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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3

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Here is the abstract of Pharoah's paper, look at it in light of the above:

ABSTRACT: The phenomenon of our experience is the property we identify as consciousness, which is why a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience would seem to explain consciousness – Indeed, Chalmers (1995) has described the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ as the problem of experience. However, the specificity of our conscious identity as distinct from conscious experience in general, tells us that following a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience, questions must remain regarding personal identity and why each of us happen to be the individual we are, rather than anyone else. In this paper, I explore noumenal consciousness as distinct from the problem of phenomenal consciousness.

Now what this could mean is mistaking what Chalmers means by the hard problem - classing it as one of the "easy problems".

Here is what Chalmers lists as the "easy problems"

  • the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to
    environmental stimuli;
  • the integration of information by a cognitive system;
  • the reportability of mental states;
  • the ability of a system to access its own internal states;
  • the focus of attention;
  • the deliberate control of behavior;
  • the difference between wakefulness and sleep.
All of these phenomena are associated with the notion of consciousness. For example, one sometimes says that a mental state is conscious when it is verbally reportable, or when it is internally accessible. Sometimes a system is said to be conscious of some information when it has the ability to react on the basis of that information, or, more strongly, when it attends to that information, or when it can integrate that information and exploit it in the sophisticated control of behavior. We sometimes say that an action is conscious precisely when it is deliberate. Often, we say that an organism is conscious as another way of saying that it is awake.

But all of these things he calls the easy problems: internally accessible, attending and awake. Is this what @Pharoah and @Soupie have in mind about consciousness?

If so, Chalmers says:

There is no real issue about whether these phenomena can be explained scientifically. All of them are straightforwardly vulnerable to explanation in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. To explain access and reportability, for example, we need only specify the mechanism by which information about internal states is retrieved and made available for verbal report. To explain the integration of information, we need only exhibit mechanisms by which information is brought together and exploited by later processes. For an account of sleep and wakefulness, an appropriate neurophysiological account of the processes responsible for organisms' contrasting behavior in those states will suffice. In each case, an appropriate cognitive or neurophysiological model can clearly do the explanatory work.

So Chalmers must mean something else when he talks about the hard problem of consicousness.

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience.

Pharaoh writes:

Indeed, Chalmers (1995) has described the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ as the problem of experience.

So far so good ... so maybe it hinges on what we are calling experience.

Pharoah writes:
However, the specificity of our conscious identity as distinct from conscious experience in general, tells us that following a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience, questions must remain regarding personal identity and why each of us happen to be the individual we are, rather than anyone else. In this paper, I explore noumenal consciousness as distinct from the problem of phenomenal consciousness.

What is the specificity of our conscious identity as distinct from conscious experience in general? What questions remain regarding personal identity? Isn't that what Chalmers and Nagel mean by being a subject? There is no other way to be a subject - except to have personal identity - otherwise you are an object - that's the whole rhetoric behind Nagel's argument.

Chalmers continues:
When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect.

the whir of information processing is what Pharoah calls conscious experience in general and what Chalmers calls "subjective aspect" (something it is like to be a "a" - singular, subject is always singular - I can't plurally be a subject

subject/object singular/plural

... cut my corpus collosum and there aren't two of me, there are two subjects - forever breached (see James' quote in the article) - what Chalmers calls "subjective aspect" is Pharoah's "personal identity" the noumenal consciousness.


Chalmers again:

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.

It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience.


But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing.

Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. <--- @Soupie Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life* at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

*smcder - this is my comment what is it to have a rich inner life emphasis on - inner - except to be you? Here "inner" doesn't mean in your head (and so also in yours and yours and yours) @Soupie has a potential contradiction here when he says we can't even know if someone else is conscious - the author says this is unbreachable even by God (or an omniscient science) - here "inner" means unaccessible, truly interior ... even if ESP is true, you only worry about someone knowing your thoughts but not someone knowing what it is like to be you.

Chalmers

If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one. In this central sense of "consciousness", an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and a mental state is conscious if there is something it is like to be in that state.


Sometimes terms such as "phenomenal consciousness" and "qualia" are also used here, but I find it more natural to speak of "conscious experience" or simply "experience". Another useful way to avoid confusion (used by e.g. Newell 1990, Chalmers 1995) is to reserve the term "consciousness" for the phenomena of experience, using the less loaded term "awareness" for the more straightforward phenomena described earlier. If such a convention were widely adopted, communication would be much easier; as things stand, those who talk about "consciousness" are frequently talking past each other.

