The Hard Problem of Consciousness 

Consciousness is mysterious and all, sure. But how you're able to write backwards from your perspective is what really blows my mind!

But if Epiphenomenalism is true, how come we’re able to describe that we’re conscious? If consciousness has no way of interacting with your physical brain, why does your physical brain know that you are conscious? How is it able to contemplate consciousness and talk about it with others when, if epiphenomenalism is to be believed, the physical brain itself does not experience or even know it is conscious. To experience is to interact, for us to know the existence of anything we must be able to interact in any way with it, including conscious. If consciousness really was a byproduct that never interacted with the physical world, we’d still feel stuff but the brain would never have a reason to talk about consciousness. You may say that it’s a coincidence that the physical brain believes itself to be conscious but it’s a very unlikely coincidenceness. The idea of consciousness occurring to an unconscious brain would be like the colour red occurring to a brain that can’t process red. And how is it able to accurately talk about consciousness? As if it’s experienced it itself.

Who else thinks a better name for "mysterianism" might be "pessimistic reductionism"?

I deeply enjoy your presentations! Thank you for explaining so thoroughly and, when possible, visually, these notoriously difficult topics!

I think that trying to solve the hard problem gives rise to the hard problem. We're trying to look for reasons why and how consciousness emerges. But the why and how ARE physical, objective reasons for something which clearly is not physical. Consciousness is to the brain what a story is to a book. Or a law is to a piece of legislation (or legal document). The story itself is not physical but the book contains physical elements that describe it and express it. But how does the stuff of the book impact the story? It doesn't. The story is independent of the book. The book is only a holder/container for the story. And there can be multiple copies of books which project the story. The story itself exists on it's own. It is a an abstract conceptual thing. Only when matter comes to influence and interact with the story can it be experienced.

What value in a clever clear-thinking teacher. I'm not the shiniest penny in the till but while Kaplan's presentation is less than 30 minutes, he was able to get across a complex topic even I could grasp. No mean feat.

Isn't there another option besides physicalism and dualism? What about idealism - the theory that consciousness is fundamental and physical bodies are illusory? I'm thinking of the Analytic Idealism proposed by, for example, Bernardo Kastrup.

I do agree with Chalmers that consciousness seems to be a property of reality. But I would not call that view dualism and say that it’s completely separate of the physical world, because we have to remember that changes in the physical world, like the touch of the molecules of ice in the molecules of my hands, do affect my conscious state by creating a subject feeling of cold, for example. So there’s has to be a connection between conscious and the physical world. They must be, at the end, all properties of a single and connected reality.

Thank you for a clear explanation of the hard problem. There is an explanation that “solves” it though (please bear with me). Here is a brief summary: 1) First person subjective consciousness is the one irrefutable fact of reality. Remember, illusions are also 1st person subjective experiences. 2) Objective phenomena (world, others, even self) are appearances within consciousness. They may or may not have reality outside of consciousness, outside of appearance. 3) Objective (physical) reality is a closed system, and thus has no apparent use and no apparent explanation for subjective consciousness. 4) Therefore, the most logical explanation for reality is a form of idealism in which the stuff of realty is experience, and objective phenomena are law-governed appearances or illusions. There are definitely esthetic concerns with this explanation ( for example, it’s not obvious how more than one actual subject is involved. “Others” in this scenario are “just “ appearances also. So much more to discuss, but that’s the basic idea, and I’d love to hear logical objections to it.

