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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 11

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Footnote from Klaasen's paper:

4 Thus Nagel’s problem is not the same problem that I am adressing here (the problem of why I am me rather than someone else). Nagel is concerned with the problem that third-person descriptions of the world, that purport to be complete, in fact seem to leave something out, i.e. the fact of occupying a certain point of view. Nagel’s problem, I think, is essentially epistemological while the problem with which I am concerned is of a more metaphysical nature. The solution that Nagel proposes to his own problem is quite interesting. He says that in order to make our picture of the world complete, one must somehow succesfully integrate both the objective and subjective realms into a coherent whole. The solution he proposes is that an objective world conception can only be conceived by an Objective Self, i.e. a subject that is not tied to any point of view. Although I think Nagel’s solution has problems, I will not go into it. However, for a criticism of Nagel and an alternative solution see ‘The Sense of Identity’ by John Perry, [29]. See also Velleman’s essay ‘Self to Self’, [37]

Perry's paper is here:

http://john.jperry.net/cv/2002dSenseIdentity.pdf
"... for a criticism of Nagel... see" Perry?
I don't think of it as a criticism, but rather an analysis. The lasr line (or two) of the chapter is a particularly nice way to end the analysis I think. And if anyone (@Usual Suspect, @Soupie maybe) still doubts WIIAMANSE I recommend Perry. Quite entertaining too.!

Beliw: Text I have noted for my own benefit ... read it should you wish not to read it all:

"
As I write this, I see a specific hand guides a specific pen across a specific page at a specific time and place. The hand belongs to John Perry---JP for short---one among the billions of persons who exist. I have a rather special relationship to JP, one which I can express by saying "I am JP." He is the one and only one among all the persons who ever have existed or will exist, who happens to be me. It is natural to take the special relationship to be identity; there is just one thing, one entity, one metaphysical unit, that is both the person I call "me" and the person I am calling "JP." We are the same not only in this possible world but in every possible world that one could describe or imagine, for there is only one thing to imaginatively project into different circumstances. So it seems that I am necessarily JP, and could be no other person.

...the thought "I am John Perry" is true when I think it, but false
when you do. But...I am John Perry. This is some sort of fact; if not an objective fact, then what kind of fact is it?

[Criticism maybe?]
I like Nagel's suggested sense for philosophical uses of "I," but not his suggestion of a new reference. I think of myself as saving Nagel's insight from his metaphysics.ii

We can imagine there is a sort of pattern-matching with attributes of the newly presented objects and objects about which one already has information. When there are enough important matches, the two are identified. The problem is rather with what recognition means; the sense of identity, and in particular, the sense of self, of identity with the person doing the
identifying. What possible worlds does this identification exclude? What fact about the world does it represent? What fact is it, the grasping of which constitutes recognition?

According to Nagel, for each person there is an objective self, which is contingently related to that person. So for TN there is an objective self, we can call it "OSTN." And for me there is one, we can call it "OSJP." These objective selves have no specific location in space and time, but they do have a special though contingent relationship to the body of the person whose objective self they are. When one has the philosophical thought, "I am TN" or "I am JP," the "I" has the sense "the subject of this objective representation," and stands for one's objective self. It is very difficult to see how the postulation of objective selves provides any solution whatsoever to the original problem. Part of that problem was to find what to add to our objective representation of the world, to correspond to the fact that TN discovers, when he discovers that he is TN. Now we can add our objective selves to the representation, and it doesn't seem to help at all

Are there then somehow different facts corresponding to the two formulations, "the subject of ICJP is JP" and "the subject of this impersonal conception is JP" ?
There are. But to find them, and put Nagel's insight into a place where we can say why it works, we need to get less profound for a while.