*smcder
- this may be crucial:

The ambiguity of the term "consciousness" is often exploited by both philosophers and scientists writing on the subject. It is common to see a paper on consciousness begin with an invocation of the mystery of consciousness, noting the strange intangibility and ineffability of subjectivity, and worrying that so far we have no theory of the phenomenon.

Here, the topic is clearly the hard problem - the problem of experience. In the second half of the paper, the tone becomes more optimistic, and the author's own theory of consciousness is outlined. Upon examination, this theory turns out to be a theory of one of the more straightforward phenomena - of reportability, of introspective access, or whatever.

*smcder - so Pharoah's theory will have to not be about one of these phenomena

Chalmers
At the close, the author declares that consciousness has turned out to be tractable after all, but the reader is left feeling like the victim of a bait-and-switch. The hard problem remains untouched.

*smcder
One last bit:

By contrast, the hard problem is hard precisely because it is not a problem about the performance of functions. The problem persists even when the performance of all the relevant functions is explained. (Here "function" is not used in the narrow teleological sense of something that a system is designed to do, but in the broader sense of any causal role in the production of behavior that a system might perform.)

"performance of functions" - would then be what Pharoah means by conscious experience in general and a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience

Pharoah
However, the specificity of our conscious identity as distinct from conscious experience in general, tells us that following a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience, questions must remain regarding personal identity and why each of us happen to be the individual we are, rather than anyone else. In this paper, I explore noumenal consciousness as distinct from the problem of phenomenal consciousness.

At least I've got something to look for now in Pharoah's noumenal paper and Chalmers and Nagel's orginal papers - and if these do turn out to be different things - then I am very excited to have a new understanding of the hard problem, for which there is a possible solution! and a new hard problem to think about.
When speaking of "phenomenal experience", nowhere does Chalmers explicitly state that he is talking about a singularty/ identity specific view point. He can be interpreted as meaning that, yes, but equally one can read him as meaning phenomenal experience as a general characteristic of consciousness.
He does not qualify the distinction because he does not acknowledge any distinction.
If you look at my noumenon paper I highlight Chalmers (2003 - Consciousness and its place in nature!) position. There he identifies 6 views on the metaphysics of consciousness. He then equates materialism and dualism as a dichotomy of views with regard the relation between phenomenal truths and physical. To him the mind-body problem is how physical truths relate to the phenomenal domain (in general terms!) (also using terms like phenomenal properties, phenomenal states, phenomenal truths which are all general and non-individuated terms)
Of course, any organism with phenomenal experience necessarily has a unique singular perspective, but that is not what he is talking about specifically
 
@ Pharoah - could you use these comparisons as a framework

( ie go back through line by line above)

to distinguish your position from the authors? It appears to me you are both saying the same thing.
The author of Phi misrepresents Nagel and Chalmers, so I am largely ignoring everything he/she has to say. As I have said, Nagel's paper is more expansive than Chalmers for he is talking about the mind-body problem and consequently does touch on my idea of noumenon, but in doing so conflates phenomenal esperience and noumenon i.e. Nagel does not rcognise any distinction because he cannot foresee a physicalist explanation of the phenomenal.
 
Ok,
Q2 Physiological mechanisms are the kind of mechanism that have evolved because of replication - proviso: we are to assume the Darwinian/Wallacian theory of evolution, and consequently will not recount the mutation, selection, variation aspects required ontop of replication: that is a given.

Footnote 9 doesn't exist in my copy anymore so I don't know what it says without looking back at the attachment which I can't access at mo... if there is a connection, it is unintentionsal.

Q2 physiological mechanisms evolved by natural selection

Q3?

By the way -- tell me what happens on or before Q21?
 
The author of Phi misrepresents Nagel and Chalmers, so I am largely ignoring everything he/she has to say. As I have said, Nagel's paper is more expansive than Chalmers for he is talking about the mind-body problem and consequently does touch on my idea of noumenon, but in doing so conflates phenomenal esperience and noumenon i.e. Nagel does not rcognise any distinction because he cannot foresee a physicalist explanation of the phenomenal.

OK, I want to back up.

What specifically do you claim when you say you've solved the hard problem?

