SteveKlinko wrote: ↑Wed Sep 02, 2020 11:15 am
RCSaunders wrote: ↑Wed Sep 02, 2020 12:59 am
SteveKlinko wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 6:01 pm
A hundred years of Scientific probing and measuring of the Brain has concluded that Conscious Experiences are certainly Correlated to the Neural Activity. But there is a great Gap of Explanation between Neurons Firing and a Conscious Experience happening. This is the Hard Problem.
I see no problem. If an organism is conscious there must be some aspect of the physical organism that corresponds to or is related to that consciousness. In all higher animals and human beings the physical aspect related to consciousness is the neurological system. Part of that system is the brain. Studies of the brain are able to correlate some conscious experience with some specific brain activity, but there is not even a hint that brain activity is in any way consciousness, because consciousness is not a thing, not an event, or a substance. The only way you know there is such a thing as consciousness is because you are conscious. If you pay attention to your own consciousness you will notice that it can best be described as a continuously changing state of awareness, and nothing more.
What your consciousness is aware of is whatever you entire neurological system makes available to your life process to be aware of, which is why you have to be alive to be conscious. The life attribute, which is manifest at the physical level as a continuous self-sustained process is what actually makes the attribute of consciousness possible. Consciousness is an attribute of a living organism which makes it possible to be aware, just as life is the attribute that makes the living process that sustains the organism possible. No physical action produces life, life makes the unique living process possible. No physical life process produces consciousness, consciousness makes conscious awareness possible in those living organisms that have that attribute.
So long as you think of consciousness as some kind of, "action," or, the product of some action, you will have a problem, because consciousness is neither of those things.
When you use the term Consciousness in a generalized way, where you are referring to some sort of Awareness, then the things you say seem mostly reasonable. But the generalized Awareness aspect of Consciousness is not what I am talking about. When I use the term Consciousness I am always thinking about Conscious Sensory Experiences like the Sight of the Color Red, the Sound of the Standard A Tone, the Taste of Salt, or the Smell of Bleach. Your generalization arguments break down when any particular Conscious Sensory Experience is analyzed. Think about the Redness of the Red itself as a thing in itself, or the Sound of the Tone as a thing in itself, etc.. Yes, think about the Experience itself. These Conscious Experiences are completely unexplained by Science. The Neurons fire and then these Experiences happen. You are simply wrong when you imply that these Experiences are not the product of some Action (like Neurons firing). You can only claim there is no Hard Problem of Consciousness if you deny the reality of the current Scientific understanding of the Correlation of Conscious Experience with Neural Activity.
I think I understand the distinction you are making. What you are questioning is not consciousness or awareness itself, but the, "content," of consciousness and why it has the character it has. The question you are asking is the same one philosophers who invented the term, "qualia," attempted to answer--not how, "red," is seen, but why, when seen, it is what we call, "red."
In one sense, we cannot talk about that, because I have no idea what your conscious experience is when you see red, and you have no idea what I experience when I see red. Without realizing it, you have put your finger on exactly why science cannot ever address the question of consciousness itself. That conscious experience you identify as the, "Color Red, the Sound of the Standard A Tone, the Taste of Salt, or the Smell of Bleach," cannot be examined because science can only deal with those things we objectively perceive, (because we all perceive the same things), but how we perceive them (each individual's own conscious experience) cannot be perceived. Science cannot address or deal with anything that cannot be demonstrated, in the form of a, "sample," or, "example," or, "experiment."
I can examine a brain scientifically, and I can show someone else the brain I am examining. But, no one can examine anyone's conscious experience and certainly cannot show someone else that experience. I can even examine my own brain, if I have the right kind of equipment, but I cannot examine even my own conscious experience, I can only have the experience. That is what I mean by I know I see because I do, but I cannot "see" my seeing (or perceive it in any other way).
As far as science is concerned, as something that can be studied, consciousness does not exist. If you insist that consciousness be explained scientifically, it never will be, because consciousness is an attribute of nature, just like any of the physical attributes, but not itself a physical attribute.
I understand the frustration: "why does red look red, why is it experienced as red and not green, or smell instead of having an appearance?" But the question is actually mistaken. It's like the question, "why is there something instead of nothing." In both cases there is an unwarranted assumption, that everything that is must be contingent and that nothing just is what it is. But there is no basis for that assumption.
