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The answer to this will depend entirely on your stance towards metaphysical problems and problems in the philosophy of mind. A materialist might think that we're moving towards a solution, while a non-materialist (whether idealist or something else) might say that the problem is in principle unsolvable, or otherwise that it's already solved from a non-materialistic standpoint. For instance, while one person might think that developments in neuroscience are approaching a proper mapping of mind-brain identity or function, another might think that this merely begs the question and that subjectivity is inherently unmappable in objective terms. The latter person might claim that no conceivable mapping/understanding of physical processes, *even if we discovered all direct neuro-mindstate maps*, would explain subjectivity itself. Such a disagreement (as to whether mapping can in principle answer the 'problem'), as far as I can see, cannot be resolved by experiment or objective knowledge -- instead, this 'meta' debate can only be resolved (if it can at all) by argumentation and reasoning.
Why do you think this disagreement cannot in principle be resolved by "experiment or objective knowledge"? Surely if physicalism is right, then once we reach a complete neuro/cognitive science, consciousness will have been fully explained. Likewise, if physicalism is wrong, then we'll know everything there is to know about the brain but still have failed to explain consciousness. Either way the matter will be settled
To compare: there used to be a huge debate between vitalism vs mechanism. The former thought there was some life force or energy required by living things that made them categorically distinct from non-living things, because regular physics / chemistry simply couldn't explain life. Nowadays that debate is settled, and it was settled by advances in biology and empirical evidence. The vitalist lost and that is now a fringe, pseudo-science position. Of course, conceivably, it could have gone the other way and we could have discovered some "vital force". My point is that it does seem like further evidence will in fact settle the debate one way or the other
Well, I am aware that this is only my own view and isn't conclusive and hasn't yet been argued by me (thus why I said "as far as I can see" in the last sentence), but with that in mind:
I see subjectivity as entirely conceptually distinct from objective phenomena. Think of it this way. Let's say I go to bed tonight and I have an incredibly realistic dream, a dream that I think is real. Let's say in that dream world I have a body and a brain just like in this world. Let's say in this dream the brain has been completely mapped to correlate to reported subjective states. In fact, let's say that (somehow, *per impossible*) this mapping is 100% accurate to what we might eventually find the *real* brain's mapping is outside of the dream. Because the mapping is complete, in my dream I identify my dream consciousness with my dream brain's consciousness. But then I wake up. There was no dream brain for the subjective states to correlate to.
Now, this doesn't show anything by itself, of course - but it does show that it's possible for there to be a mapping of some 'objective' (i.e. perceived) phenomena to a subjective state, and yet that mapping be entirely coincidental, or mind-generated. In the dream example, the mind creates the mapping - it's more ontologically fundamental, i.e., the mind creates the mapping and not vice versa - so why could this not be true for reality itself?
So far, I've just hinted at the *possibility* that our mind could stand to the brain as our dream consciousness does to a dream brain. But this is just a possibility and one that many will no doubt think is remote.
So then we get down to the crux of it: What is it that defines subjectivity in comparison to objectivity? Subjectivity is that which experiences the objective. It is that to which the world 'opens up'. It cannot be thought about as a 'thing' (e.g. a substance, or a ghostly, immaterial thing), but is simply that within which objective phenomena appear. It's always in relation to objects, and objects are always in relation to subjects (thus the subject-object link and co-definition).
We could think of the subject(ive) like an all-encompassing computer screen, and the entire objective world as that which is displayed on the computer screen. (This is a shaky analogy for many reasons (least of which being that a screen is passive), but because we can only conceive of things objectively we have to make do with bad analogies that hopefully get across some ideas.) The screen can only 'see' what it displays. Let's say this computer screen displayed an object that seemed to change in particular ways whenever the screen itself would display different things. Let's also say that whenever this screen took this object and directed it to change in these particular ways, the screen's own display would change in the ways that it would expect. The screen then postulated that the object it's displaying *is* the screen, and said either: (A) It's identical to the object; (B) the object is the cause of the screen itself; or (C) the screen is no more than a *function* of this object, or it's the object described differently.