What specifically are you claiming for your idea of the noumenal - that this is unique? A Google search for "why am i me" turns up many responses -

For example:

Conscious Entities » Blog Archive » Why am I me?

I don't want to make assumptions here.

Next, I don't think you can ignore the author of the paper -

Isn't what they are describing the same as your idea of the noumenon? y/n?

If so, then I think there must be a reason why they attribute it to Nagel an Chalmers - I think it's implicit in their work - Nagel's paper is all about subjectivity, how can that be anything other than "why am i me?" so I don't think it's a leap, especially when you reconcile the terminology - see my posts above.

There is also @Soupie's interpretation from the get go that this is the hard problem and frankly, it's the only thing that makes sense that they are talking about subjectivity, a subject which means a unique point of view - why am I me? I realize I am being repetitive.

Chalmers clearly describes what he doesn't mean by the hard problem and I have lined up your examples with the "easy problems" that Chalmers categorizes, so he can't mean that as the hard problem. Do you want me to repost that part, where I do a line by line comparison with Chalmers writings?

I think I have a quote from Nagel's paper too ... tell you what, let me put all this together for round two and what I will do this time is assume you are right and see if I can distinguish your view from Chalmers, Nagel and others ... see if I can show your formulation of the noumenal is unique and if you have then the possibiltty of having solved the hard problem
 
Pharoah, I've just read a paper comparing MP and Deleuze in which it occurred to me that you might look for traces of your 'noumenal':

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/people/formerresearchstudents/henry-somers-hall/deleuze_and_merleau-ponty_-_aesthetics_of_difference_-_henry_somers-hall.pdf

but I doubt that it will satisfy your goals.



Isn't what they are describing the same as your idea of the noumenon? y/n?

If so, then I think there must be a reason why they attribute it to Nagel an Chalmers - I think it's implicit in their work - Nagel's paper is all about subjectivity, how can that be anything other than "why am i me?" so I don't think it's a leap, especially when you reconcile the terminology - see my posts above.

Agreed and seconded.
 
I don't mind the drip of insistence... it sounds to me as though you want me to start not with Hegel, but MP... Can't say I am enthusiastic about Hegel so far, but...

I do think it would be better if you read MP first.

Encapsulate the Globe

With one heart
Nurture the sphere in your crooked hand
Deeply inhale its soft cool mist into your fractured lungs
Wipe its endless soft life gently over red raw eyelids

With one vision
Caress the curved cragged landscapes
Brush the whispering life of trees
A sea of green floss
Cool and gentle in the wandering mist
soothing ragged skin

Soft sounds echo
Chiming as one with the mind
Seas slop and rage.
Scoop the ocean with omnipotent ease
Splash the sea to moisten the intense
drumming.

Draw in infinitely
Internal breath of heady scent
A rush of beauty straight to the head
And breath out a weep of poisonous bitterness
Far out into the distance
Live in time.

Where did you find this poem?
 
I'm thinking out loud (have been all night) - so you might not want to read all these following posts - I'll hope to decide I'm wrong or if I'm right, I hope to put it succinctly. I'll try to format these consistently but again it's just me thinking out loud mostly and making notes more for myself.

I'm reading @Pharoah's paper now (and he has said clearly that he hasn't visited this in ten years, I think and all cards on the table as far as noumneal consciousness is concerned, but the claim has been made that he can show the hard problem in 21 questions - so my focus is on whether or not he has a hold of the hard problem or if what he calls the noumenal is the same as Nagel/Chalmers hard problem - in which case he hasn't solved it.

Phenomenal experience is the term used to describe the rather subjective ‘something it is like’ aspect of experience. Examples of phenomenal experience include what it is to experience depths and shades of colours, the variety in the subtlety of aromas, the character of sound clusters, or the pleasantness of tactile sensations. Whilst being a fundamental aspect of the way we relate to the environment, the phenomenon of our subjective experience has ineffable qualities that evade objective analysis. Phenomenal experience is the experience that individuals identify as the subjective experience of consciousness.

Let's see if we can fit these in Chalmers' examples:
  • the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to
    environmental stimuli;
  • the integration of information by a cognitive system;
  • the reportability of mental states;
  • the ability of a system to access its own internal states;
  • the focus of attention;
  • the deliberate control of behavior;
  • the difference between wakefulness and sleep.
It looks to me like these are all examples of Chalmers' first category*

discriminate, categorize and react to environmental stimuli

depths and shades of colors, variety in the subtlety of aromas, character of sound clusters, pleasantness of tactile sensations

*This is the first place I could be makinng a mistake.

