy.

From there the progression of atomic structure methodically evolves with increasing complexity following a specific defined gradient. Step by measured quantum step of exquisitely exacting configurations, eventually forming some 92 different (naturally occurring) atomic “entities”. With a rigid consistency that follows all the way through to yet more exotic atoms, including 24 “manmade” elements. Each with unique qualities.

These atoms are entities. This is based on observations that they communicate, influence, and cooperate with other entities. Of course it’s all on a quantum level. Awareness has nothing to do with it.

This is not “panpsychism,” nothing is imbued with anything — it simply is what it is. Things in their own right, taking up their own space, nothing more, nothing less

It does acknowledge that fundamental particles are in constant association, including communicating — a term physicists use. This recognizes that particles are already influencing each other, which indicates a capacity for interaction.

Philosophers will suggest that “Continuity of mechanism is not the same as continuity of what it’s like to be.”

That misses the point that it is the increasingly complex biological mechanisms working hand in glove with increasingly complex environments that nudge “mindless molecular beings” towards “what it’s like to be.” Creating something meaningful, that all life on this Earth spawned out of. But now I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

Of course this required unimaginable eons’ worth of deep-time, unfolding moment to moment. Atoms evolved into complex aggregates of increasing size and complexity. With size, gravity entering the equation, and together with Time, atomic elements grew into a bewildering variety of interacting forms.

Stars, planets, galaxies of mind-boggling shapes and sizes, engaged in a variety of dynamics that never cease to amaze. What we do seem to know is that objects influence each other and the whole, implying there is an awful lot of communicating going on. A cosmos filled with entities, each entity constrained within its particular physicality (bandwidth).

Each oblivious to its Self, because there was no need for it, and no means to it.

After all, consciousness is fundamentally all about processing interaction and feedback loops. Creatures are in a constant dialogue with prediction, observation, evaluation, reaction, all unfolding within their unique dynamic environments.

On Earth, stuff like crystals, mineral lattices, metals, etc. Out in the cosmos, all sorts of extreme atomic realities unfold, thanks to interacting with gravity. Each entity is unique and projects itself to the outside, interacting with some of that world.

The pre-biotic world was full of entities, not selves in any aware manner, still embodiments that interact with other embodiments just the same.

Then came the Krebs cycle, when CHNOPS (Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus, and Sulfur atoms) captured and harnessed electricity, energy.

That motive force created a profoundly unique category of elements, they invented the foundation of biology, dynamic interaction, life, the process lead to awareness, eventually achieving introspective consciousness. This injected a motive force that exploded molecular complexity to previously inconceivable elaborations and interactions.

Thus sending Earth’s Evolution down an astoundingly unique path, enabling life to take hold and build upon those beginnings towards ever more amazing levels of complexities and abilities, generation after generation.

Biotic molecular arrangements found themselves within a significantly different environment, with interactions becoming more involved and specific. This in turn required new internal communication strategies and the hardware to enable it.

The increasing complexity of molecular systems created the differentiation that evolved specialized units for handling the various tasks required to accommodate this increasing complexity, including inner-cell, later inner-creature, communication systems.

These new layers were built upon the nuance of already existing atomic/quantum interactions, communication, and cooperation systems — as witnessed by the latest evolutionary biological and neuroscientific evidence that is peering ever deeper into the physical reality of thought and consciousness processes beyond anything imaginable as recently as the pre-2000s.

My point being that Earth was always populated with entities, incredibly complex molecular entities that were something, simply by virtue of their composition and specific dynamic interactions. But nothing was at home to perceive, or care.

Evolution was a process of exploration, experimentation, and culling; inevitably efficiency and motivation became important players in the survival game. There was never a switch turned on. Biological or mythical. Connecting with one’s “Self” evolved over eons, and to different degrees.

Some philosopher’s imagine a Zombie person mind experiment — what’s that worth? We can imagine anything we want. The standard reply is that imaginability alone isn’t the point — what matters is whether the imagined scenario contains a hidden logical contradiction.

I find the weak link in the Zombie argument’s assumption that they have near complete enough of an understanding of our body’s exquisitely complex biological functions to erect such a conjecture. How we frame our questions dictates the kind of answers we are limited to.

Presuming conceivability without contradiction isn’t the same as a demonstrated possibility.

The Hard Problem simply assumes, for argument’s sake.