NAVOMITTO: A New Approach to the Hard Problem The "hard problem" of consciousness refers to the mystery of subjective experience: how something physical like the brain can give rise to interior, conscious qualities like the redness of red or the painfulness of pain. Philosophers have struggled for centuries to solve this puzzle. The NAVOMITTO framework offers a novel approach to solving the hard problem. At its core, NAVOMITTO sees reality as composed of illusory dimensions and perspectives that differentiate across clarions. It's this process of differentiation across clarions that gives rise to consciousness and qualia. Clarions are the key to the solution. Lower clarions contain relatively undifferentiated perspectives that likely correspond to primitive forms of awareness. As perspectives differentiate into more parallel perspectives across higher clarions, richer conscious experiences emerge. Consciousness "scales up" as clarions increase. Subclarions within each clarion also play an important role. Subclarionic dynamics contain the finely differentiated information processing that grounds our qualia. Though embedded within a given clarion of consciousness, subclarions may bridge the gap to neural processes. The vocabulary of NAVOMITTO - illusion, dimensions, perspectives, clarions, subclarions - provides new conceptual tools for understanding how consciousness arises. Traditionally, philosophers framed the problem in terms of physical substances - like neurons - that seemed fundamentally separate from subjective experience. But clarions reframe the debate in a more fertile way. While NAVOMITTO presents only a high-level solution at this point, it points to a promising new direction for tackling the hard problem. Consciousness may emerge as an inevitable byproduct of the differentiation and integration of perspectives across clarions and subclarions - a product of the illusory structure of reality itself. In this way, NAVOMITTO offers a potential answer to the hard problem: consciousness arises through the process of differentiation across clarions, grounded and textured by subclarionic dynamics, and made possible by the illusory nature of reality. With further development and refinement, NAVOMITTO's novel conceptual tools may finally help philosophers crack the mystery of consciousness. NAVOMITTO: A Multi-Dimensional Framework for Understanding Reality Nothingness and existence are two sides of the same coin Illusion 1-there is Illusion. Reality is made of Illusion. Illusion is the whole coin of nothingness-existence. Illusion is all aspects of reality from zero (nothingness) to infinity (existence at its most actualized form). Illusion is the paradox itself. Illusion can be seen in different clarion through the process of differentiation. Dimension (Universal) 2-there is Dimension. each Dimension describe a concept or property or quality or quantity or relations or changes or process or anything else‌. each Dimension is unique in its own way but it can be seen as an interaction of infinite other Dimensions. in other way each Dimension is entangled with Illusion and All Dimensions are emergent from Illusion. Dimension exists in different Clarions and different Perspective. Illusion can be seen as infinite Dimentions. Perspective (Particular) 3-There is perspective. The set of perspectives in different clarions makes the dimension. Any conscious or unconscious entity can only pass through successive perspectives in different clarions. It is not possible for an entity to pass to parallel perspectives. Each perspective contains unique information that describes the dimension in that clarion. Each perspective manifests its own unique qualia. Clarion 4-there is Clarion. Clarion determines how many Perspective exist in that particular Clarion (in a specific Dimension). Clarion can be any number from Zero to Maxima. Differentiation (enamation) 5-There is Differentiation. Differentiation is the process of enamation that involves separation of superimposed information (at previous lower clarion) into more clear information (at next higher clarion) that leads to increase in clarity, But losing of information's. Differentiation creates Reciprocal Hierarchy Structure of Dimentions. (For example: At a lower Clarion , you may have a Perspective that contains information about red and green (Particular red-green). There is no green or red in this lower Clarion Perspective but there is only red-green. Through the process of differentiation, the information in this Perspective (Perspective red-green) can be separated into 2 simpler, more clear Perspectives at next clarion (Perspective red + Perspective green). red Perspective is the parallel Perspective of green and red-green is the parent Perspective at lower Clarion. So if you move from red-green Perspective to red Perspective you will gain clarity but at the same time you lose information of green Perspective) Nothingness 6-there is Clarion 0. Clarion Zero contains no Perspective. Clarion 0 is nothingness. Clarion 0 contains all of illusion as potential. Nothingness is the result of superimposition of all Dimentions. All Dimensions are common in Clarion Zero. Clarion 0 is the only simple. Existence 7-there is Clarion 1. At Clarion one, there is one Perspective in Dimention. The information in Clarion 1 includes the superimposition of all Perspectives in Clarion 2. Clarion One contains all information found in Dimention, but in an undifferentiated form and looks simple because it is viewed from the perspective of Clarion One. Clarion One means Dimention in the most uncertain state. Inflectia 8-Between Clarion Zero and Clarion Maxima, there is an intermediate Clarion that has the largest amount of Parallel Perspectives. From clarion zero to inflectia, the number of Parallel Perspectives for each clarion increases, and from inflectia to clarion maxima, the number of Parallel Perspectives for each clarion decreases. Perspectives at Inflectia has the most complexity while Perspectives at Clarion 1 and Platonica has the minimum Complexity. Platonica 9-there is Clarion (Maxima-1). In Clarion (Maxima-1), Dimention needs another Differentiation to reach Clarion Maxima. Platonica means Dimention in the most certain state. each perspective at Platonica contains the last bit of information in that Dimention. In Platonica, with One differentiation, existence is destroyed and nothingness remains. Platonica is formed from the superimposition of Nothingness in clarion Maxima. Maxima (Infinity) 10-there is Clarion Maxima. In Clarion Maxima, there is no superimposition, and all causes have already occurred, with no change left to be made. In Clarion Maxima, there can be no further differentiation, and there is nothing left to differentiate. Therefore, paradoxically, Clarion Maxima, represent Clarion 0. Maxima can be any number from zero to infinity. Formulas: 11-The number of Parallel Perspectives in Clarion C is calculated through the binomial coefficient with the following formula: N=P!/(C!(P-C)!) In this formula: N=number of Parallel Perspectives in Clarion C P=Platonica Clarion 12-Despite the existence of multiple perspectives in the upper clarions, for a perspective in the lower clarion it is only possible to enter P-C+1 number of perspectives from the upper clarions (for 0

*_You Are Your Brain & Your Brain Is You_** ;* We have yet to find evidence that it's possible, for a _"conscience thinking mind"_ to exist, without a _"living functioning brain"._ If your memories & personality are separate from your brain, _(in a soul),_ then *they would not be effected by damage to the brain.* _(but they are)_ Even though we don't know the exact process by which consciousness arises, it is still _undeniable that it is a brain process that can't occur, separate from the brain._