With Chalmers’ stance one could conclude that a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience is by necessity also a reductive explanation of consciousness – Experience is the property we identify as consciousness, therefore, the phenomenon of experience is consciousness. However, why should one presume that a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience is not distinct from the materialist or dualist arguments regarding consciousness?

But is phenomenal experience what Chalmers' is talking about? The examples Phaorah gives above do not appear to be "what it is like to be" rather they seem to be the "whir of information-processing"

depths and shades of colors, variety in the subtlety of aromas, character of sound clusters, pleasantness of tactile sensations

We can imagine all of these and imagine other's experiencing them without knowing what it is like to be them. That's the left-over bit. If this all there is to what it is like to be someone, then I would know what it is like to be any one (any subject). Below Chalmers defines what he means by "experience" is the subjective aspect, the something it is like to be a conscious organism. Is this what Pharoah means by the noumenal. Well, if he means what it is like to be me and not someone else, then it appears to me to be what he means too.

Chalmers
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.

Phaoroah
However, the specificity of our conscious identity as distinct from conscious experience in general, tells us that following a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience, questions must remain regarding personal identity and why each of us happen to be the individual we are, rather than anyone else. In this paper, I explore noumenal consciousness as distinct from the problem of phenomenal consciousness.


It looks like they are drawing the same distinction.

BUT Pharoah then says this:

I suggest therefore, that the nature of the concept of the “hard problem” of consciousness does not entail providing a reductive explanation of phenomenal experience.

Yet remember what Chalmers means by "experience" (he uses "experience" not phenomenal experience - there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience.

I'm still not 100% sure we have the vocabulary lined up.

continued

@Pharoah

Phenomenal experience is the term used to describe the rather subjective ‘something it is like’ aspect of experience. Examples of phenomenal experience include what it is to experience depths and shades of colours, the variety in the subtlety of aromas, the character of sound clusters, or the pleasantness of tactile sensations. Whilst being a fundamental aspect of the way we relate to the environment, the phenomenon of our subjective experience has ineffable qualities that evade objective analysis. Phenomenal experience is the experience that individuals identify as the subjective experience of consciousness.

Let's see if we can fit these in Chalmers' examples:
  • the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to
    environmental stimuli;
  • the integration of information by a cognitive system;
  • the reportability of mental states;
  • the ability of a system to access its own internal states;
  • the focus of attention;
  • the deliberate control of behavior;
  • the difference between wakefulness and sleep.
It looks to me like these are all examples of Chalmers' first category of "easy problems" - if so, this is not the hard problem of consciousness
 
quoting Pharoah: "Phenomenal experience is the term used to describe the rather subjective ‘something it is like’ aspect of experience."

But nor is Pharoah's statement that "Phenomenal experience is the term used to describe the rather subjective ‘something it is like’ aspect of experience" an adequate description of phenomenal experience. We keep trying here to understand phenomenological experience from the meager attempt by C and N to account for it in terms of 'what it is like'. Phenomenal experience cannot be understood without a reading and comprehension of phenomenological philosophy. {that steady drip-drip again, but how many times do I need to point this out?}
 
The extracts from the Abrams paper I posted yesterday contain the clues to how phenomenological experience exceeds 'what it is like' and mere qualia. Why not read the extracts again, attentively, and see if you can recognize what is significant and founding in phenomenologically understood experience itself?
 
I do want to express my gratitude for the rehearsal here of key issues in consciousness studies. It's helped to orchestrate my own evolving understanding of these issues for me to the point where I feel ready now, for the first time in a year, to get back to my own work explaining the phenomenological significance of W. Stevens's poetry.
 
OK, I want to back up.

What specifically do you claim when you say you've solved the hard problem?

What specifically are you claiming for your idea of the noumenal - that this is unique? A Google search for "why am i me" turns up many responses -

For example:

Conscious Entities » Blog Archive » Why am I me?

I don't want to make assumptions here.

Next, I don't think you can ignore the author of the paper -

Isn't what they are describing the same as your idea of the noumenon? y/n?

If so, then I think there must be a reason why they attribute it to Nagel an Chalmers - I think it's implicit in their work - Nagel's paper is all about subjectivity, how can that be anything other than "why am i me?" so I don't think it's a leap, especially when you reconcile the terminology - see my posts above.