When I look at Evolution’s fantastical pageant, it’s filled with extraordinary creatures that were consistently pushing the envelope of what was previously possible, and coming up with mind-boggling strategies and mechanisms that elevated them to new heights in the so-called biological-arms-race. That was not about introspection, it was about increasing awareness in an increasingly complicated environment informing action.

—————

The Hard Problem tries to make something magical out of “feeling like something” when feeling like something was the only route for increasingly complex living organism with their complex environmental feedback loops and recall to go.

“Feeling like something” was the survival advantage that offered everlasting payback!

The drive to thrive. One day at a time. Day after day. Skin in the game is what creature survival required. It is inconceivable that a Zombie-person, lacking all sense of self & experience could muster the grit required to survive challenging times and events. Zombies belong in pipe dreams, not the vibrant pulsating natural biological Earth as it plays out over uncountable generations — that modern man seems to have come to loath. Where did that come from? But I digress.

It feels like something to be something simply by virtue of Evolution’s increasing biomechanical complexity & constant creature interaction, the thing philosophers don’t seem to care to discuss.

What’s going on here? History suggests that Descartes’ establishment of dualism was a result of appeasing both the Catholic Church and our Western sense of human exceptionalism and business interests — with its explicit understanding that Earth was ours to master and consume with no consideration beyond our own interests. It’s distasteful, but that’s how it really was. Our history books make that clear as a bell, for those who dare to investigate.

This is why I find it easy to see the Hard Problem as an example of thinkers unconsciously clinging to human exceptionalism, which is wrapped within passionate bias. Rather than being a matter of fact-based constructive dialogue with scientific knowledge and its respect for down-to-Earth evolutionary reality.

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What else could it be? As we learn more and more, that consciousness is different/distinct is less and less tenable. I guesstimate that all of the literature on consciousness simply orbits the hard problem of consciousness without making even an inch of progress towards anything more substantive. The explanatory gap isn’t that big a deal: how do physical processes give rise to mental phenomena?

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An impressive account of the emergence of consciousness. Thanks.

Yes, consciousness seems to have come into existence as the result of the evolution of self directed organisms.

Yes it seems unlikely that the experience of the brain which we call consciousness is something that could be switched on and off in a fully functioning brain.

Conscious experience seems to arise from our brain state and be an intrinsic part of that state.

I think that the experience we have as humans is highly developed but something similar may be happening in all organisms that have brains.

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Evolution did it. Ok, but how?

It’s not even clear that consciousness is useful for survival.

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You have described just another objectivistic theory about consciousness, which, as such, ignores the perspective from inside it. You have described everything as if your perspective was from outside you, but this is not where your perspective is. You consider everything from inside your subjectivity and this is precisely what you have ignored in your description. The problem of consciousness is hard because, at a certain point, we realize that we try to understand it from inside it and by using it. The perspective from inside is subjectivity and that’s why it cannot be understood by objective perspectives. The key question about consciousness is not “How is that it exists?”, but “How is that I am inside this consciousness?”

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I largely agree with the OP except that I disagree that this clears the explanatory gap.

Let’s consider pain. The way that we experience pain – as a negative experience of various strengths – works great. It means that we learn to avoid harmful stimuli, but can also choose to endure a level of pain for a level of goal.

I think tracing back how this may have evolved, is a quite promising angle to work on this problem. But, in itself, it is not a model of how neural activity can give rise to subjective experience.

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@Citizenschallenge
This – with a “why?” attached – is the Hard Problem. No one knows, yet, or even whether “give rise” is the right way to describe it. Talk about emergence is arm-waving until we get an actual scientific account. “Evolution’s ever so slowly increasing mechanical complexity” doesn’t come close to being such an account.

It’s also important to be clear about the “why?” part. To say that consciousness is evolutionarily helpful – a “survival advantage with everlasting payback” – does not answer the “why?” that needs answering. What we want to know is why a certain organization of physical matter must coincide with consciousness. In short, we want a lawlike scientific explanation, not a mere statement that consciousness is helpful. We pretty much already knew that; the “why?” of the Hard Problem is a different question. Perhaps, when we understand the “how?”, it will also become clear why this process has to do what it does, and not some other thing.

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I agree. The focus should be how and not why. However we can ask both questions and look to answer them together.

How did the car move from location A to B?

A force was applied, probably by the engine, to produce motion in the car from A to B.

