# Why Philosophy Converges on the Hard Problem **URL:** \ **Category:** Philosophy of Mind\ **Created:** [September 19, 2026, 7:58pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158 "2026-09-19T19:58:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![WhoKnows](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/whoknows/32/1145_2.png) [@WhoKnows](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/WhoKnows)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2026, 4:59am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/191 "2026-10-09T04:59:56Z")
> [@j\_j](#): > > Are you a Stones fan ? > > Great song. Yes - I like most music. > [@j\_j](#): > > I suggest that one strong reading of “consciousness” takes it to point at the “being” or “presence” of the world **for** this or that animal. The animal wants. Its brain is part of that. Yes - the question remains - what **is** it which is doing the “wanting” re the human animal form? Remember that “wanting” is a conscious thing. We are not specifically talking about automatic body functions which are not the same as wanting. (those are more just a case of doing). ---
**Author:** ![j\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ab097/32.png) [@j\_j](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/j_j)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2026, 5:13am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/192 "2026-10-09T05:13:37Z")
> [@WhoKnows](#): > > Yes - the question remains - what **is** it which is doing the “wanting” re the human animal form? > > Remember that “wanting” is a conscious thing. We are not specifically talking about automatic body functions which are not the same as wanting. (those are more just a case of doing). I approach this in terms of experience **is** reality but from a “pov.” So the world is noisy and colorful and structured in terms of value. So I am hungry and that food over there smells great. In one sense, “I” as meat-creature am the witness. This selfhood is enacted. Our bodies are trained into performing the time-binding other-dependent meme of selfhood. In another sense, **there is no witness.** An implicit meat-located perspective, but no witness. Consciousness is the brute presence of the world. This “presence” is not a thing inside the world. Not a stuff. But the presence of things. ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/uploads/thephilosophyforum/original/2X/7/71351591fd76cf4c7a47e495faaee2a8f8489abf.jpeg) That’s a “self-portrait” by Ernst Mach, one of my key influences on this issue. The world **is.** Let’s say I have a rotten tooth and the pain is terrible. The toothache **is.** Forget categories like “mind” and “matter.” I say let us “notice” that the toothache **is.** This is the “brute fact” of the world, and this brute fact is qualitative. The world is ugly, beautiful, delicious, nauseating, and so on and so on. This quality of the world **is.** The red rose is. The grilled cheese sandwich is. When I don’t take my famotidine and antiacid tablets before I go to bed, heartburn **is.** “My” mouth or fingers can speak or type the sign “I.” This sign does not refer to the brain or to the presence of the world but in general to the “role” that my meat has been trained to dance as a “self.” Quality, being, presence = “consciousness” ? Last but not least, the sound of music is. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/V-HuYUaSjNU/maxresdefault.jpg "Heaven (Remastered)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-HuYUaSjNU) ---
**Author:** ![bert1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8baadc/32.png) [@bert1](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/bert1)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2026, 8:53am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/193 "2026-10-09T08:53:58Z")
> [@m\_t](#): > > The tricky part is how, not why Indeed, that’s exactly the Hard Problem. ---
**Author:** ![bert1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8baadc/32.png) [@bert1](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/bert1)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2026, 8:56am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/194 "2026-10-09T08:56:26Z")
> [@m\_t](#): > > As for anesthesia, I hope you lose consciousness during your surgery or the nurse didn’t do it right. Is consciousness lost, or identity lost? ---
**Author:** ![WhoKnows](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/whoknows/32/1145_2.png) [@WhoKnows](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/WhoKnows)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2026, 7:34pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/195 "2026-10-10T19:34:47Z")
> [@j\_j](#): > > In one sense, “I” as meat-creature am the witness. We differ here. “I” is not the “meat-creature” human, but that which experiences being a human - being within a human form. > [@j\_j](#): > > Quality, being, presence = “consciousness” ? Yes. That which is having the human experience… …“I”… ---