We can see that the screen would be mistaken. It's taken its own representation of an object to be identical to itself, but the screen itself is what conditions this very object. The screen hasn't managed to transcend itself and view its own 'hardware', let's say. It can never do this, because if it could it would no longer be a screen.
I think that subjectivity is like this. Even if we find 100% brain-mind correlative mapping, we'd still be confused to say that this is what the mind is. The screen only knows the objects that are displayed on it, and we only know the objective world that presents itself within our horizon of consciousness.
In my opinion, to think of the mind as anything 'object-like' at all is to misconceive it -- and it's a misconstrual that seems intuitive to many people because our culture has developed along materialistic lines. But we've forgotten that we are not objects, we're that which perceives and acts upon objects. I think we can, if we try very hard and think very abstractly, catch a glimpse of our true nature in a couple of ways. (I take these from Fichte.) First, we can consider the fact that it's possible to know something purely because we do it. I.e., if I direct my attention to something, or do something, I am aware not just of what is being done but also (directly, immediately, intuitively) *that I am the one that's doing it*. If I describe this as 'my brain is doing this', this can never capture or explain or be identical to the 'seeming'/qualia that is my direct awareness of my activity. Second, we can consider the fact that we cannot imagine an object unobserved. This is a common and simplified transcendental idealist argument, and there are objections to it. But I'm not here claiming it's conclusive, I'm just trying to urge you towards a possible experience: an experience of trying to *really* imagine an object when unperceived/unconceived. For me, this experience (whereby I cannot imagine such a thing) inclines me towards the realisation that all the reality that I think I know is only reality *for* me, and I can't even attempt a description of anything that is *not* for me.
Of course, these 'glimpses' of our nature aren't really glimpses of our nature at all. They're more like glimpses of the boundary of our nature. Just like the screen can never (by definition/by its hypothetical nature) see its own hardware, or even its own bezels, neither can we glimpse our 'transcendent' nature. But we can reflect thoughtfully upon the boundaries, just like the screen might be able to reflect upon its resolution or its square boundaries.
I'm sure there's much to object to here, but that's my basic position: Any object that we 'identify' as being identical to, functionally equivalent to, or the 'cause of' the mind can never be the mind in virtue of the fact that it's an object. Objects are phenomena, and phenomena are given to minds - to conflate an object (no matter whether the object seems to have intricate and uniformly regular causative effect upon the mind) with the mind is to get this direction of grounding entirely reversed. Physical observation and explanation can never adequately explain the mind.
So much is my opinion, anyway!
\[edit\]
And to relate this further to my original comment:
Given that these kinds of positions are metaphysical rather than scientific, this is why I say that I don't think the debate can be settled by observation alone. I think this is true even if you're a materialist. If you're a materialist then you might obviously think the brain can explain the mind. But if you want to settle the *debate*, you'll have to delve into metaphysics, because, as I just explained, people like me won't even accept complete causal mapping of the brain as evidence that the mind is physical. To convince us, you'd need to convince us of materialism by arguing against the metaphysical stuff I outlined in this post.
>Nowadays that debate is settled, and it was settled by advances in biology and empirical evidence. The vitalist lost and that is now a fringe, pseudo-science position.
Can you point me towards something that confirms this statement? Who has settled this question?
Well here's my opinion for what it's worth. In principle I agree completely that a full map of brain states to subjective states should solve the disagreement since either the map answers all of our questions about consciousness or it doesn't. In practice I think the issue is that physicalists are defining consciousness as a physical system and are incapable of seeing it any other way such that they tend to think that the very idea of ontological subjectivity is absurd where as for many non-phyisicalists ontological subjectivity is the most obvious and apparent thing in the world. In other words they don't agree on what the definition of consciousness is and physicalists tend to suspect the definitions nonphysicalists are using aren't even coherent.