Alas, what about idealism among optimistic reductivism and dualism

I like to think that the brain is an abstraction machine. A processor connected to a sensory apparatus. The sensory apparatus includes input and output as well as storage and is all an abstraction of the interaction experience. Without the extraction of the sensory apparatus structure the processor function could not work as there would be no data. Cognative function only begins when the initial sensory stimuli is received. This function begins building sets based on experiences and abstraction of comparative elements. The abstraction of these sets continues to build models to understand and interact with the stimuli. This is the begining of conciousness. There are many model sets being built, allowing the sophistication of an intellect and personality of the individual to grow. There is a plataeu based on requirement of abstraction the individual needs in their enviorment, habit of abstraction and interest in learning or discovering things. This seems to reflect in an individual based on the regular interactive cohorts they keep, and activities they take part in or not. So change the enviorment change the mind. This may not remain my theory if I get feedback that helps me move to a better model or reconcille it to somewhere inbetween. I just think it seems to fit quite well as a process. It is something that came to me when pondering Rene Descartes 'I think therefore I am', and applying concepts of everything being a function to a non well founded universal set model. The idea was how cognition begins, how sets would be formed. I concluded that whilst the thinker could not be sure of anything about themselves they could be sure of the following. That any cognition that occurs would require an abstraction apparatus regardless of form, that any cognition receiving data could gain enough sophistication to identify the 'function set model'. That all ideas sit in the universal set model and that includes the well founded set models. That the reality of the situation must exist as a set model, even if the thinking mind can not find it. That the mind can abstract a model adequate enough to be a non well founded set within the reality set model they are experiencing with some well founded sets inside that greater model. That this is adequate enough for the interactions the mind perceives are taking place, provided the mind continues the quest for understanding.

Guys, these problems are very old and I am amazed that one can talk about them without referring to the past, as if we moderns and American researchers and academics were the smartest guys ever who did philosophy. Did you know that in Buddhism, a religious psychology and philosophy that arose in the fifth century BC, the number of types of consciousness (called "dharmas") varies from 8 to no less than 89? You probably don't. That's how narrow and oblivious of other traditions this whole thing is! Chalmers is a Harvard version of Descartes, i.e. philosophy without the beauty of sixteenth-century French and Latin prose. A very important distinction since philosophy is artistry, too. The parallelism or correspondence between physical phenomena and consciousness resembles arguments made by Spinoza or Leibnitz mutatis mutandis. The easy problems of consciousness are related with what Aristotle calls the material and efficient (be)causes; the hard problem has everything to do with the other two (be)causes: the definition and final purpose of consciousness. Obviously, given the nature (you can call it it a "bias", one that is rooted in philosophy by the way, although most scientists would deny it) of present Western scientific inquiry, the last two questions can never be answered satisfactorily. On the one hand, scientists are telling us they have observed some physiological phenomena related with brain activity and WHICH THEY CONSIDERS TO BE THE COMPLETE CAUSE OR EXPLANATION of consciousness (what about simple correlation or just necessary condition, huh? who says light would not be light without an eye to see it?)) and then they go on to say that consciousness is nothing but a subjective apprehension of sensory data. I mean, talk of being BLIND to what one is doing because one has hidden assumptions one is unwilling or incapable to examine! When scientists say the physiological processes explain consciousness are they observing the explanatory nature of the aforesaid processes? Are they actually perceiving the causality? Not at all. This is a very biased, incomplete and hasty conclusion. It is a CONCEPTUAL INTERPRETATION of SOME sensory data. But scientists treat those scientific observations, the shock and pony show of chemical and electric reactions, as if they transcended mere subjectivity and were capable by themselves to explain the brain. Then, oblivious of the activity of analyzing the data, they blithely explain consciousness WITHOUT referring to its conceptual activity at all. That won't do, sorry; and the fact that we accept such errors so easily and unquestioningly is a testament to the deeply entrenched prejudices we harbor in our minds ever since science and its slavish philosophical progeny of empiricism, rationalism and critical idealism have had the final word on everything. All the hard problems of consciousness come from the naive realistic view, one Hume and Kant adopted without examining it, that the knower is a separate entity from the known, that the observer and the observed are and can never be one. The truth is knowledge is immediate, not transcendent. Here is the solution to all the futile paradoxes and unnecessary riddles.

Appreciated breakdown ^^ The Hard Problem seems like 1) unfalsifiable to differentiate and 2) requiring committal to its existence despite any number of suggestion that consciousness is emergant, regardless if otherwise.