Notions are ideas we have of things, and self-notions are ones that are tied to the epistemic and pragmatic methods tied to identity. The self-notion is the repository of information picked up in self-informative ways, and the motivator of self-effecting actions. I said that my self-knowledge involves my self-notion, and is to be distinguished from mere knowledge of the person I happen to be. When I was sitting on the curb reading John Perry's business card, I had knowledge about John Perry, the person I happened to be. Self-recognition consisted in linking that idea of John Perry with my self-notion; I came to believe not only that John Perry worked at Stanford, but that I did. Before the episode of self-recognition I believed the proposition that John Perry worked at Stanford, and this is what I believed after the episode. But I believed it in a different way. Call my self-notion selfJP . My later belief can be true only if selfJP belongs to someone who works at Stanford. That is the reflexive content of my belief, and it is this that changed when I recognized who I was.

What then is the sense of identity, of self, in this kind of situation? It is the complex of epistemic and pragmatic relationships that are most closely and firmly tied to the self-buffer.

The core of our self-concepts, our sense of identity, our sense for "I," is as the knower of facts about objects that are playing agent-relative roles with respect to us, and the agent of actions that are done agent-relative ways. I am the possessor and controller of these hands; the subject of these sensations; the maker of these movements; the sufferer of these pains; and so forth. Since only we can attend to our own inner sensations and thoughts, and only we can see our bodies and things around us from our perspective, it is natural to use the demonstrative "this" to express the aspects of our self-concept.

My view of our self-concepts is something like a cluster version of Russell's hidden description theory of the self, in that I think we have a cluster of things in our self-concept, which are weighted in their importance to us. The most important and inseparable from us are the things in our own mental life that we can attend to and think of with an internally directed "this." In spite of this similarity with hidden description and cluster theories, however, my view is quite different on the crucial matters of reference and truth. My self-notion is a notion of me because it is my self-notion; that is, (a) it is a self-notion, one whose informational role is as the repository of information gotten in normally self- informative ways, and that motivates normally self-directed actions; (b) it is mine. It is of me even if it is full of false stuff. My self-concept or self-file, the notion together with the ideas associated with it, is of me because the notion is of me, not because I am uniquely denoted, or denoted at all, by the combination of ideas.

[@smcder on multiple personality disorder search:] "This isn't a problem for the my account for two reasons. First, unlike Russell, I'm not trying to build up a hierarchical account of our knowledge with self-knowledge somewhere near the bottom. I'm as sure that I am the only person having my sensations as I am that I am the only person with my body and brain...."

The picture is this. There is a certain way of believing things, that involves the self-notion. It is a species of attached beliefs, beliefs that involve the kinds of notions I call buffers, that are tied to epistemic/pragmatic relations. What is special about these notions, and the beliefs that contain them, is the way they work, the way they are connected to our perceptual and motor systems. So the beliefs that involve these notions will have subject-matter content, but also they will have a different information handling role, and hence a different causal role, than other beliefs with the same content.

Since I am John Perry, there is just one person, one thing, one metaphysical being, that is both John Perry and I. When I take John Perry and myself to another possible world, I take only one thing. So I can't very well manage to find a possible world in which I am there, and he is not, or I am there, and he is there, but I am not he. Identity is a necessary relation; if a and b are one in any world, they are not two in any world.
"
 
Reading Perry. Still not seeing why this is a problem for a monist (that is, other than the HP haha). Perry says that "I and JP" is an identity. If one is a physical monist, then that's the end of it. There is no WAIM.

Perry goes on to say however that "I am JP" also "seems" contingent. And then speaks at length about problems that are essentially the mind-body problem. That is, while the mind and body seem to be ontologically the same, they also seem to be contingent and thus different. We can't explain the mind objectively, etc.

This seeming contingency and difference between "I and JP" or mind and body is—I've suggested—a byproduct of perception. When organisms can (inferentially) perceive the world, they will inevitably perceive (infer/reperesent) their own bodies. This creates what seems to be a duality—I and JP.

But... if one is a physical monist, then one recognizes that this seeming duality is illusion. The mind and body, I and JP, may seem to be two distinct entities but alas they are not.

@smcder Is it possible that while Pharoah doesn't grok the HP as articulated by Chalmers as you and I do, that he does grok the HP as articulated by this WAIM question? Bc that's essentially what it is. (Note that Pharoah thinks p-consciousness can be explained via physicalism, whereas the "standard" articulation of the HP estblaishes that it can't.)