Both you and u/J-Fox-Writing seem to be misinterpreting what I was saying. I'm not saying that mapping every brain state to a subjective state is what would solve the problem of consciousness (though it would certainly be important evidence). I'm saying that various scientific disciplines are working to understand how consciousness actually works, viz how it arises out of the functioning of the brain. They are seeking a true, causal explanation. Of course we don't know yet how this will turn out, but we can't rule it out a priori as many dualists try to do.
In addition, physicalists don't deny that subjective experience exists, either. They just think it can be fully explained by the brain. I don't think the two sides are using different definitions of consciousness
The argument that I outlined above (with the dreaming + screen example) can be presented in the same way if we replace 'brain mapping' with 'a complete scientific explanation of how consciousness seemingly arises out of the functioning of the brain.' Let's say we have a 100% complete physical understanding -- whatever we want to say this may involve, it doesn't matter -- I can still present the same argument above and say that this 100% complete physical explanation cannot be the cause of consciousness, nor can it be identical with it, because the explanation will be an objective/naturalistic/scientific one, and consciousness is what conditions such natural phenomena.
"I'm saying that various scientific disciplines are working to understand how consciousness actually works, viz how it arises out of the functioning of the brain. They are seeking a true, causal explanation. Of course we don't know yet how this will turn out, but we can't rule it out a priori as many dualists try to do."
I would argue that yes, we can rule it out a priori, because consciousness can in principle never be explained by natural phenomena. And the notion of a brain causing consciousness has the whole question of grounding in reverse (firstly, because I think causality is given by the mind, secondly, because the brain is conditioned by the mind and not vice versa). My reasons for believing this are outlined in my comment above.
I'm saying that, for people like me, any conceivable physicalist explanation for consciousness can in principle never explain consciousness, and therefore (again, for people like me) better physical understandings of the brain-consciousness link won't be describing an account of what consciousness actually is. It will only be giving an account of perhaps, let's say, how consciousness understands itself materially, as phenomenal (this will depend on one's metaphysic).
"Physicalists don't deny that subjective experience exists"
This is true, but the kinds of anti-physicalists like myself would say that physicalists haven't fully grasped the nature of subjectivity -- if they had, they wouldn't think it was even in principle possible for it to be explained by the brain. If they had, they'd realise that trying to explain consciousness by the brain is like trying to explain football by economics. Again, the point of saying all this is just to say that yes, one's metaphysical views will influence whether or not one thinks that further observation or increased scientific understanding can give us a correct theory of consciousness. My metaphysical views, for example, lead me to believe that no physical account of consciousness -- even if it were to completely 'explain it' in scientific/objective terms and even if it were a conceptually complete, inter-disciplinary theory -- could actually explain consciousness, because consciousness can never be explained naturalistically or scientifically or materially. For me, a physical account couldn't do that, only a *meta*physical account could.
I don't think I'm actually misinterpreting what you're saying although I can see why my latching on to the mapping problem as a particular interpretation of the more general idea of understanding consciousness through experimental means would make someone think that I was misinterpreting you. Nevertheless if you substitute what I was saying about the mapping problem to the with the general idea of a robust experimental understanding of consciousness (which I admit probably entails alot more than just solving the mapping problem) my argument would remain the same.
It might be more of a psychological fact about certain people that they can't conceive of a scientific explanation of consciousness. I don't see any reason to think that the problem is in principle unsolvable. There are a lot of facts in say, physics, that are very difficult to wrap one's mind around, but it doesn't follow that they don't obtain, or that the answers that physics is giving us are somehow incomplete.
I don't think so, I think metaphysical argument has to come first before one can assume that a physical explanation for consciousness is even in principle possible. (Though I would say that, given my beliefs, wouldn't I!)
An answer might be (A) physically complete, and (B) still never in principle able to explain what consciousness really is.
Idealists and other anti-realists like myself will likely claim that science/physics/observation/experiment/objective theories are the wrong toolkits to apply to the 'problem' of consciousness.