Thank you so much. I really like how you explain things

As a cognitive scientist, I find myself squarely in the camp which finds the "hard problem" argument unconvincing. The argument is unconvincing for the same reason that many otherwise interesting discussions of consciousness also end up going in circles. We can't seem to reach an agreement on what consciousness is, and as a result many approaches conflate properties of consciousness with properties which are not conscious at all. Confusion is inevitable. Perhaps then it would be useful to begin by thinking about what consciousness ISN'T. I propose that it isn't part of the spectrum of cognitive processing that ranges from the simplest responses of unicellular life to its environment at one end of the spectrum, and goes on to increasingly elaborate neuroanatomical function at the other end. Spiders, fish, mice, mammals: they and we are all functioning in essentially the same way, responding to internal signals that are representations of our environment. What is it "like" to respond in this way? Ask your fingertip when it touches a hot surface. It's a meaningless question. A purely neuroanatomical description will suffice. We don't suppose that there is some homunculus down there at that level of expression, an "experiencer" capable of greater things but fated to the menial toil of relaying the information on to the rest of the organism. There is, as far as we know scientifically, absolutely no evidence of such an awareness at this level. Nor is it needed in any way. When we come to it, consciousness is a very minor recent cognitive feature which seems to manifest for sure in only one species on this entire planet, and arguably not often even then. We may persuade ourselves that most of our cognitive activities are conscious, but nothing could be further from the truth. Even as I'm writing this, almost all of what I'm doing is not being consciously chosen. If you were to hide the keyboard from me, for example, I could probably only locate half of the keys by a conscious exercise of memory, yet my fingers find the positions accurately and without any deliberate assembly of motions. Even my casual intention to type "motions" produced an entire unconscious cascade of appropriate neural activity. Most of my ability to assemble ideas into plausible sequences of inference has thorough long practice become unconscious. The initial practice was indeed deliberate and conscious, but eventually I no longer need to focus my attention on it. I've trained my unconscious mind to do the work. And my unconscious mind has no idea what it's "like" to be an unconscious mind. This is not a hard problem. There's no philosophical conundrum to it. It is undoubtedly a process that runs in human neuroanatomy. The thin layer that I have of introspection and theory of mind and ability to frame abstract propositions and arguments, well, it's half unconscious also. Still, I can knowingly access and manipulate scraps of it, which is amazing, and I can knowingly refuse to do so, which is equally amazing. However, I don't propose that I could recognize what makes this sort of process neurologically distinct from an unconscious process of comparable complexity. Likewise, I wouldn't expect to look at the zeroes and ones inside a computer and be able to infer what processes might be taking place there. It's very cool that we can think about thinking. That requires some capacity for symbolic abstraction, which I strongly suspect requires language - and not just the literal representations of a language such as arithmetic but of a higher order equivalent to algebra. Several species can perform simple arithmetic tasks such as detecting differences between small integer sums. Solving an algebraic equation calls for manipulating abstract symbols whose meaning has yet to be determined. And this degree of cognitive ability seems essential before we can think about abstractions such as thinkers, thoughts, possibilities, impossibilities, and so on. Even then, all this could and often does proceed unconsciously. It took the course of most of human evolution to achieve this much. I can solve simple integrals in my sleep, and compose music, for example. Even, once in a rare while, I'll have a dream in which I wonder whether I'm dreaming, and carry on regardless. I can't exactly tell you what this skilful dreaming is "like," though I can tell you what it's like to awaken with a memory of it. There is a homunculus, and it's me, and it seems to tangibly and smoothly emerge from these other, distinctly unconscious, capabilities as well as reaching down into them a short distance. How is this sort of emergence a "hard" problem? It's just one thin layer of capability. Don't conflate it with all of cognition, because then you'll be obliged to account for all of cognition as if it were conscious, and that sort of overreach is entirely unjustified. It's how we get ridiculous claims such as "the universe must be conscious" or "consciousness requires a quantum substrate."

For me, consioussness doesn´t seem like an epiphenomenon and it looks like subjective experience does have some causality over the phisical world. For instance, there wouldn´t be philosophers phisically talking and writing about the hard problem of consciusness if consciousness didn´t exist, it would be too much coincidence for zombies to talk so coherently about something never experienced. Thanks for the videos! I found the channel today and it really deserves much more subscribers, nice clarity and rythm, saludos de argentina.

Roger Penrose spoke about this lack of knowledge about consciousness. He mentioned a few things we know about. For instance that we know how to turn it off with sedatives and that it seems to originate on the surface of neurons.

There maybe a 4th possible way to "explain" the hard problem. It's almost like #3 dualism but it goes a bit further. Well maybe a lot further. We can start by questioning dualism. The first question follows from #3 is this: Which one comes first, consciousness or physical reality? By all indications and experiences consciousness comes first. I won't go into the details here why I personally think so, but there are very good experimental and personal proofs of this, and zero evidence suggesting that it's the other way around. So #4 is that physical reality as we experience it is merely the product of the particular configuration of consciousness we currently posses. There is no such a thing out there as an absolute physical reality in which somehow consciousness arises. It's rather that we collectively as humans believe that there is such a thing as physical reality because of our way of experiencing consciousness.

My right ear would have enjoyed this, thankfully mono audio is a ubiquitous option

Thank you for laying out so clearly Chalmer's article, must admit he was brilliant creating the circular reasoning in positing the hard problem and proposing a dualist solution so that the hard problem will forever remain hard and "unsolved", a gordian knot.

Why questions aren't hard problems. They're not problems at all. Consciousness is an emergent property of our brain AND it is one that has evolutionary advantage. It is zero surprise to me to learn that our operating state was itself something the brain started monitoring. I am my brain. I experience what it is doing. That's it. Everyone is making this way more complicated than it need to be. I suspect born fwd by a religious Instinct that has much skin in this game.