I think that's what's going on here. We grok the HP thinking of p-consciousness alone, Pharoah needs to WAIM layer to get there!?
 
"... for a criticism of Nagel... see" Perry?
I don't think of it as a criticism, but rather an analysis. The lasr line (or two) of the chapter is a particularly nice way to end the analysis I think. And if anyone (@Usual Suspect, @Soupie maybe) still doubts WIIAMANSE I recommend Perry. Quite entertaining too.!

Beliw: Text I have noted for my own benefit ... read it should you wish not to read it all:

"
As I write this, I see a specific hand guides a specific pen across a specific page at a specific time and place. The hand belongs to John Perry---JP for short---one among the billions of persons who exist. I have a rather special relationship to JP, one which I can express by saying "I am JP." He is the one and only one among all the persons who ever have existed or will exist, who happens to be me. It is natural to take the special relationship to be identity; there is just one thing, one entity, one metaphysical unit, that is both the person I call "me" and the person I am calling "JP." We are the same not only in this possible world but in every possible world that one could describe or imagine, for there is only one thing to imaginatively project into different circumstances. So it seems that I am necessarily JP, and could be no other person.

...the thought "I am John Perry" is true when I think it, but false
when you do. But...I am John Perry. This is some sort of fact; if not an objective fact, then what kind of fact is it?

[Criticism maybe?]
I like Nagel's suggested sense for philosophical uses of "I," but not his suggestion of a new reference. I think of myself as saving Nagel's insight from his metaphysics.ii

We can imagine there is a sort of pattern-matching with attributes of the newly presented objects and objects about which one already has information. When there are enough important matches, the two are identified. The problem is rather with what recognition means; the sense of identity, and in particular, the sense of self, of identity with the person doing the
identifying. What possible worlds does this identification exclude? What fact about the world does it represent? What fact is it, the grasping of which constitutes recognition?

According to Nagel, for each person there is an objective self, which is contingently related to that person. So for TN there is an objective self, we can call it "OSTN." And for me there is one, we can call it "OSJP." These objective selves have no specific location in space and time, but they do have a special though contingent relationship to the body of the person whose objective self they are. When one has the philosophical thought, "I am TN" or "I am JP," the "I" has the sense "the subject of this objective representation," and stands for one's objective self. It is very difficult to see how the postulation of objective selves provides any solution whatsoever to the original problem. Part of that problem was to find what to add to our objective representation of the world, to correspond to the fact that TN discovers, when he discovers that he is TN. Now we can add our objective selves to the representation, and it doesn't seem to help at all

Are there then somehow different facts corresponding to the two formulations, "the subject of ICJP is JP" and "the subject of this impersonal conception is JP" ?
There are. But to find them, and put Nagel's insight into a place where we can say why it works, we need to get less profound for a while.

Notions are ideas we have of things, and self-notions are ones that are tied to the epistemic and pragmatic methods tied to identity. The self-notion is the repository of information picked up in self-informative ways, and the motivator of self-effecting actions. I said that my self-knowledge involves my self-notion, and is to be distinguished from mere knowledge of the person I happen to be. When I was sitting on the curb reading John Perry's business card, I had knowledge about John Perry, the person I happened to be. Self-recognition consisted in linking that idea of John Perry with my self-notion; I came to believe not only that John Perry worked at Stanford, but that I did. Before the episode of self-recognition I believed the proposition that John Perry worked at Stanford, and this is what I believed after the episode. But I believed it in a different way. Call my self-notion selfJP . My later belief can be true only if selfJP belongs to someone who works at Stanford. That is the reflexive content of my belief, and it is this that changed when I recognized who I was.

What then is the sense of identity, of self, in this kind of situation? It is the complex of epistemic and pragmatic relationships that are most closely and firmly tied to the self-buffer.