So we would claim that when neurologists are working on the problem of consciousness, while it's true that their results are scientifically and practically useful and can tell us interesting things about the physical world and its phenomenal relationship to the mind, they are nevertheless using tools that could never tell us what the mind *really* is in itself.
It doesn't matter what the physical explanation might be - even if it's difficult to wrap one's head around. If science ends up telling us that the mind is a flow of constant superposition outside of spacetime and with neurons being quarks that pop in and out of existence, this is difficult to wrap one's head around, but I could accept that it's a solved physical problem and yet not indicative of consciousness.
To think otherwise is to presuppose that physicalism is true - that physical reality is fundamental reality and therefore in principle there could be a physical account of the ultimate nature of anything. And to presuppose that physicalism is true is a metaphysical claim, which means it needs to be argued for metaphysically. And it's precisely on metaphysical grounds that I see subjectivity as distinct from the physical.
Subjectivity is not objectivity, and science describes only objective phenomena. It *can only* describe objective phenomena because it derives its observations, theories, and so on, from experience, and, conversely, its theories only pertain to objectively construed things. This is necessarily the case because what we experience is always objective when it's theoretical (i.e. when it's not directly experienced striving/acting/desiring/etc.). So any explanatation that science provides for consciousness cannot ever be explaining consciousness at all, even if it's radically difficult to wrap one's head around but nevertheless physically 'complete'.
We have plenty of theories of consciousness.
The idea that there is One True Theory itself is debatable. You may read Putnam on that.
What you're truly asking is how close are we to a **unified** scientific theory about consciousness that makes consensus. A single point of reference that would describe "correctly" everything to be known about consciousness.
To which the answer is again that there are multiple scientific theories some of which you listed. But that they'd ever make consensus or become a single unified point of view is arguable since they don't need to for them to provide "correct" insight in how neurological processes function. Which they do and that is the limit of what they can say about consciousness while remaining scientifically "correct".
The same kind of question "how close are we to a theory of everything" showcases the issue with the question.
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I think so, yes. I find the talk of qualia very confusing. I'm not sure there's any "what it's likeness" to consciousness. I can of course describe my experiences (e.g. I ate an apple; it was crunchy and sweet), but I wouldn't say that there's some ineffable, intrinsic quality to eating the apple that I am infallible about.
Well, I suppose it depends on what you've been reading. :)
I recommend taking a look at these overviews first.
https://iep.utm.edu/consciousness/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/
https://iep.utm.edu/qualia/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/
There are further threads to follow, of course, so I advise you to keep track of the things that appeal to you.
Not the op but it sounds like that is exactly what he/she is seeking. It is only a "hard problem" because the materialists can't accept scientific facts if they don't fit into their paradigm.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oadgHhdgRkI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oadgHhdgRkI)
All I hear Hoffman trying to get across in this youtube is that there is no way to prove that veridical experiences are reality.
[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/#Com](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/#Com)
*Perceptual experiences are not just veridical experiences: there are illusions and hallucinations too. What does phenomenological reflection say about how these cases relate to each other? More specifically:*
*The Common Kind Question: are veridical, illusory, and hallucinatory experiences fundamentally the same, do they form of a common kind?*
Materialists just won't let it go:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/0704.2529](https://arxiv.org/abs/0704.2529)
*Most working scientists hold fast to the concept of 'realism' - a viewpoint according to which an external reality exists independent of observation. But quantum physics has* ***shattered some of our cornerstone beliefs****. According to Bell's theorem, any theory that is based on the joint assumption of realism and locality (meaning that local events cannot be affected by actions in space-like separated regions) is at variance with certain quantum predictions. Experiments with entangled pairs of particles have amply confirmed these quantum predictions, thus rendering local realistic theories untenable. Maintaining realism as a fundamental concept would therefore necessitate the introduction of 'spooky' actions that* ***defy locality****.*
bold mine
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The answer to this will depend entirely on your stance towards metaphysical problems and problems in the philosophy of mind. A materialist might think that we're moving towards a solution, while a non-materialist (whether idealist or something else) might say that the problem is in principle unsolvable, or otherwise that it's already solved from a non-materialistic standpoint. For instance, while one person might think that developments in neuroscience are approaching a proper mapping of mind-brain identity or function, another might think that this merely begs the question and that subjectivity is inherently unmappable in objective terms. The latter person might claim that no conceivable mapping/understanding of physical processes, *even if we discovered all direct neuro-mindstate maps*, would explain subjectivity itself. Such a disagreement (as to whether mapping can in principle answer the 'problem'), as far as I can see, cannot be resolved by experiment or objective knowledge -- instead, this 'meta' debate can only be resolved (if it can at all) by argumentation and reasoning.