Why did the car move from location A to B?
Gravity.

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And to make it a truly lawlike explanation, we have to add:

“Why must the car have moved from A to B, given the initial conditions? Why was this predictable?”

So, for consciousness, “What is it about the initial physical conditions that necessitate the co-appearance of consciousness, and not some other thing, or nothing at all?”

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We first have to deal with the late professor Daniel Clement Dennett III’s consciousness is an illusion.

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One issue the ‘Hard Problem’ points to, but is ignored by your analysis (as well as those by figures like Chalmers and Nagel) is that consciousness isn’t just about subjective feeling, it is about perspectival point of view and subjective scheme of interpretation. A scientific theory doesn’t eliminate subjective bias, it intertwines multiple subjective biases in order to abstract from these multiple points of view a consensus interpretation.

In producing such abstractions (objective, mathematically-based causation), we are contributing our own subjective and intersubjective schemes and placing them over the phenomena. We then conveniently forget our contribution to the ‘facts’ of nature, and proceed to explain subjective consciousness on the basis of those natural facts (physical, chemical, biological). Which is precisely what you have done here.

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You don’t think pain is useful to us?

Or do you mean something different?

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I do think pain is useful to us yes. I have no problem with that because I think consciousness is causal, we do things because of how we feel. The trouble is that this conflicts with the casual closure of the physical, which is also intuitively plausible. So we have to give one up. As a panpsychist I’m wondering if we actually need physical causation at all. Could all causation originate in feeling? Stuff does what it does because of how it feels, just like we do with pain avoidance.

I said that it is doubtful if consciousness is useful if we accept, as physicalists tend to do, the casual closure of the physical. A zombie, following physical laws, can do just fine without any feelings. But it seems we can’t function without them, perhaps. (Although some think feelings are epiphenomenal) Which suggests that physical law is insufficient to explain our behaviour. Taken to its panpsychist extreme, this view ends in the idea that nothing would happen at all without consciousness to cause it.

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That pain is useful as a signal isn’t in question. The hard problem raises the question whether pain as an experience is useful (see epiphenomanalism).

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I’m struggling to understand how Chalmers and Nagel could be said to limit consciousness to being “about subjective feeling”. Is there a particular argument you have in mind? Are you perhaps interpreting the question “What is it like to be a bat?” as “What does it feel like to be a bat?” If so, I urge you to read the essay again. Nagel’s major point is that we lack a means of sharing “the perspectival point of view.” (“Every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view.” - TN, my emphasis) This in turn of course influences the “subjective scheme of interpretation.” The question of “our contribution to the ‘facts’ of nature” is exactly what both Nagel and Chalmers foreground in their writing; the bat has different facts, not just different feelings. I agree that the formula “What is it like to be X?” is imprecise, but any charitable reading of Nagel and Chalmers reveals that they view the “what it’s like” question as a much deeper one than merely “how does it feel”.

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Let me answer your question with regard to Chalmers by relying on Zahavi’s take on Chalmers:

In his book The Conscious Mind David Chalmers introduced a by now familiar distinction between the hard problem and the easy problems of consciousness. The easy problems are those concerned with the question of how the mind can process information, react to environmental stimuli, and exhibit such capacities as
discrimination, categorization, and introspection.

All of these abilities are impressive, but they are, according to Chalmers, not metaphysically baffling, since they can all be tackled by
means of the standard repertoire of cognitive science and explained in terms of computational or neural
mechanisms. This task might still be difficult, but it is within reach. In contrast, the hard problem—also known as the problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why mental states have phenomenal or experiential qualities.

Why is it like something to ‘taste coffee’, to ‘touch an ice cube’, to ‘look at
a sunset’ etc.? Why does it feel the way it does? Why does it at all feel like anything?
Chalmers’s distinction confronts us with a version of the so-called ‘explanatory gap’. On the one hand, we have certain cognitive functions, which can apparently be explained reductively, and on the other hand, we have a number of experiential qualities, which seem to resist this reductive explanation.

We can establish that a certain function is accompanied by a certain experience, but we have no idea why that happens, and regardless of how closely we scrutinize the neural mechanisms we don’t seem to be getting any closer at an answer. In his book, Chalmers also distinguished two concepts of mind: a phenomenal concept and a psychological concept. The first captures the conscious aspect of mind: Mind is understood in terms of conscious experience. The second concept understands mind in functional terms as the causal or explanatory basis for behavior.