“All is mind” - The Kybalion. I.e. monism

Experiments in the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research department showed there is some crossover/overlap between the conscious & physical worlds, although small. This would tend against dualism/epiphenomenalism, rather supporting panpsychism or panprotopsychism.

Ah! Daniel Dennett; aman unafraid to ask the truly hard questions.. and then answer a much simpler, adjacent question.

Ty for the excellent presentation. It was recommended by a teacher of advaita vedanta who has referred to Chalmers in a lecture about Consciousness and a logical flaw in The Hard Problem approach.

writing on glass is brilliant as it stops what tecahers always did at school - turning their back on you when they wrote on the board behind

The hard answer could be to give up CALLING the edges of consciousness (“where” it necessarily connects with our atoms in or around our brain cells) on names like “oscillation” or “particles”, and give up pretending that they predictably exist in our observable universe. The way we should picture this event horizon, between what we can perceive and what we can’t, should rather be a smooth verlauf from existence to non-existence (where predictability starts to be increasingly limited). This would automatically explain things like quantum weirdness because particles are never in complete existence in our observable universe - the smaller they are the less they exist, given we define existence as predictability of measurable attributes and their changes after an interaction or other event (plus we consider them being fully independent, separate and different from other existing things). What official science currently models as waves (of energy) or vibration (of matter) - that can fully be defined as a combination of, mostly meaningless and random, different amplitude-frequency data pairs - is actually the soft edge of our predictable (existing) world, where Kansas go bye-bye from our viewpoint.

@14:56 Offering up a theory, the neurons are repeating a pattern of complex sensory experience. For the structure of the individual brain there is a semi variable pattern of how the brain experiences sensory data, depending on the stage of neuron reproduction. This shows in structural variablility within the larger fixed structure in individual brains. So one sensory experience has multiple elements within that experience. The brain processing elements of experience attempts to repeat the partial abstract experience of the greater pattern. The brain when thinking can replicate elements from different patterns to form new patterns. The growth of experience is the growth of pattern vocabulary. So thinking is determined by both apparatus and experienced enviorment. A brain is an situational adaptor through these abstractions and can only improve through experience and reflection. Experience of a pattern can degrade as the brain replicates the pattern less often and this is why memory is imperfect. Brain damage results in a change of thinking because it prevents replication of patterns of experience. The structure of the brain is changed even in healing and may become unable to fully complete the experienced pattern or find a new experience adaptation.

It feels like some of the arguments against the optimistic theory of consciousness are defining consciousness as the non-physical element, which you'll know when you see it. And then they use that to explain that consciousness can't be explained by physical processes.

'The Observer Effect' in quantum physics is not mentioned by Chalmers (per this overview), which does allow an interface between dualistic consciousness and phenomena.

Watching these videos on the nature of consciousness, I can't help thinking we might have it the completely wrong way around. What if there is only mental stuff and the physical aspects of the world is just an illusion or projection? Like the world is actually completely psychic rather than physical.

A neurobiologist who lives in southern California...but whatever. He won the Nobel prize for the structure of DNA.

I'm immensely entertained by the way you introduce deeply complex and cutting edge material and immediately drop "whatever" afterwards, because the details aren't meaningfully informative upon the thing being considered and it's exactly the point at which my brain is coming to that conclusion.

That was awesome. Thank you for making such efforts to educate people. Would love to hear more about David Chalmers and Dualism.

1. The brain is a prediction machine. At multiple levels. 2. Most of what the brain 'does' is 'emergent behaviour', (that is it is unintuitively different than the sum of its inputs). 3. Therefore, my brain is constantly having to predict what I am going to feel and do next. 4. As my brain gets better at predicting me, it also gets better at predicting others, which in a social species is highly adaptive. 5. "What it's like" to be doing this all the time gives rise to the internal monlogue, the story telling, and ultimately the impression that mind feels like a separate thing. So it's Optimistic Reductionism, if we can work out how to work backwards from emergent behaviour to underlying cause, and Mysterianism, if we can't.

I came across some neurological research that demonstrated that we make decisions and have thoughts long before we become aware of them. We have the impression that we willed these thoughts and decisions into existence “consciously” but this is not actually the case. This should lead us to a conclusion along the lines that we are not really conscious at all, but we become aware of the results of our subconscious thinking and believe them to be our “consciousness”. It’s very difficult to get to grips on this concept. An easy example is our (conscious) experience of vision. Subconsciously, we see everything upside down and erratically (with two blind spots) and as two almost indistinguishable separate images. Yet our “conscious” experience is an upright, steady and complete whole image of the world. It’s a complete fabrication. What we experience “consciously” doesn’t exist as we see it, and we are totally unaware that it may be derived from a sea of unconscious experiences. Nothing “parallel” about it. Out brains present us with a “conscious” showing of its internal activities, and yet we have no idea that even this has occurred! :o