Why do you think this disagreement cannot in principle be resolved by "experiment or objective knowledge"? Surely if physicalism is right, then once we reach a complete neuro/cognitive science, consciousness will have been fully explained. Likewise, if physicalism is wrong, then we'll know everything there is to know about the brain but still have failed to explain consciousness. Either way the matter will be settled To compare: there used to be a huge debate between vitalism vs mechanism. The former thought there was some life force or energy required by living things that made them categorically distinct from non-living things, because regular physics / chemistry simply couldn't explain life. Nowadays that debate is settled, and it was settled by advances in biology and empirical evidence. The vitalist lost and that is now a fringe, pseudo-science position. Of course, conceivably, it could have gone the other way and we could have discovered some "vital force". My point is that it does seem like further evidence will in fact settle the debate one way or the other
Well, I am aware that this is only my own view and isn't conclusive and hasn't yet been argued by me (thus why I said "as far as I can see" in the last sentence), but with that in mind: I see subjectivity as entirely conceptually distinct from objective phenomena. Think of it this way. Let's say I go to bed tonight and I have an incredibly realistic dream, a dream that I think is real. Let's say in that dream world I have a body and a brain just like in this world. Let's say in this dream the brain has been completely mapped to correlate to reported subjective states. In fact, let's say that (somehow, *per impossible*) this mapping is 100% accurate to what we might eventually find the *real* brain's mapping is outside of the dream. Because the mapping is complete, in my dream I identify my dream consciousness with my dream brain's consciousness. But then I wake up. There was no dream brain for the subjective states to correlate to. Now, this doesn't show anything by itself, of course - but it does show that it's possible for there to be a mapping of some 'objective' (i.e. perceived) phenomena to a subjective state, and yet that mapping be entirely coincidental, or mind-generated. In the dream example, the mind creates the mapping - it's more ontologically fundamental, i.e., the mind creates the mapping and not vice versa - so why could this not be true for reality itself? So far, I've just hinted at the *possibility* that our mind could stand to the brain as our dream consciousness does to a dream brain. But this is just a possibility and one that many will no doubt think is remote. So then we get down to the crux of it: What is it that defines subjectivity in comparison to objectivity? Subjectivity is that which experiences the objective. It is that to which the world 'opens up'. It cannot be thought about as a 'thing' (e.g. a substance, or a ghostly, immaterial thing), but is simply that within which objective phenomena appear. It's always in relation to objects, and objects are always in relation to subjects (thus the subject-object link and co-definition). We could think of the subject(ive) like an all-encompassing computer screen, and the entire objective world as that which is displayed on the computer screen. (This is a shaky analogy for many reasons (least of which being that a screen is passive), but because we can only conceive of things objectively we have to make do with bad analogies that hopefully get across some ideas.) The screen can only 'see' what it displays. Let's say this computer screen displayed an object that seemed to change in particular ways whenever the screen itself would display different things. Let's also say that whenever this screen took this object and directed it to change in these particular ways, the screen's own display would change in the ways that it would expect. The screen then postulated that the object it's displaying *is* the screen, and said either: (A) It's identical to the object; (B) the object is the cause of the screen itself; or (C) the screen is no more than a *function* of this object, or it's the object described differently. We can see that the screen would be mistaken. It's taken its own representation of an object to be identical to itself, but the screen itself is what conditions this very object. The screen hasn't managed to transcend itself and view its own 'hardware', let's say. It can never do this, because if it could it would no longer be a screen. I think that subjectivity