According to the phenomenal concept, a state is mental if it ‘feels’ a certain way; according
to the psychological concept, a state is mental if it plays an appropriate causal role. The first concept characterizes mind by the way it feels, the second by what it does, and according to Chalmers it is the first concept that is troublesome and which resists standard attempts at explanation.

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It’s not simply point of view that Nagel is arguing for in ‘what it is like’, it is the distinction between objectively determinable point of view and phenomenal point of view. You can give a perfectly objective account of perspective or point of view without thereby solving Chalmers’s and Nagel’s hard problem.

For example, a bat’s sensory system is organized around its particular sensory receptors, the spatial position of its body, the direction in which it is moving, the frequencies it emits and detects, the information available to it, its internal neural representations and its action possibilities.

We could, in principle, describe all of this objectively.We could say that given the bat’s position, sensory apparatus, neural architecture, and environmental relations, information from location X is processed in manner Y and produces behavioral disposition Z.

Nothing mysterious has necessarily appeared here. We’re describing a system’s standpoint on its environment.

And this is where something like computational cognitive science, neuroscience, ecological psychology, or enactivism can potentially give an objective account of perspective.

But Nagel isn’t merely saying that a bat processes information from a different spatial/biological standpoint than I do. He’s saying that there is something it is like for the bat to occupy that standpoint, and that the bat’s phenomenal facts are not captured by the objective facts. He and Chalmers are then inclined to add a special experience to those assumed objective facts.

My point is that Chalmers and Nagel assuming that we have first identified an objective physical/functional process and then have to explain why a subjective experience is somehow added to it.The enactivists, the phenomenologists and the pragmatists, by contrast, conceive of subjective consciousness as already constitutive of the objective facts. The objective world and the subject co-emerge out of their inseparable interaction via schemes of action.

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Thanks, that’s helpful. I wouldn’t describe Chalmers’ view this way, but if you adopt this description from Zahavi, I can understand why you would emphasize the “feel” aspect. Perhaps we can agree that the apparent duality of “feels” and “does” isn’t nuanced enough to capture the problem, in any case.

Yes.

Hmm . . . Is the special experience different from what we would call, in other contexts, being self-aware? It may be special, but I don’t think it’s mysterious or esoteric.

Well, yes, since we can identify similar physical/functional processes – biology, broadly – in which subjective experience does not arise.

I don’t find that much more satisfactory than the more standard evocations of “emergence” and its supposed explanatory power. Let’s say the objective world and the subject do co-emerge. The questions are: Why, and how? Simply declaring that it happens is not an explanation.

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Let’s say that one posits a deterministic model of objective causality to explain the behavior of physical objects. Has one down more than saying it happens? Has one explained why? Does one need to in order to have a pragmatically useful model?

I will say this. Any approach which identities grounding laws, properties and norms and builds their empirical model on top of these is not interested in the further ‘why’ behind these laws and norms. They are content with the explanation that the world just happens to work that way. Enactivist and phenomenological approaches, by contrast, recognize that the norms and laws of a science are not static, but transform themselves and the world, producing new ‘why’s’ all the time.

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Good questions. If one merely posits a deterministic model of causality, then no, I agree that much more is needed in the way of theory. Nor is such a positing explanatory. And yes, I’d say humans have done OK for centuries, pragmatically, by this kind of positing – it is a useful model.

But what is the role of us philosophers? I believe we have to either do better than positing, or else explain why that’s an unreasonable request. To the extent that any philosophical tradition defaults to “laws and norms,” I want more. I’m not sure which tradition you have in mind, exactly, but “the world just happens to work that way” is a non-starter – that is, unless one can back it up with a spade-turning explanation of why we must stop there.

That’s great. But here, now, there is the “why” of subjectivity. I’m happy to hear an account of why a current scientific explanation, if we had one, would necessarily be “not static,” and open to transformation. I’d probably agree with such an account. But first we need the explanation itself, don’t we? Otherwise, the traditions you’re describing would be making the same inadmissible move as the “it just happens that way” viewpoint.

This thread may not be the spot for such an explanation, of course. And I’m aware that a term like “schemes of action” probably has some very specific elaborations. But in a way, that’s my point. It’s the elaborations we need, not a recourse to (what are to me) weak phrases like “emergence”.