**Author:** ![j\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ab097/32.png) [@j\_j](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/j_j)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2026, 8:22pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/196 "2026-10-10T20:22:44Z")
> [@WhoKnows](#): > > We differ here. “I” is not the “meat-creature” human, but that which experiences being a human - being within a human form. As I see it, the mark/sign “I” is a thing we can trade. The meaning is not “inside” the mark. I’m with Bakhtin on this. The hard part of dialogue is figuring out what the other person is trying to do with the sign. You seem to be talking about the “pure witness.” I get that. So am I. But in a certain sense there is no witness. Consciousness is just the being of the world itself, from the POV of the meat associated with the performed social linguistic “I.” I don’t offer this as the “truth.” I am sharing signs that may or may not help us feel that we understand one another. ---
**Author:** ![Andy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/aeb1de/32.png) [@Andy](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Andy)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2026, 8:32pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/197 "2026-10-10T20:32:02Z")
> [@WhoKnows](#): > > “I” is not the “meat-creature” human, but that which experiences being a human - being within a human form. You’re standing on a stepping stone half way across the stream… halted at roughly the same linguistically generated confusion that stopped Descartes dead in his tracks with his “thinker,” except this time it’s the linguistically generated confusion “there is experience, therefore there is an experiencer.” ---
**Author:** ![WhoKnows](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/whoknows/32/1145_2.png) [@WhoKnows](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/WhoKnows)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2026, 10:52pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/198 "2026-10-10T22:52:27Z")
@Andy @J_J What language does is shape our understanding of the first-person. Philosophy stays in the “safety” of the third-person, which is the main point of the thread subject. It cannot answer the Hard Problem because the question is “what am I?” and can only be answered by the experiencer. There is no experience without an experiencer. It is not so much about the experience or even what we might each think of the experience - what each of our experience is. It is about WHAT is having the experience. ---
**Author:** ![Andy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/aeb1de/32.png) [@Andy](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Andy)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2026, 11:32pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/199 "2026-10-10T23:32:50Z")
> [@WhoKnows](#): > > What language does is shape our understanding of the first-person. Yes, but by introducing a confusion. > [@WhoKnows](#): > > Philosophy stays in the “safety” of the third-person Isn’t that science? > [@WhoKnows](#): > > It cannot answer the Hard Problem because the question is “what am I?” Have you been reading Ramana Maharshi? I went down that road and got stuck for years because I misunderstood the question. It’s not exhorting you to find something, it’s exhorting you to look in order to realise there’s nothing to find. > [@WhoKnows](#): > > There is no experience without an experiencer. And there it is… you think you’ve found something, but all that’s happened is that you’ve been confused by language. > [@WhoKnows](#): > > It is about WHAT is having the experience. Keep looking. The penny will eventually drop. ---
**Author:** ![j\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ab097/32.png) [@j\_j](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/j_j)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2026, 11:56pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/200 "2026-10-10T23:56:50Z")
> [@WhoKnows](#): > > What language does is shape our understanding of the first-person. Philosophy stays in the “safety” of the third-person, which is the main point of the thread subject. It cannot answer the Hard Problem because the question is “what am I?” and can only be answered by the experiencer. > There is no experience without an experiencer. > It is not so much about the experience or even what we might each think of the experience - what each of our experience is. > It is about WHAT is having the experience. I understand reality to be **only** from-a-point-of-view. So for me “subjectivity goes all the way down.” On the other hand, I do not see experience as “inside stuff.” The subject is not a container of inside stuff. My mom is “conscious” because the world that I have from my point of view is also there for her from her point of view. Her consciousness is the being of the entire world from another point of view. I suggest that the verbal normative enacted self-meme tends to get in the way here. The animal-linguistic self is an experiencer. Sure. But I think the most radical understanding of consciousness is as the pure presence of the world. The “witness” is part of the ~~witnessed.~~ ---
**Author:** ![Banno](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/banno/32/55_2.png) [@Banno](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Banno)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2026, 12:06am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/201 "2026-10-11T00:06:41Z")
The OP begins by observe that inquiry involves a subject, goes on to equivocate on “subject”, then declares the hard problem a precondition, and asserts idealism or panpsychism by fiat. The one true premise, that inquiry has an inquirer, doesn’t support the conclusion. The inquirer, of course, is a community, never alone. ---