There is also @Soupie's interpretation from the get go that this is the hard problem and frankly, it's the only thing that makes sense that they are talking about subjectivity, a subject which means a unique point of view - why am I me? I realize I am being repetitive.

Chalmers clearly describes what he doesn't mean by the hard problem and I have lined up your examples with the "easy problems" that Chalmers categorizes, so he can't mean that as the hard problem. Do you want me to repost that part, where I do a line by line comparison with Chalmers writings?

I think I have a quote from Nagel's paper too ... tell you what, let me put all this together for round two and what I will do this time is assume you are right and see if I can distinguish your view from Chalmers, Nagel and others ... see if I can show your formulation of the noumenal is unique and if you have then the possibiltty of having solved the hard problem

@smcder
I want to read Nagel 20 years on paper and the Kripke which were linked above.

Another way of understanding Chalmers' Hard Problem is to recognise how he aligns himself with the conceivability arguments (inverted spectra, zombie, other worlds, Jackson's Mary). I think it is very clear what he means by the Hard Problem. We are talking in these examples about qualitative phenomenal experience non-individuated i.e. the general property of phenomenal consciousness; that mysterious qualitative experience "we all refer to as the experience of consciousness". He thinks that this is the mind-body problem—this encapsulate the mind-body problem—but it is not the mind-body problem if you explain the qualitative phenomenon of experience. When you do have that explanation, you realise the mind-body problem is the person specific nature of being not that of the qualitative phenomenal experience.

When people talk of phenomenal feeling, they talk about "the smell of a red rose" the feeling of "green" etc. They don't talk of "my feelings as a unique identity in this world of qualitative experience"

What does Chalmers mean by easy problems? basically the ones that can be objectively measured by science: correlations between phenomenal feelings and ECG such that we can say ECG pattern (mathematically translated) = feeling blue etc. He is talking about the natural sciences and the kinds of progress they make. He is saying that a fundamental shift is required that science is incapable of making namely, the shift into the world of qualitative phenomena.

@smcder
you say:
"Q2 physiological mechanisms evolved by natural selection
Q3?
By the way -- tell me what happens on or before Q21?"

On or before Q21, you probably fall asleep! or jump off something too high. No, we are supposed to arrive at x=phenomenal experience... or something like that. I don't have much confidence but I am enjoying the pernickety task so far.
We can't have your version of Q2 though. It is implying that natural selection is the cause; that there is a direction or purpose to Mother Nature. We can't have that.

Q2 The kinds of mechanism that have evolved because of replication (and necessary conditions as per Darwin) are exclusively physiological.
 
I do think it would be better if you read MP first.

Where did you find this poem?
I wrote it.
Thanks for the Deleuze MP paper... will have a look

Can someone drop the Phi paper link again... I can't find it? I do think they/he/she is are talking about my noumenon but the attributions to N and C are incorrect.

@smcder
"the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;" = Chalmers thinking "behaviourism"
"the integration of information by a cognitive system;" = Chalmers thinking "function(alism)"
"the reportability of mental states;" = Chalmers thinking "psychology/language/representation(alism) poss. HOR"
"the ability of a system to access its own internal states" = Chalmers thinking "Cognitive science"
etc.

I am not that keen on going over this Hard Problem easy problem blah blah because ultimately, if you want to think HCT addressing an easy problem then that is what you are going to think... BUT nota bena DC says "we do not yet have anything close to a complete explanation of these [easy] phenomena" so... if HCT is only a solution to an "easy" problem that is no small measure!! But it's not anyway... it's the Hard Problem

@Constance
So pleased you are finding this recent discussion positive. Even if we go our separate ways in our approach to consciousness, I think we are richer and wiser in our understandings.

I need to read Phi again, plus the other three papers linked. cyall
 
We are talking in these examples about qualitative phenomenal experience non-individuated i.e. the general property of phenomenal consciousness; that mysterious qualitative experience "we all refer to as the experience of consciousness". He thinks that this is the mind-body problem—this encapsulate the mind-body problem—but it is not the mind-body problem if you explain the qualitative phenomenon of experience. When you do have that explanation, you realise the mind-body problem is the person specific nature of being not that of the qualitative phenomenal experience.