The core of our self-concepts, our sense of identity, our sense for "I," is as the knower of facts about objects that are playing agent-relative roles with respect to us, and the agent of actions that are done agent-relative ways. I am the possessor and controller of these hands; the subject of these sensations; the maker of these movements; the sufferer of these pains; and so forth. Since only we can attend to our own inner sensations and thoughts, and only we can see our bodies and things around us from our perspective, it is natural to use the demonstrative "this" to express the aspects of our self-concept.

My view of our self-concepts is something like a cluster version of Russell's hidden description theory of the self, in that I think we have a cluster of things in our self-concept, which are weighted in their importance to us. The most important and inseparable from us are the things in our own mental life that we can attend to and think of with an internally directed "this." In spite of this similarity with hidden description and cluster theories, however, my view is quite different on the crucial matters of reference and truth. My self-notion is a notion of me because it is my self-notion; that is, (a) it is a self-notion, one whose informational role is as the repository of information gotten in normally self- informative ways, and that motivates normally self-directed actions; (b) it is mine. It is of me even if it is full of false stuff. My self-concept or self-file, the notion together with the ideas associated with it, is of me because the notion is of me, not because I am uniquely denoted, or denoted at all, by the combination of ideas.

[@smcder on multiple personality disorder search:] "This isn't a problem for the my account for two reasons. First, unlike Russell, I'm not trying to build up a hierarchical account of our knowledge with self-knowledge somewhere near the bottom. I'm as sure that I am the only person having my sensations as I am that I am the only person with my body and brain...."

The picture is this. There is a certain way of believing things, that involves the self-notion. It is a species of attached beliefs, beliefs that involve the kinds of notions I call buffers, that are tied to epistemic/pragmatic relations. What is special about these notions, and the beliefs that contain them, is the way they work, the way they are connected to our perceptual and motor systems. So the beliefs that involve these notions will have subject-matter content, but also they will have a different information handling role, and hence a different causal role, than other beliefs with the same content.

Since I am John Perry, there is just one person, one thing, one metaphysical being, that is both John Perry and I. When I take John Perry and myself to another possible world, I take only one thing. So I can't very well manage to find a possible world in which I am there, and he is not, or I am there, and he is there, but I am not he. Identity is a necessary relation; if a and b are one in any world, they are not two in any world.
"

Koan...western inversion of

"Who were you before you were born?"
 
... Notions are ideas we have of things, and self-notions are ones that are tied to the epistemic and pragmatic methods tied to identity ...
That is all extraneous to the concept of the singular as it relates to uniqueness. In other words the word "you" is in this context singular. We aren't addressing a crowd as a rock star might ( Hey you out there! ) We're talking about you as a singular being. And we're using "unique" in the sense that nobody else is you, even if there are a lot of other humans running around the planet. So unless there is some way to change the logic to allow for you to concurrently be someone else ( not simply by identity as in owning several fake passports ) then we'd have to rethink the question. However as that appears to be logically impossible, I'd say it doesn't matter how many other references there are. It won't change that basic situation because it cannot change the basic situation. If you think that is in error, some specifics that address this particular view rather than casual references to other writers would be helpful.
 
@Pharoah

It hits your cognitive funny bone... but I'm not sure there is a lot of metaphysical hay to be made of it - it's an acute realization of subjectivity to be sure, vertiginous at times - but its no good thinking you might not have been, both because you are and because had you not, it wouldn't be necessary to miss you - no one would say the world was incomplete because you didn't come into being - there is no necessity in not being, almost everyone that could be, has not been.

You can only ask "Why is one of these me?" once you have shown up, once you are- and just because you are there to ask the question - that is the "why" of it. Every one who asks the question is providing the wondrous "me" required for the dizzying effect ... as I put it before

  • you are unique, just like everyone else -

Not to discourage metaphysical hay making or God seeking ...
 
Reading Perry. Still not seeing why this is a problem for a monist (that is, other than the HP haha). Perry says that "I and JP" is an identity. If one is a physical monist, then that's the end of it. There is no WAIM.