**Author:** ![j\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ab097/32.png) [@j\_j](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/j_j)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2026, 12:48am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/202 "2026-10-11T00:48:36Z")
> [@Banno](#): > > The inquirer, of course, is a community, never alone. Yes. Descartes should have said something like “ **we** are.” Language is fundamentally social and embodied. So the whole “ghost” thing was wack too. ---
**Author:** ![WhoKnows](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/whoknows/32/1145_2.png) [@WhoKnows](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/WhoKnows)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2026, 5:52am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/203 "2026-10-11T05:52:39Z")
@Andy You appear to be agreeing with me about language - but what I notice is that what is _realising_ a “no-thing” is **something** - whereas the comment "keep on looking (requiring a “looker”) only serves to mystify and infer you “know” something I don’t. But what is that? It is not expressed. Thus your post content appears to be more a case of philosophism. Words that infer meaning but actually don’t show any. ---
**Author:** ![WhoKnows](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/whoknows/32/1145_2.png) [@WhoKnows](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/WhoKnows)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2026, 5:58am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/204 "2026-10-11T05:58:25Z")
I don’t respond to respond summaries. Rather, if you want to quote those parts of the OP that you make declarations about, I will adress those critiques. ---
**Author:** ![WhoKnows](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/whoknows/32/1145_2.png) [@WhoKnows](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/WhoKnows)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2026, 6:07am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/205 "2026-10-11T06:07:17Z")
> [@j\_j](#): > > > [@Banno](#): > > > > The inquirer, of course, is a community, never alone. > > Yes. Descartes should have said something like “ **we** are.” Language is fundamentally social and embodied. So the whole “ghost” thing was wack too. Yes - “communities” a gatherings of third person conjecture which has been relegated something akin to “this is the truth” and “We are gathered here today” Communities create their own narratives - and claim authority for them. But here’s the kick. Each of us is born and will die independent of any group we choose to align with and the beliefs such groups may foster and gatekeep. We are born alone. We die alone. No group changes that. a group cannot decide for you WHAT you are. We can of course, delegate that responsibility to any group one might name, but it makes no difference. Not in the language they choose to use, nor anything else. First-person is the default. Grouping is the reaction against that. Before any community - there is the first-person. Before any “we” - there is “I.” The group is a formation of individuals - not the ground of them. ---
**Author:** ![Banno](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/banno/32/55_2.png) [@Banno](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Banno)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2026, 6:09am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/206 "2026-10-11T06:09:58Z")
> [@WhoKnows](#): > > First-person is the default. Yet on your own account there is no first person without the “other”? ---
**Author:** ![j\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ab097/32.png) [@j\_j](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/j_j)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2026, 6:50am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/207 "2026-10-11T06:50:37Z")
> [@WhoKnows](#): > > Each of us is born and will die independent of any group we choose to align with and the beliefs such groups may foster and gatekeep. We are born alone. We die alone. No group changes that. I agree. Life is first-person. Death is first-person. Reality itself is “first-person.” But this reality is shared and not something in people’s “minds.” Not idealism but ontological perspectivism. The “community” point isn’t some kind of sentimental optimistic thing for me. I like the gloomy philosophers. We are mortal animals in the world. We trade marks and noises as we deal with objects in our shared environment. This environment will kill us if we aren’t careful or can’t get along — if only to wage war together against some other tribe. We are indeed born helpless, with heads too heavy for our necks. As far as I know, we don’t even have a conception of the self yet. That meme is learned. > [@WhoKnows](#): > > Grouping is the reaction against that. Before any community - there is the first-person. Before any “we” - there is “I.” The group is a formation of individuals - not the ground of them. I will meet you half way. The individual emerges from the group and inherits language from the group, but “consciousness” is first-person. The individual can work toward a new kind of personality that the world has never seen before. The group is also not a group except through mortal individuals. I’m talking about moms and dads here. The neighbor down the street. No individuals, no group. But no group, no language, no philosophy. No self-consciousness. Selfhood is an enacted meme directed at “witnesses” ( others.) I can only be me through contrast. This last “claim” is just a pointer, not offered “literally.” ---