So you say, but you need to explain what you mean, support what you are claiming. The mind-body problem, as well as the subject-object problem, are obviously both involved in (and precede in the history of philosophy) the contemporary attempt to understand what 'consciousness' is. 'What is consciousness?' is a question we can work on, and need to work on, and in our time are finally working on, before we take up the additional question {if it is a question still remaining after phenomenological analysis} of the individuality -- the positionality and self-referentiality -- of conscious and proto-conscious experience.
 
@smcder

Re: my conception of the HP.

I think my phrasing, which was in response to the "Phi" article and particular quotes you highlighted, caused you to misunderstand me.

Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3 | Page 44 | The Paracast Community Forums

Since reading Chalmers, I've understood the HP to be the problem of how consciousness can exist in a physical reality. So I agree with @Pharoah. Chalmers' HP is not the problem of describing individual consciousnesses, but the problem of describing how consciousness can be physical.

So I think @Pharoah (or someone) could answer Chalmers (objectively explain how consciousness in general could be physical) but fail to objectivity explain what it's like to be an individual (ie to objectively describe subjectivity).
 
The ordinary concept of water is unsaturated, so to speak, since it contains a blank space to be filled in by the discovery of the real, and essential, chemical composition of water. Just as we make room for the possibility of such discovery by denying that the manifest properties of water exhaust its nature, so we can open the possibility of an a posteriori [as per Dowell - HCT] answer to the mind- body problem by denying that the manifest properties of experience exhaust its nature. This means thinking of experiences, contrary to intuition, as events whose full nature is not revealed to experience -- and more generally, thinking of the mind, contrary to Cartesian intuition, as only partially available, even in principle, to introspection. If we can do this without denying the phenomenology or reducing it to something else, we will be on the first step toward an expansionist but still nondualist response to the mind-body problem. This is so far pure fantasy, but it is the fantasy of a theoretical identification of mental events with an inner constitution that includes but is not exhausted by their introspectible or manifest character.
 
@smcder

Re: my conception of the HP.

I think my phrasing, which was in response to the "Phi" article and particular quotes you highlighted, caused you to misunderstand me.

Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 3 | Page 44 | The Paracast Community Forums

Since reading Chalmers, I've understood the HP to be the problem of how consciousness can exist in a physical reality. So I agree with @Pharoah. Chalmers' HP is not the problem of describing individual consciousnesses, but the problem of describing how consciousness can be physical.

So I think @Pharoah (or someone) could answer Chalmers (objectively explain how consciousness in general could be physical) but fail to objectivity explain what it's like to be an individual (ie to objectively describe subjectivity).

I thought @Pharoah was saying the opposite ... ?
 
The ordinary concept of water is unsaturated, so to speak, since it contains a blank space to be filled in by the discovery of the real, and essential, chemical composition of water. Just as we make room for the possibility of such discovery by denying that the manifest properties of water exhaust its nature, so we can open the possibility of an a posteriori [as per Dowell - HCT] answer to the mind- body problem by denying that the manifest properties of experience exhaust its nature. This means thinking of experiences, contrary to intuition, as events whose full nature is not revealed to experience -- and more generally, thinking of the mind, contrary to Cartesian intuition, as only partially available, even in principle, to introspection. If we can do this without denying the phenomenology or reducing it to something else, we will be on the first step toward an expansionist but still nondualist response to the mind-body problem. This is so far pure fantasy, but it is the fantasy of a theoretical identification of mental events with an inner constitution that includes but is not exhausted by their introspectible or manifest character.

So HCT doesn't provide an answer to the hard problem?
 
So HCT doesn't provide an answer to the hard problem?
That is not how I was interpreting Nagel. Btw I think his paper is outstanding:
CONCEIVING THE IMPOSSIBLE AND THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
the manifest properties of experience aren't all there is to the mind-body problem, is how I was interpreting it. I am not sure though... perhaps you can enlighten me
 
@Pharoah, I looked over the weekend for some good introductions to Hegel's Phenomenology of Geist (Spirit, Mind) and jotted down some recommendations that appear below. I think your best bet, given your current purpose of entering into phenomenological philosophy, would be the first book on this list.

John Russon, Reading Hegel's Phenomenology

Reading Hegel's Phenomenology (Studies in Continental Thought): John Russon: 9780253216922: Amazon.com: Books


Others that look especially good to me are:

Stephen Houlgate, Hegel's 'Phenomenology of Spirit': A Reader's Guide

Jean Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure of Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit"

Alexandre Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit
 
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