The fundamental problem here is that the language game that comprises the natural sciences is not comprehensive enough to describe subjectivity at all. This is a design choice and indeed a feature - the whole point of the scientific project is to try and generate objective explanations of phenomena that do not require or contain any references to subjective experience. This is reflected even on a very basic grammatical level: scientific statements (natural laws, predictions derived from theories, even raw empirical data) are written in third person only, as if they were written by an ideal observer that himself is fundamentally separate from the things he describes. So scientific language is a deliberately reduced sub-set of whatever natural language it is phrased in. The language of subjectivity, on the other hand, is grammatically and semantically complete. All its sentences can be phrased as first-person descriptions of the narrator's subjective experience, and this experience can contain second and third person statements, including all possible scientific statements. In subjective language, sentences like "I believe that / I understand that / I perceive that [third-person statement about a set of perceived external objects or components of a scientific model]" are well-formed and common. So subjective language has a way to reference and encompass scientific or "objective" language, whereas the inverse is not true, by design of the latter. For a subjective speaker to make an objective statement X is to imply a subjective statement of the form "I believe that X is true, and I think anyone else should also believe that." If that implied statement wasn't subjectively true, the subjective speaker would not be making the objective claim X in the first place. Again, no such requirement exists in the inverse, since it is perfectly possible to make subjective statements that do not imply reference to an objective reality. Finally, subjective conscious experience necessarily is epistemologically prior to any contents that unfold in it, including the formulation and understanding of scientific or objective statements. Epistemologically, subjectivity is fundamental, whereas objectivity is a derived category. Subjectivity cannot be doubted, since the act of doing so is identical to the subjective experience of it, but objectivity is merely a concept that you can doubt or disbelieve in in a (phenomeno)logically consistent way. So all these observations lead me to the conclusion that the reductionist approach is precisely backwards: instead of reducing the subjective to the objective, which is linguistically, epistemologically and as of now practically impossible without loss of information, the correct course of action seems to be to reduce the objective to the subjective. This is precisely what Eastern (Hindu/Buddhist) philosophy has been doing all along, and I think Western philosophy, despite its impressive achievements in other fields, has still not even begun to understand this approach to any real extent. I think the solutions to many problems in the theory of mind have probably already been formulated some 4000-ish years ago in some footnote of some commentary to the Upanishads or such. It's just that we still lack the conceptual instrumentarium to translate these solutions into anything that can be handled by modern-era Western philosophy.

There's also the "semi-hard" problem of consciousness: the diversity of qualia. From the outside we see the brain's various electrical signals, and though they have different frequencies, amplitudes, etc. they're the same essential thing. From the inside, we aware of qualia that are entirely different from each other: colors, sounds, tastes, feels, smells.

The problem with physicalism is that it begins with its own presumption--that "reality" consists entirely of "physical" processes--and then tries to assign "physical" explanations to every experience of "reality," even where it doesn't fit. In other words, in the end such speculation is based on circular reasoning.

So, what Chalmers calls the easy versus the hard problem could be reduced to the explanations of conscious activity that are possible or doable and those that are not possible or impossible because of the subjective nature of consciousness and these latter can be boiled down to two: the How and the Why does consciousness emerge as an observable phenomenon. I agree that these latter are harder than the former because we still haven't worked them out, but disagree that we can't. Susan Greenfield's research is already touching on this. The problem Chalmers has, I think, is that he confuses consciousness with self-awareness because many animals we know are conscious and that doesn't seem to bother him as a hard thing. . Susan's research points to the critical mass reached with cluster assemblies of neurons that seem to indicate the difference between both, so the question isn't that hard. What is hard is to come to terms with the realisation, the Eureka moment of realising that we exist, but that isn't that different from the surprise of seeing after having been blind. A surprise that you get used to. Also, it being a very slow process from learning to identify yourself (some animals can already do that) to discuss philosophy, it is something we slowly take in as a fact. It is only retrospectively that we wonder at the magic of acquiring self awareness at the age of two. Nobody remembers exactly when they began to realised they exist.

loved this, so insightful!

1:40 Already a problem here. Why would I smile? Clearly I smile because of a value of mine is visible. A value? Yes, a value, meaning my perceptual or conceptual consciousness identified a thing which benefits my life. Consciousness is already present, the brain alone portion of the quote is already over and gone

Consciousness is all we really have. Without it there is no us

Another excellent and non-judgmental discussion of some relevant topics in philosophy. From my view, Daniel Dennett makes short work of Chalmer's perspective by reminding us of the myriad ways our sensory organs pre-process data, with the resultant understanding that none of these processes are simultaneous nor are they fed into a single mental entity called "consciousness." Regardless of my personal perspective-your lectures are absolutely superb! I look forward to seeing more of them! Thanks!

i love hearing this in my right ear

Love your classes 👏 It would be great if you reviewed this lecture to include Kastrup and Hoffman’s theory of Analytic Idealism which substantially advances metaphysics aligning it with new quantum theories and geometries

The only person ive ever seen actually attempt to do "science" on mental space, thats is; the inside subjective consciousness, is Shinzen Young. I highly recommend his book; the science of Enlightenment.