**Author:** ![Andy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/aeb1de/32.png) [@Andy](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Andy)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2026, 7:18am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/208 "2026-10-11T07:18:29Z")
> [@WhoKnows](#): > > what is _realising_ a “no-thing” is **something** The subject is not an object. > [@WhoKnows](#): > > the comment "keep on looking (requiring a “looker”) only serves to mystify Yes, language itself is the source of confusion, but it’s the only tool in the tool box, so one must use it as skilfully as one is able. It’s like having to steer into a skid in order to recover from it. > [@WhoKnows](#): > > and infer you “know” something I don’t. What I know is that I was confused by language. > [@WhoKnows](#): > > But what is that? I was unthinkingly and erroneously imposing the subject-predicate structure of my language on my model of the structure of reality. ---
**Author:** ![j\_j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ab097/32.png) [@j\_j](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/j_j)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2026, 7:40am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/209 "2026-10-11T07:40:49Z")
Adding to what @Andy just said, I offer a few comments on the “subject.” I won’t call these comments “true” in the sense that they “agree with” a reality-from-no-POV. I don’t know if you will find anything in them. From my POV, I had a breakthrough a few years ago on this issue. So I try to “spell out” that breakthrough in case others can relate. If not, I can’t blame them. This is slippery stuff. I don’t have the world as them. There is risk in offering this kind of talk. Here goes: I suggest that taking “reality-from-no-POV” **for granted** “forces” people into the hard problem. I think we can get by with shared-but-first-person-reality. We **inherit** a dualistic framework. This framework includes a “lonely ghost” that is trapped in a “machine.” All these ghosts share a world, but in the dualistic framework this is achieved through the ghost stuff of “qualia” or “perception as internal icon.” Somehow “information” from “objective reality stuff” gets “translated” into these “internal icons.” This “objective reality stuff” is “reality-from-no-POV” and usually also “the great truth-maker.” If one accepts the typical understanding of “true” as “agreeing with objective reality stuff,” then one has already accepted dualism. One has already “forced” consciousness to be a “stuff.” One other approach is to understand consciousness as being or presence. In this case, the “consciousness” associated with a human body is the being of _the world itself_ from the POV of that body. So “consciousness” is not inside stuff but the “being” there of the world I share with others, from “my” POV as selfing animal. The word “being” is not used here as the name of a primal stuff. The word “being” is itself of course another thing in the world. But certain humans use this thing to point at the strange “it-is-ness” of the world, which we mostly ignore. It’s an attempt to point at the “it is there-ness” of the world and not something in the world that is “there.” From this POV, even the “internal monologue” is part of the world. All the “I”-saying of the body is just more stuff in the world that is there. There is only the world but only from POV. The subject is “empty.” The subject is “pure point of view” — the being of the world in this way rather than that, relative to the conscious creature. Note that this means that “immediate reality” is stuctured in terms of the animals values. These values are not “painted on.” Instead some metaphysicians scrubbed them off in the first place, by understanding physics, for instance, as metaphysics. But we can just as easily understand physics as a tool for prediction and control, a map **within** the territory. Maps are good precisely because they are simpler than the territory. They compress information. “Scientism” takes a useful lossy compression and calls it “the true world.” Why ? Well people want to claim the “truth.” So they are willing to reject some parts of reality as “unreal.” ---
**Author:** ![WhoKnows](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/whoknows/32/1145_2.png) [@WhoKnows](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/WhoKnows)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2026, 8:36am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158/210 "2026-10-11T08:36:09Z")
> [@Banno](#): > > > [@WhoKnows](#): > > > > First-person is the default. > > Yet on your own account there is no first person without the “other”? The “other” is first-person. Everyone is. I wrote as much in my last post. [Previous page](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158.md?page=9) [Next page](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/why-philosophy-converges-on-the-hard-problem/3158.md?page=11)