Perry goes on to say however that "I am JP" also "seems" contingent. And then speaks at length about problems that are essentially the mind-body problem. That is, while the mind and body seem to be ontologically the same, they also seem to be contingent and thus different. We can't explain the mind objectively, etc.

This seeming contingency and difference between "I and JP" or mind and body is—I've suggested—a byproduct of perception. When organisms can (inferentially) perceive the world, they will inevitably perceive (infer/reperesent) their own bodies. This creates what seems to be a duality—I and JP.

But... if one is a physical monist, then one recognizes that this seeming duality is illusion. The mind and body, I and JP, may seem to be two distinct entities but alas they are not.

@smcder Is it possible that while Pharoah doesn't grok the HP as articulated by Chalmers as you and I do, that he does grok the HP as articulated by this WAIM question? Bc that's essentially what it is. (Note that Pharoah thinks p-consciousness can be explained via physicalism, whereas the "standard" articulation of the HP estblaishes that it can't.)

I think that's what's going on here. We grok the HP thinking of p-consciousness alone, Pharoah needs to WAIM layer to get there!?
"Still not seeing why this is a problem for a monist"
That's because you don't know what Perry, Nagel or I am talking about. To talk of monism or dualism is irrelevant to the inquiry. Just a little clue... neither Perry nor Nagel mention monism or dualism.
It is true about what you say of HP grokking... I understand it as Chalmers intended and you don't.
(just kidding!!)
Pharoah HP: HP is the problem of explaining phenomenal experience, where phenomenal experience relates to the qualitative nature of conscious experience.
@Soupie HP: HP is [insert ..... ]
@smcder HP: HP is [insert .... ]
the "standard" articulation of the HP: the "standard" articulation of the HP is [someone, anyone: insert .... ]
"...establishes that it can't" ? really?!
 
That is all extraneous to the concept of the singular as it relates to uniqueness. In other words the word "you" is in this context singular. We aren't addressing a crowd as a rock star might ( Hey you out there! ) We're talking about you as a singular being. And we're using "unique" in the sense that nobody else is you, even if there are a lot of other humans running around the planet. So unless there is some way to change the logic to allow for you to concurrently be someone else ( not simply by identity as in owning several fake passports ) then we'd have to rethink the question. However as that appears to be logically impossible, I'd say it doesn't matter how many other references there are. It won't change that basic situation because it cannot change the basic situation. If you think that is in error, some specifics that address this particular view rather than casual references to other writers would be helpful.
That quote from my comment was a quote from Perry... just in case you didn't realise it.
 
"Still not seeing why this is a problem for a monist"
That's because you don't know what Perry, Nagel or I am talking about. To talk of monism or dualism is irrelevant to the inquiry. Just a little clue... neither Perry nor Nagel mention monism or dualism.
It is true about what you say of HP grokking... I understand it as Chalmers intended and you don't.
(just kidding!!)
Pharoah HP: HP is the problem of explaining phenomenal experience, where phenomenal experience relates to the qualitative nature of conscious experience.
@Soupie HP: HP is [insert ..... ]
@smcder HP: HP is [insert .... ]
the "standard" articulation of the HP: the "standard" articulation of the HP is [someone, anyone: insert .... ]
"...establishes that it can't" ? really?!

anigif_enhanced-buzz-31328-1390414772-11.gif
 
"Still not seeing why this is a problem for a monist"
That's because you don't know what Perry, Nagel or I am talking about. To talk of monism or dualism is irrelevant to the inquiry. Just a little clue... neither Perry nor Nagel mention monism or dualism.
It is true about what you say of HP grokking... I understand it as Chalmers intended and you don't.
(just kidding!!)
Pharoah HP: HP is the problem of explaining phenomenal experience, where phenomenal experience relates to the qualitative nature of conscious experience.
@Soupie HP: HP is [insert ..... ]
@smcder HP: HP is [insert .... ]
the "standard" articulation of the HP: the "standard" articulation of the HP is [someone, anyone: insert .... ]
"...establishes that it can't" ? really?!
Let's have another look at what I wrote:

"Still not seeing why this is a problem for a monist (that is, other than the HP haha)."