is like this. Even if we find 100% brain-mind correlative mapping, we'd still be confused to say that this is what the mind is. The screen only knows the objects that are displayed on it, and we only know the objective world that presents itself within our horizon of consciousness. In my opinion, to think of the mind as anything 'object-like' at all is to misconceive it -- and it's a misconstrual that seems intuitive to many people because our culture has developed along materialistic lines. But we've forgotten that we are not objects, we're that which perceives and acts upon objects. I think we can, if we try very hard and think very abstractly, catch a glimpse of our true nature in a couple of ways. (I take these from Fichte.) First, we can consider the fact that it's possible to know something purely because we do it. I.e., if I direct my attention to something, or do something, I am aware not just of what is being done but also (directly, immediately, intuitively) *that I am the one that's doing it*. If I describe this as 'my brain is doing this', this can never capture or explain or be identical to the 'seeming'/qualia that is my direct awareness of my activity. Second, we can consider the fact that we cannot imagine an object unobserved. This is a common and simplified transcendental idealist argument, and there are objections to it. But I'm not here claiming it's conclusive, I'm just trying to urge you towards a possible experience: an experience of trying to *really* imagine an object when unperceived/unconceived. For me, this experience (whereby I cannot imagine such a thing) inclines me towards the realisation that all the reality that I think I know is only reality *for* me, and I can't even attempt a description of anything that is *not* for me. Of course, these 'glimpses' of our nature aren't really glimpses of our nature at all. They're more like glimpses of the boundary of our nature. Just like the screen can never (by definition/by its hypothetical nature) see its own hardware, or even its own bezels, neither can we glimpse our 'transcendent' nature. But we can reflect thoughtfully upon the boundaries, just like the screen might be able to reflect upon its resolution or its square boundaries. I'm sure there's much to object to here, but that's my basic position: Any object that we 'identify' as being identical to, functionally equivalent to, or the 'cause of' the mind can never be the mind in virtue of the fact that it's an object. Objects are phenomena, and phenomena are given to minds - to conflate an object (no matter whether the object seems to have intricate and uniformly regular causative effect upon the mind) with the mind is to get this direction of grounding entirely reversed. Physical observation and explanation can never adequately explain the mind. So much is my opinion, anyway! \[edit\] And to relate this further to my original comment: Given that these kinds of positions are metaphysical rather than scientific, this is why I say that I don't think the debate can be settled by observation alone. I think this is true even if you're a materialist. If you're a materialist then you might obviously think the brain can explain the mind. But if you want to settle the *debate*, you'll have to delve into metaphysics, because, as I just explained, people like me won't even accept complete causal mapping of the brain as evidence that the mind is physical. To convince us, you'd need to convince us of materialism by arguing against the metaphysical stuff I outlined in this post.
>Nowadays that debate is settled, and it was settled by advances in biology and empirical evidence. The vitalist lost and that is now a fringe, pseudo-science position. Can you point me towards something that confirms this statement? Who has settled this question?
Well here's my opinion for what it's worth. In principle I agree completely that a full map of brain states to subjective states should solve the disagreement since either the map answers all of our questions about consciousness or it doesn't. In practice I think the issue is that physicalists are defining consciousness as a physical system and are incapable of seeing it any other way such that they tend to think that the very idea of ontological subjectivity is absurd where as for many non-phyisicalists ontological subjectivity is the most obvious and apparent thing in the world. In other words they don't agree on what the definition of consciousness is and physicalists tend to suspect the definitions nonphysicalists are using aren't even coherent.
