Is The Hard Problem Of Consciousness based on a fallacy?

Question

From Wiki, random but structured exchanges online, I came to know of The Hard Problem Of Consciousness, which has been interpreted in multiple ways, one of which is, science is objective and consciousness is subjective. Very much like Gould's NOMA (nonoverlapping magisteria), consciousness is inaccessible to science.

I draw an equivalence between this argument and You (science) can't see what's inside this box (mind). So its content (consciousness) is special (nonphysical). Isn't this a bad/fallacious argument? It seems to be a variation on argumentum ad ignorantiam (argument from ignorance)

Answer 1

The Hard Problem Of Consciousness, which has been interpreted in multiple ways, one of which is, science is objective and consciousness is subjective.

No, it was coined by David Chalmers and is pretty straightforward: Why is the performance of certain functions accompanied by experience?

It's hard because science deals in functional explanations, yet consciousness seems hopelessly non-functional in nature. The fact that this lump of wet matter in our head carries with it a "what is it likeness" (per Nagel) seems completely unnecessary given our current understanding.

It's not the interpretation of the hard problem that causes controversy, its the response to it. The linked article goes into depth on all these so I won't rehash here, but suffice it to say that through this conceptual gap people try to ram all kinds of wild ideas.

My opinion is that

• Philosophical zombies only seem conceivable because we lack the bridging concepts between experience and function [i.e., we have a gap]
• Information and some type of causal/quantum-like coherence relation will be important in establishing the boundaries of different subjects ("observers").
• Experience will be constitutive of existence (but not devolve into idealism)

Obviously, this last part is super speculative and I put low odds on it being right but it's my current thinking on this.

Answer 2

Preamble

Your question presumes an invalid assumption, that science cannot study first person phenomenon. This is untrue, the entire field pf psychology is a first person field. Science can and does study the first person.

The effort to avoid first person thinking was behind the half century of Behaviorist dominance of psychology and philosophy of mind, in the middle of the 20th century. Jaegwon Kim, in his summary of the history of philosophy of mind thinking, as part of his Physicalism or Something Near Enough, considered this period of domination by behaviorism to be a source of great embarrassment for philosophers. No, your avoidance of the first person is not NECESSARY for science, it is instead a viewpoint considered embarrassingly false.

Definitions of science do not themselves spawn fallacies. Basing a claim something is a fallacy of an incorrect definition of science, is doubly in error.

The Hard Problem of Consciousness

The hard problem of consciousness is only a problem for physicalism. It is not a universal problem for non-physicalist philosophers of mind, only for the physicalists.

The Hard Problem is created by the dogma within physicalism that the physical world is causally closed. Here is how it is derived:

• IF the physical world is causally closed, THEN non physical things, like qualia, ideas, math, etc., cannot be causal on anything we can measure.
• THEREFORE we should not be able to study any of these non-physical things, as there should be no casual relation between their existence/non-existence, and any measurable physical phenomenon or output.
• Note this creates multiple hard problems for physicalism. Abstract objects are also a problem, like consciousness is.
• The Hard Problem of Consciousness focusses on just the issue physicalism has with consciousness. Consciousness certainly appears to be causal, and we seem to have had significant success studying it. And neither should be the case under causal closure.

Identity Theories to solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness

• The primary solution proposed by physicalists to try to work toward a resolution of the Hard Problem is to propose Identity Theories. Postulate that some physical or logic structure is actually identical to consciousness.

• The Neural identity theory is that consciousness is identical to a particular neural wiring, or activation state OF a particular neural wiring, etc.

• Neural identity fails very basic identity tests. We have the same thought despite continual changes in our neural structure and activation patterns,a nd we can transmit the same mental idea (2+2=4, for example) to others who have very different wiring and activation patterns. NIT has mostly been abandoned within philosophy as a result.

• Functionalism, or alternatively Algorithmic Identity Theory, holds that some function or algorithm is identical to consciousness. For instance, 2=2=4 as an algorithm, could be identical to the qualia of thinking 2+2=4. The problem for AITs, is that every one of them predicts both false positives and false negatives -- we do a lot of algorithmic processing that is unconscious, and sometimes we have consciousness that is not algorithmic. Etc.

An additional problem for all these Identity Theories, is that the data questioning them, SHOULD NOT BE DETECTABLE, given physicalism!

Non-reductive physicalism

With the empirical and logic problems of Identity Theories, most physicalists have pursued non-reductive physicalism to try to solve the hard problem.