A physical monist about the mind-body problem assumes that the mind and body are identical, and in particular physical.

Thus the answer to WAIM follows—on their account—from physical laws.

From their perspective, then, there is no problem.

But, wait, says Pharaoh, I'm a materialist physicalist and there is a problem! Even if the mind and body are both physical and therefore explainable via physical laws, I find that I can't explain subjectivity via objectively... hmm. This is a hard problem...

"This is some sort of fact; if not an objective fact, then what kind of fact is it?"

Wait! Maybe subjectivity—consciousness—can't be explained via materialist physicalism, ie objectivity, after all!

Thus materialist physicalism fails to explain the origin and nature of consciousness. Also known as the hard problem of consciousness.

Tldr version: WAIM shouldn't be a problem for a physical monist if physical monism is true. But it is a problem—a hard problem—which indicates that materialist physical monism is false.
 
That quote from my comment was a quote from Perry... just in case you didn't realise it.
Yes I saw the quotes, and my response was to the content ( regardless of source ) in the context of this statement, " And if anyone (@Usual Suspect, @Soupie maybe) still doubts WIIAMANSE I recommend Perry. Quite entertaining too.!"

So it's not so much that I "doubt WIIAMANSE" because it's simply a question to be pondered in a number of particular ways. In other words, we don't really doubt questions. We doubt answers to questions or question the coherency of a question's construction. So my answer is not in the typical vein we see in other approaches to the problem.

It's based on the logical relationships between the meanings of the words we use to define uniqueness. The very concept of uniqueness requires it to be applicable to any particular thing, and as such is independent of particular ways of defining the self. Therefore I would submit this approach is more likely to be necessarily true for notions of selves as particular things.
 
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@Pharoah

Perry criticism: ?

"Contemporary semantics ought to help us to understand what I think when I think "I am JP." It would thus provide the sense of identity, and illuminate the philosophical self. But it is not clear how it does so. The standard semantics for indexicals and names identifies the propositions expressed by "I am JP" with the necessarily true proposition expressed by "JP is JP"---a thought anyone can think truly (Kaplan, 1983). It identifies the proposition I express with "I am Napoleon," with the necessarily false proposition that JP is Napoleon. But that is not the proposition I am thinking when I imagine being Napoleon. Something seems to have been left out, after all. But from what has it been left out? Is there a side of the world left out, by thinking that all facts are objective? Or is a part of ourselves left out, when we take ourselves to be just flesh and blood persons with a perspective on the world? Or could it be something more boring ---- something left out of the semantics we have for understanding and describing our thought and language?"
 
smcder: The point of the question is to try and sort if "explanation" is the right sort of thing to be after when faced with
"Why am I me and not someone else?"
If we don't know what such an explanation would look like, then can we ask any other questions, for example:
What would I know if I had an explanation?

What would I know if I had an explanation?

Re the latter question, I think it's clear that we'd know a great deal more than we know now concerning the ontological origins of ourselves and the world/cosmos we live in. Indeed, we know nothing now concerning our ontological origins and the ontology of the world/cosmos we inhabit [to the limited extent that we can perceive its physical extent and comprehend its entire nature].

Separate from the unanswerable 'why' question, we also have the recourse of asking the 'how' question: how our species and possibly some others on earth have evolved to the point of experiencing personal consciousness within which we can and do experience our being-in-the-world as our own self-referential being. I think the 'how' question can be answered by studying the evolution of species from the point of view of affective neuroscience, which recognizes that awareness and instinctive seeking behavior constitute the seeds of prereflective consciousness, which grounds reflective consciousness/mind in our own species. I think that the hard problem exists not only re human consciousness but in many other species evolved before homo sapiens. The more we know of other species the clearer it becomes that they are also self-aware, have complex emotional lives, solve problems, seek comfort and fellowship, work cooperatively, indeed think.