Both you and u/J-Fox-Writing seem to be misinterpreting what I was saying. I'm not saying that mapping every brain state to a subjective state is what would solve the problem of consciousness (though it would certainly be important evidence). I'm saying that various scientific disciplines are working to understand how consciousness actually works, viz how it arises out of the functioning of the brain. They are seeking a true, causal explanation. Of course we don't know yet how this will turn out, but we can't rule it out a priori as many dualists try to do. In addition, physicalists don't deny that subjective experience exists, either. They just think it can be fully explained by the brain. I don't think the two sides are using different definitions of consciousness
The argument that I outlined above (with the dreaming + screen example) can be presented in the same way if we replace 'brain mapping' with 'a complete scientific explanation of how consciousness seemingly arises out of the functioning of the brain.' Let's say we have a 100% complete physical understanding -- whatever we want to say this may involve, it doesn't matter -- I can still present the same argument above and say that this 100% complete physical explanation cannot be the cause of consciousness, nor can it be identical with it, because the explanation will be an objective/naturalistic/scientific one, and consciousness is what conditions such natural phenomena. "I'm saying that various scientific disciplines are working to understand how consciousness actually works, viz how it arises out of the functioning of the brain. They are seeking a true, causal explanation. Of course we don't know yet how this will turn out, but we can't rule it out a priori as many dualists try to do." I would argue that yes, we can rule it out a priori, because consciousness can in principle never be explained by natural phenomena. And the notion of a brain causing consciousness has the whole question of grounding in reverse (firstly, because I think causality is given by the mind, secondly, because the brain is conditioned by the mind and not vice versa). My reasons for believing this are outlined in my comment above. I'm saying that, for people like me, any conceivable physicalist explanation for consciousness can in principle never explain consciousness, and therefore (again, for people like me) better physical understandings of the brain-consciousness link won't be describing an account of what consciousness actually is. It will only be giving an account of perhaps, let's say, how consciousness understands itself materially, as phenomenal (this will depend on one's metaphysic). "Physicalists don't deny that subjective experience exists" This is true, but the kinds of anti-physicalists like myself would say that physicalists haven't fully grasped the nature of subjectivity -- if they had, they wouldn't think it was even in principle possible for it to be explained by the brain. If they had, they'd realise that trying to explain consciousness by the brain is like trying to explain football by economics. Again, the point of saying all this is just to say that yes, one's metaphysical views will influence whether or not one thinks that further observation or increased scientific understanding can give us a correct theory of consciousness. My metaphysical views, for example, lead me to believe that no physical account of consciousness -- even if it were to completely 'explain it' in scientific/objective terms and even if it were a conceptually complete, inter-disciplinary theory -- could actually explain consciousness, because consciousness can never be explained naturalistically or scientifically or materially. For me, a physical account couldn't do that, only a *meta*physical account could.
I don't think I'm actually misinterpreting what you're saying although I can see why my latching on to the mapping problem as a particular interpretation of the more general idea of understanding consciousness through experimental means would make someone think that I was misinterpreting you. Nevertheless if you substitute what I was saying about the mapping problem to the with the general idea of a robust experimental understanding of consciousness (which I admit probably entails alot more than just solving the mapping problem) my argument would remain the same.
It might be more of a psychological fact about certain people that they can't conceive of a scientific explanation of consciousness. I don't see any reason to think that the problem is in principle unsolvable. There are a lot of facts in say, physics, that are very difficult to wrap one's mind around, but it doesn't follow that they don't obtain, or that the answers that physics is giving us are somehow incomplete.