Quasi-panpsychism. Electrical fields are conscious or a certain configuration or interaction of electrical fields are conscious. Consciousness is the tension or superimposed difference between two different electrical states, that is - potential difference or resultant voltage. Voltage is consciousness. Consciousness is voltage.

I don't agree that the work on synchronised firings of neurons in different parts of the brain and how they relate to the brain's ability to appreciate an entity from its constituent phenomena (colour, shape, smell) does nothing to contribute towards the hard problem. On the contrary, it seems to me that the qualia emerge from further synchronisations of neurons (pleasure from endorphins binding to neurons associated with certain visual or auditory sensations, for example). Consciousness is generally considered to be an emergent phenomenon which is entirely dependent on a functioning brain (cf unconsciousness), so I don't see why it can't eventually be explained by the studies cited.

I wonder why we can accept with ease that neurons in the brain can react to visual inputs (the reactions of rods and cones in the eyes) or to aural signals (the reaction to vibrations in the fluid of the inner ear) -- but not accept that perhaps there are simply neurons whose job it is to monitor and react to other neurons, rather than to anything outside. Consciosness, it seems to me, might simply be feedback loops of the brain watching itself.

So are you saying that epiphenomonon is part of dualism? My reaction a moment earlier when it was revealed that he must be a dualist, is that he had not considered emergence or epiphenomonon. Why wouldn't those be reductionalist? We understand "wetness" and how it is caused by the interaction of molecules, even though it is not a property of fundamental particles. We understand the properties of crystals as arising from the interactions of atoms, but don't apply to atoms. I don't see emergence as a "different kind of thing" separate from physics, but as the normal kind of chunking or hierarchical organization that we've done to go from quantum mechanics -> particle physics -> atomic physics -> chemistry -> biochemistry.

In order to understand anything, one must be able to define it. If you cannot define it, you cannot study it. This is why the study of “consciousness” is so difficult. And yet, we have a sense of consciousness, as argued by Thomas Nagel in “What it is like to be a bat”. Everyone understands what the term “consciousness” refers to; generally in the context of “what something is like”. That is how we think - by comparing this to that: our memories of bats, knowledge of hearing and echo-location, etc. The neurophysiology of understanding the brain mechanisms underlying those processes is the “easy” problem - the “whatness” of consciousness. Consciousness itself can be considered as the “field” of those comparisons. Consider riding in a train, looking out the window, seeing people, houses, cows, whatever. Consciousness is just looking out the window. When you realize you are conscious it is because you recognize something, say a car. Your brain has compared what you see to your memory and decided either you know what it is or you don’t. What has happened is you have “split” your mind into 2 parts - a recollection (comparison with some stored memories) versus a current perception. That process results in an event that is neither past nor present; it cannot be defined, yet the result is definitely an experience. But while you may remember the result, you do not remember experiencing the result: thus the experience of recognition is not defineable. That doesn’t mean we can’t call it something. We call it “consciousness”. You can know what you know, and you can know what you don’t know, but you can’t know what you can’t know. What you can’t know is consciousness.

At some point Jeffrey says there are two possible ontological explanations materialism, or dualism, Materialism obviously simply dismisses the problems it can’t solve and dualism produces more questions than it answers There is a third option which seems to go under the radar which is immaterialism which rather than viewing conciousness or mind as an emergent phenomenon from matter regards matter as an emergent property of mind Hence the paradox of the double slit experiment In this view mind is irreducible and precedes all other phenomena I am puzzled why he doesn’t mention this option

How do we initially define consciousness is key. It might not be a single phenomenon. If it were to be more complex than the simple feeling of experience, than Chalmers’ dichotomous view of the consciousness problem would be biased. Indeed, each component explaining consciousness would be perceived as reductionist and placed in the easy problem. The entire construct is based on a subjective initial feeling that consciousness is a single process that is inevitably more than what we can explain of it. What if consciousness was a set of mental constructs designed to help us predict our interactions with our environment? What if consciousness was not as amazing as we feel it to be but different neurological functions made to help us conceive ourselves as a person and to function as one? Then, the hard problem would not be a problem… there could simply be no single consciousness!

The solition to consiousness is very simple. It is done by the brain to focus. We simply cannot be aware of too much that is happen both internally and externally. Neuro(bio)logy has a clear view more and more on how consiousness functions. But a lot is still to discover. It is just that in certain academic disciplines, such as certain types of philosophy, there is a tendency towards thinking in the wrong direction and making things endlessly complex. Often based on intuition and narrow reasoning as well. Perhaps for a part due to the urge of keeping yourself busy, academically. But the factual solution is very simple. And keep thinking in vague, complex directions will only be useless. Rather think in complex directions that actually mean something in the real world.

Chalmers ignores a fourth possibility which is being explored actively. That is holistic rather than reductionist science, the idea that consiousness is an emergent property of a complex dynamic system, the brain. This area of research uses Systems Dynamics and Agent Based Modelling and is an active area of research aimed at solving the 'hard' problems of science.

the thing is, if processes are tied to the physical systems in our brain in some way that we continue to discover, that makes them a part of the physical system. erasing dualism potentially.