• Non-reductive physicalism accepts that non-physical things, like consciousness and abstract objects can and do exist
• But postulate that abstractions and consciousness emerge from, and are causally dependent on the physical.
• Strong emergence, where consciousness can be causal on matter, is generally rejected by physicalists, but the rationale for this is unclear, and emergent physicalists are in dispute on this question.
• Why, if emergent phenomenon can be casual on a substrate, that this would not just be ontological pluralism rather than monistic physicalism is likewise somewhat unclear.

While emergent consciousness is not as clearly falsified as identity theories are, this is only because the theories of emergence that emergent physicalism is postulating are themselves unformed. If one does not have an emergence theory, then emergence cannot be tested for.

Additionally, IF one postulates casual closure of the physical to emergent consciousness, THEN consciousness still faces the problem of being undetectable, even by our own brains from the inside!

Yet, we can and do detect consciousness.

There is an easy non-physicalist solution

The Hard Problem of Consciousness is a statement of observations about our universe that serve as a falsification test case for a core dogma of physicalism.

Abandon causal closure, and everything we observe about consciousness makes perfect sense.

• Consciousness is evolutionary tuned, BECASUE IT IS CAUSAL!
• We can detect and study consciousness, BECAUSE IT IS CAUSAL
• We can characterize the functions that consciousness performs for us, BECAUSE IT IS CAUSAL.

This leads to other problems, that non-physicalist philosophies of mind will need to address. But those problems are not logically insoluble, the way the Hard Problem of Consciousness is.

Answer 3

The so-called Hard Problem of Consciousness is interesting, and worth discussing. Nevertheless, there are some problems with the HPC that indicate that it may be fallacious or founded on a fallacy.

It is far from clear what definition of consciousness is being used. Likewise, "experience", "subjectivity", "first-person point of view", and "qualia" are not well-defined. And this is swept under the carpet by Chalmers, I think. There is a hidden assumption that these terms are well-defined.

Likewise the existence of the these supposed things is not argued for, it is another hidden assumption.

Chalmers asks why we have experience, while never stating clearly what he means by "experience" or how we know it exists. So (combining the problems) the fallacy that the Hard Problem of Consciousness is based on would seem to be that we know exactly what we mean by experience and we know that it exists.

If Keith Frankish (who follows in Dan Dennett's footsteps), among others, is correct, consciousness is an illusion. We are conscious, but qualia do not exist. And consciousness does not mean what most philosophers think it does.

And being conscious means nothing more that having a certain type of behavior. It is not that certain behavior causes consciousness to arise within a bunch of particles. Whether something is conscious is a matter of definition: we must decide which behavior we call conscious.

It's analogous to being alive without a life force. Being alive means nothing more than having certain behavior. It is not that certain behavior causes life to arise within a bunch of particles. Whether something is alive is thus a matter of definition: we must decide which behavior we call being alive.

To say that consciousness cannot be observed is like saying that life cannot be observed.

According to Frankish, all we truly know is that we say we are conscious, and we say that we know what that means, and say that it is undoubtedly the case, and show a great amount of behavior that we easily recognize as conscious behavior (although difficult to decide cases exist: some nonhuman animals, certain drug-intoxicated people, and very young children or babies). We are not conscious when we are asleep. We normally are conscious when we are awake. And so on. It's easy to decide in practice, like deciding whether something is alive. Again, borderline cases exist (crystals, viruses).

According to Frankish, consciousness is like a rainbow. https://www.keithfrankish.com/blog/like-a-rainbow/ Both of them do exist, but each is something slightly different from what most people think it, and can be accurately described as an illusion. Frankish adds that trying to find an answer to the HPC is like trying to find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

Frankish puts it better: "Consciousness is as real as a rainbow. It exists, but it is not a private qualia world, any more than a rainbow is a physical arc in the sky. So trying to find the neural correlates of the qualia world is as sensible as trying to find an arc-shaped structure in the atmosphere after a rain shower."

Frankish has a very watchable series of videos on YouTube that you can watch if you want to understand his position. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhgvALi0LQGXIA7cKNmGNTiQ7dpS-7dLw

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The fan of the HPC tends to be a panpsychist, meaning they believe all matter in the universe is conscious, but somehow in the healthy human brain this consciousness is highly concentrated or something. As far as I know, they have no idea how this might work, and no evidence.

They are perhaps in a position analogous to a hypothetical person who clings to the idea that there is a life force in all living matter and in order to make this idea fit with physicalism, comes to believe that that all matter in the universe is alive, and contains at least a trace of the life force, but it is much more concentrated in the bodies of functioning, healthy organisms.

Such a fan of the supposed universal life force, a pananimist, to coin a term, perhaps, might even come up with a pananimistic zombie thought experiment, with a hypothetical living organism that lacks any life force, which is compared with a supposedly normal organism that "of course" has a life force.