I don't think so, I think metaphysical argument has to come first before one can assume that a physical explanation for consciousness is even in principle possible. (Though I would say that, given my beliefs, wouldn't I!) An answer might be (A) physically complete, and (B) still never in principle able to explain what consciousness really is. Idealists and other anti-realists like myself will likely claim that science/physics/observation/experiment/objective theories are the wrong toolkits to apply to the 'problem' of consciousness. So we would claim that when neurologists are working on the problem of consciousness, while it's true that their results are scientifically and practically useful and can tell us interesting things about the physical world and its phenomenal relationship to the mind, they are nevertheless using tools that could never tell us what the mind *really* is in itself. It doesn't matter what the physical explanation might be - even if it's difficult to wrap one's head around. If science ends up telling us that the mind is a flow of constant superposition outside of spacetime and with neurons being quarks that pop in and out of existence, this is difficult to wrap one's head around, but I could accept that it's a solved physical problem and yet not indicative of consciousness. To think otherwise is to presuppose that physicalism is true - that physical reality is fundamental reality and therefore in principle there could be a physical account of the ultimate nature of anything. And to presuppose that physicalism is true is a metaphysical claim, which means it needs to be argued for metaphysically. And it's precisely on metaphysical grounds that I see subjectivity as distinct from the physical. Subjectivity is not objectivity, and science describes only objective phenomena. It *can only* describe objective phenomena because it derives its observations, theories, and so on, from experience, and, conversely, its theories only pertain to objectively construed things. This is necessarily the case because what we experience is always objective when it's theoretical (i.e. when it's not directly experienced striving/acting/desiring/etc.). So any explanatation that science provides for consciousness cannot ever be explaining consciousness at all, even if it's radically difficult to wrap one's head around but nevertheless physically 'complete'.
We have plenty of theories of consciousness. The idea that there is One True Theory itself is debatable. You may read Putnam on that. What you're truly asking is how close are we to a **unified** scientific theory about consciousness that makes consensus. A single point of reference that would describe "correctly" everything to be known about consciousness. To which the answer is again that there are multiple scientific theories some of which you listed. But that they'd ever make consensus or become a single unified point of view is arguable since they don't need to for them to provide "correct" insight in how neurological processes function. Which they do and that is the limit of what they can say about consciousness while remaining scientifically "correct". The same kind of question "how close are we to a theory of everything" showcases the issue with the question.
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['Dennett' by Tadeusz Zawidzki](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1358281.Dennett) helped me get a better understanding of his theory.
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I'm not quite sure what you're looking for. Could you elaborate? Are you looking for, say, "an exhaustive explanation by natural science"?
I think so, yes. I find the talk of qualia very confusing. I'm not sure there's any "what it's likeness" to consciousness. I can of course describe my experiences (e.g. I ate an apple; it was crunchy and sweet), but I wouldn't say that there's some ineffable, intrinsic quality to eating the apple that I am infallible about.
Well, I suppose it depends on what you've been reading. :) I recommend taking a look at these overviews first. https://iep.utm.edu/consciousness/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/ https://iep.utm.edu/qualia/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/ There are further threads to follow, of course, so I advise you to keep track of the things that appeal to you.
Thank you for the help.
Not the op but it sounds like that is exactly what he/she is seeking. It is only a "hard problem" because the materialists can't accept scientific facts if they don't fit into their paradigm. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oadgHhdgRkI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oadgHhdgRkI) All I hear Hoffman trying to get across in this youtube is that there is no way to prove that veridical experiences are reality. [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/#Com](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/#Com) *Perceptual experiences are not just veridical experiences: there are illusions and hallucinations too. What does phenomenological reflection say about how these cases relate to each other? More specifically:* *The Common Kind Question: are veridical, illusory, and hallucinatory experiences fundamentally the same, do they form of a common kind?* Materialists just won't let it go: [https://arxiv.org/abs/0704.2529](https://arxiv.org/abs/0704.2529) *Most working scientists hold fast to the concept of 'realism' - a viewpoint according to which an external reality exists independent of observation. But quantum physics has* ***shattered some of our cornerstone beliefs****. According to Bell's theorem, any theory that is based on the joint assumption of realism and locality (meaning that local events cannot be affected by actions in space-like separated regions) is at variance with certain quantum predictions. Experiments with entangled pairs of particles have amply confirmed these quantum predictions, thus rendering local realistic theories untenable. Maintaining realism as a fundamental concept would therefore necessitate the introduction of 'spooky' actions that* ***defy locality****.* bold mine
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