I personally have not experienced the [most probably distinctly] human question Pharoah explores {why am I me and not someone else?}, unless I've forgotten the occasion(s) when this question arose for me. But I do see now why Pharoah has focused on this question as a philosophical one. The sense of this question underwrites the validity of the hard problem, bears out the undeniable reality of subjective experience itself as verifying the personal sense of self that each of us bears throughout our embodied lives {and likely continued in our discarnate lives/existences, based on the evidence accumulated in the archives of the Society for Psychical Research over the last 145 years, in reincarnation research, and in past-life regressions}.
 
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@Soupie


Let's have another look at what I wrote:

"Still not seeing why this is a problem for a monist (that is, other than the HP haha)."

A physical monist about the mind-body problem assumes that the mind and body are identical, and in particular physical.

Thus the answer to WAIM follows—on their account—from physical laws.

From their perspective, then, there is no problem.

[Ok. I get it so far. For a physical monist, the WAIM problem is a physical problem and therefore in theory can be be answered in principle and therefore is not a (metaphysical) problem]

But, wait, says Pharaoh, I'm a materialist physicalist and there is a problem! Even if the mind and body are both physical and therefore explainable via physical laws, I find that I can't explain subjectivity via objectively... hmm. This is a hard problem...

[Just to clarify, this para above is not my view. On the contrary, I find thst I can explain subjectivity via objectivity, or at least, am of the view that it is possible to do so]

"This is some sort of fact; if not an objective fact, then what kind of fact is it?" [John Perry's words btw]

Wait! Maybe subjectivity. —consciousness—can't be explained via materialist physicalism, ie objectivity, after all!
[don't get the last sentence]

Thus materialist physicalism fails to explain the origin and nature of consciousness. Also known as the hard problem of consciousness.

[In other words @Soupie says, to paraphrase the two sentences above: The HP is the problem of explaining the origin and nature of consciousness]

Tldr version: WAIM shouldn't be a problem for a physical monist if physical monism is true. But it is a problem—a hard problem—which indicates that materialist physical monism is false
[In other words @Soupie says, to paraphrase the two sentences above: The HP is WAIM]

[I deduce therefore, that for soupie the problem of the origin and nature of consciousness is the same as the WAIM problem, both being the HP. This view, as I understand it, also reflects Chalmers view reading paras 4 and 5 of his "Facing up to the problem of consciousness" paper. So, moving on, I believe that HCT is valid and that in principle it answers the origins and nature of phenomenal consciousness (ONC) and why subjectivity must exist in an objective physical world. And this is why WAIM has become of interest to me! Because it splices the WAIM problem from the ONC problem. Now, because there remains a question to answer, one can hold the ideological position that an answer will confirm either monism or dualism in equal measure, imo
 
What is this referring to in the article:
"In the last century it was finally established that there is something in maths that isn’t reducible to logic; not much, but an essential little something which can be construed in different ways"

Russell's paradox - see comments
 
I'm still not fully understanding the problem but according to this author it is the problem of why anything is anything and is related to the HP.

"Perhaps the underlying problem is the vexed question of why anything is anything in particular: it’s just that in the case of my own experience and my own existence the question hits me with a force it lacks when I’m merely wondering about a chair. The basic problem is haecceity or thisness (the same problem which in my view lies at the root of the qualia problem)."

Also this:

"to say that all possible laws of physics are realised in some universe is in effect to declare that there are no laws of physics and that everything happens arbitrarily."

The latter is a thought I've stumbled upon when thinking about the apparent order in the universe and the apparent existence of free will.
 
Ok. I get it so far. For a physical monist, the WAIM problem is a physical problem and therefore in theory can be be answered in principle and therefore is not a (metaphysical) problem.
Yes.

pharoah said:
On the contrary, I find thst I can explain subjectivity via objectivity, or at least, am of the view that it is possible to do so. ... I believe that HCT is valid and that in principle it answers the origins and nature of phenomenal consciousness (ONC) and why subjectivity must exist in an objective physical world.
What HCT provides is a clever description of how organisms have come to perceive the word from a unique point of view. But remember:

Tyler Burge, Perception: Where Mind Begins - PhilPapers

"Two marks of mind are consciousness and representation. ... Consciousness is neither necessary nor sufficient for perception."