One could even imagine a so-called "Hard Problem of Aliveness" which asks whether an animal that behaves just like an ordinary animal every way and yet lacks life force completely ("it is dead inside") is conceivable. It would contain two hidden assumptions: first that we know what "life force" means, and second that such a thing exists. One could perhaps reasonably say that this "Hard Problem of Aliveness" would be based on a fallacy.

I said above that "It is not that certain behavior causes consciousness to arise within a bunch of particles." I'd like to add that, IMAO, it is also not that certain behavior by a bunch of particle gives us evidence that a certain bunch of particles contains (or is associated with) consiousness. That behavior is the consciousness, much like the motion of the molecules in a gas is the heat.

What about a hypothetical "Hard Problem of Hotness", which asks whether it is conceivable that there could exist a gas with molecules moving in exactly the same way as a normal hot gas, except it completely lacks heat ("it is cold inside"). It seems a good analogy.

Dan Dennett once said that, in a sense we are all zombies. People were up in arms (figuratively), as I recall. Would we be shocked by the claim that in a sense all animals are dead (being a bunch of chemical reactions), or that in a sense all gases are cold (being a bunch of molecules that as individuals are cold, or neither hot nor cold)? I think the claim that animals are dead would upset people, but no actual philosopher or scientist would seriously argue that the idea is absurd. The claim about gases would get a shrug. And yet here (no paywall, and BTW if you scroll down past the end of the article, there is some additional relevant material, also free) https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/StrawsonDennettNYRBExchangeConsciousness2018.pdf, in the New York Review of Books, Galen Strawson thundered against Dennett et al as follows: "What is the silliest claim ever made? The competition is fierce, but I think the answer is easy. Some people have denied the existence of consciousness: conscious experience, the subjective character of experience, the “what-it-is-like” of experience. Next to this denial—I’ll call it “the Denial”—every known religious belief is only a little less sensible than the belief that grass is green."

Dan Dennett calls it a "strange lapse of reason among philosophers". I am inclined to agree. It seems Galen's heart is ruling his head here. It's completely understandable, of course. But it does call to mind the (equally understandable, IMAO) revulsion, centuries ago, that met the claim that the Earth rotates on it's axis.

Here's another quote from the Strawson article: "What is it? Anyone who has ever seen or heard or smelled anything knows what it is; anyone who has ever been in pain, or felt hungry or hot or cold or remorseful, dismayed, uncertain, or sleepy, or has suddenly remembered a missed appointment. All these things involve what are sometimes called “qualia”—that is to say, different types or qualities of conscious experience. What I am calling the Denial is the denial that anyone has ever really had any of these experiences. Perhaps it’s not surprising that most Deniers deny that they’re Deniers. “Of course, we agree that consciousness or experience exists,” they say—but when they say this they mean something that specifically excludes qualia."

See how easy it is to substitute "aliveness" or "hotness" for "consciousness" and "experience" throughout the Strawson quote, and to adjust the rest so that it makes sense?

Dennett makes a similar point in the same link: "Unrevolutionary science has discovered good explanations for such heretofore baffling phenomena as reproduction, metabolism, growth, and self-repair, for instance. So while it is possible that we will have to overthrow that science in order to account for consciousness, we should explore the default possibilities first. This is the pragmatic policy of naturalism, nothing more. "

Answer 4

Whether or not it is based on a fallacy, it may be that the hard problem itself is a fallacy. If consciousness is universal rather than local, then there is no hard problem. There is no evidence that consciousness is non-functional. It is reasonable to infer that it is functional because of the evolutionary investment. Human history obviously demonstrates its utility. Frankly, I find the "hard problem" vexatious and absurd.

Answer 5

1. The term “Hard problem of consciousness” has been coined by the philosopher David Chalmers. He introduces the term in his paper Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness from 1995:

“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 […] has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. […]
Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yes it does. If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness it is this one.”

2. Chalmers emphasizes that the problem cannot be solved by the usual functional explanations from biology: “even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience […] there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? A simple explanation leaves this functions open.”

3. I consider Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness to be the question for the function of consciousness? Which benefit for a smart organism results from the fact that certain mental processes are conscious? That’s a legitimate question in the context of neuroscience: Asking for the function of an organ or a capability is one of the most useful methodological questions in biology.

   As far as I see this question has not been answered until now. I do not see any argument why the hard problem of consciousness were based on a fallacy.

4. For an introduction to the problem from the viewpoint of neuroscience I recommend Christof Koch: Consciousness, and for a challenging attempt at a mathematical model of consciousness: Integrated InformationTheory (ITT) 4.0