HCT has not given p-consciousness any work to do; by that I mean that HCT does not address the Problem of Mental Causation nor the Problem of Overdetermination.

Yes, I agree with you that thoughts, feelings, and ideas clearly do work in what-is, but HCT does not establish how this is so within an objective, materialist ontology.
pharoah said:
"This is some sort of fact; if not an objective fact, then what kind of fact is it?" [John Perry's words btw]

Wait! Maybe subjectivity—consciousness—can't be explained via materialist physicalism, ie objectivity, after all! [don't get the last sentence]
Materialist physicalism is the ontological position that "matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental aspects and consciousness, are results of material interactions. (wiki)"

Matter can be fully described objectively. Indeed, to hold a materialist ontology is to hold that all of what-is can be described and explained in objective terms.

pharoah said:
Thus materialist physicalism fails to explain the origin and nature of consciousness. Also known as the hard problem of consciousness.

[In other words @Soupie says, to paraphrase the two sentences above: The HP is the problem of explaining the origin and nature of consciousness]
Close. It s the problem of explaining the origin and nature of consciousness in wholly objective, materialist terms.

Pharoah said:
Tldr version: WAIM shouldn't be a problem for a physical monist if physical monism is true. But it is a problem—a hard problem—which indicates that materialist physical monism is false
[In other words @Soupie says, to paraphrase the two sentences above: The HP is WAIM]

[I deduce therefore, that for soupie the problem of the origin and nature of consciousness is the same as the WAIM problem, both being the HP. This view, as I understand it, also reflects Chalmers view reading paras 4 and 5 of his "Facing up to the problem of consciousness" paper. So, moving on, I believe that HCT is valid and that in principle it answers the origins and nature of phenomenal consciousness (ONC) and why subjectivity must exist in an objective physical world. And this is why WAIM has become of interest to me! Because it splices the WAIM problem from the ONC problem. Now, because there remains a question to answer, one can hold the ideological position that an answer will confirm either monism or dualism in equal measure, imo
What the Problem of Qualia and the Problem of WAIM have in common is this: when one attempts to wholly describe what-is in objective, materialist terms, something is always left out, something is always missing from the description. Objective, materialist descriptions produce powerful, comprehensive, predictive descriptions of what-is, but they can never get us to the intrinsic nature of what-is.
 
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Yes.


What HCT provides is a clever description of how organisms have come to perceive the word from a unique point of view. But remember:

Tyler Burge, Perception: Where Mind Begins - PhilPapers

"Two marks of mind are consciousness and representation. ... Consciousness is neither necessary nor sufficient for perception."

HCT has not given p-consciousness any work to do; by that I mean that HCT does not address the Problem of Mental Causation nor the Problem of Overdetermination.

Yes, I agree with you that thoughts, feelings, and ideas clearly do work in what-is, but HCT does not establish how this is so within an objective, materialist ontology.

Materialist physicalism is the ontological position that "matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental aspects and consciousness, are results of material interactions. (wiki)"

Matter can be fully described objectively. Indeed, to hold a materialist ontology is to hold that all of what-is can be described and explained in objective terms.


Close. It s the problem of explaining the origin and nature of consciousness in wholly objective, materialist terms.


What the Problem of Qualia and the Problem of WAIM have in common is this: when one attempts to wholly describe what-is in objective, materialist terms, something is always left out, something is always missing from the description. Objective, materialist descriptions produce powerful, comprehensive, predictive descriptions of what-is, but they can never get us to the intrinsic nature of what-is.
@Soupie is p-consciousness, phenomenal consciousness?
One of the problems we have in our communications soupie is that our terms of reference differ quite markedly in their meaning. I can think of few terms that mean for you what they mean for me... I think that we interpret terms from very different ideological stances. When you say HCT doesn't do this or that, I'm often perplexed
 
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