He is not writing backward. The image we see is inverted. If you notice he appears to be writing with his left hand and his watch and wedding ring appear to be on his right hand which is exactly what you would see in an inverted image like in a mirror. Absent inversion of the image we see, his writing would appear backward to our view although he would be writing with his right hand and his watch and ring would be on his left side as is normal.

17:20 .. Not necessarily disagreeing with anything else, but I think Chalmers is wrong about this specific point. He seems to contradict himself when he says that Hameroff / Penrose are saying consciousness arises from certain quantum phenomena, but then he says that even if they are right about that, then they are still not addressing how consciousness arises. But, they _are_ trying to address it, speculating that it arises through quantum processes in microtubules, etc. Please correct me if I'm mistaken. I feel like I must be. But, this is how I interpret it, purely just from what's presented here. As always, thank you for all of the excellent classes.

Consciousness may well be but the subjective experience of negotiating without an algorithm between the dueling infinities of arithmetic: addition where infinity is a meaningless extent, or multiplication where infinity is a meaningful finitude, governed by the appearances of the sequential differences of prime values.

What is consciousness is the fundamental basis of reality and everything else is derivative?

Chalmers contradicts his response to the hard problem with his further speculation. If consciousness is totally apart from what physics can touch or explain then that necessarily means that consciousness cannot have any effect on physical functions of the body. And yes, there would be no way for science to study the hard problem, but why would we expect it to once we write consciousness off as non-physical and outside of physical laws?

Have you spoken about Churchland’s arguments? Im trying to find a défense for physicalism for my essay, any help? Thank you!

Ockham's Razor would suggest that consciousness arises from physical phenomena in the brain. No need for dualism at this point (until there's some evidence of the existence of consciousness outside of the brain).

If option 1 is Optimistic Reductionism, then he should have called option 2 Pessimistic Reductionism. Same basic premise (its all going on in there but understanding how it works is too hard). Option 3 is just mysticism. All his thought is going on in his physical brain unless he believes that there is something unembodied. Of course, that is called religion. He (and you) take a dismissive attitude to the 'easy problems' without any evidence that these states of mind, synchronisations, quantum effects are NOT what he is experiencing as consciousness. Apart from passing a Turing test, can he prove that he is conscious? And If he believes the Mary's room thought experiment, passing a Turing test is no evidence of 'understanding' and consciousness. And he ends with the (unproven) assertion that consciousness CAN NOT be derived from physical laws. That does not have to be option 3 but could be option 2.

Very enjoyable. Do you want to try free will vs determinism?

Amazing stuff. I wish I was one of your students. Have you published any work I could read?

Isn't the position of consciousness not affecting/creating events in physical reality a moot point? It's known, through experimentation, which has shown that conscious thoughts/conscious intent...products of consciousness...directly affects &/or changes physical reality. I read of an experimental study* that used "a trained deep empath" through different forms of conscious intent documented changes in DNA (within some form of vacuum container). *I can't recall the name of the journal, sorry, but it was definitely academically peer reviewed journal.

Consciousness is subjective. Humans try to label consciousness instead of looking at interconnected events or between 2 or more as a consciousness in itself. Interconnection is a prerequisite. Now you have the whole EMF spectrum just to start working I/O functions solo or in plural to create a consciousness in your image if you choose.

Dualism is in danger of becoming a bit like creationism. "You can't explain this, therefore God/Spirit.". We have really only had the tools needed to explore the brain for the last 20-30 years so the first steps are to get a clear understanding of the basics, which is ongoing. The "hard" problem may not be so hard, once that is understood. BTW No-one has ever actually found this other "stuff" of consciousness. That is a problem, perhaps philosophers could tell us where and how to look? Also why is it always associated with bodies?

The point being to know if the "mental stuff" can exist if the "physical stuff" ceases to function/exist/etc. If it can't, doesn't it mean it's only a sub-product of the physical one?

Chalmers proposes that to solve what he calls consciousness, we (checks notes) "do drugs about it, I guess"

So Chalmers basically say that we as conscious observers are without free will...? Since consciousness cannot affect the physical world then my thoughts and decisions happen independently of my consciousness.

Jeffrey doesn’t venture into the realm of Idealism because he would probably endanger his professorship for doing so, given the paradigmatic stranglehold of scientific materialism on the dogmatic foundational presumptions that are enforced in our institutions of higher learning-but the fact is there is important work being done that this lecture fails to consider. The deeply flawed presumption that there is such a thing as an objective observer is the most glaring example of such dogma. Science is based on that presumption. It is a 3rd person illusion that presumes that there is a “me” that can find out about “it” without “it” being affected by “me”. even though the evidence is overwhelmingly contrary to this notion. Nobody ever proved Berkeley wrong, because you can’t within the auspices of 3rd person science and that, by Karl Popper’s falsifiability principle anyway, means that it isn’t science. Fair enough, but that doesn’t mean what he said wasn’t true that if nobody heard the tree fall, it didn’t make a sound. Just because Einstein was bothered by the idea that if nobody is looking at the moon, it does not exist doesn’t mean he was right. He was also very bothered by “spooky action at a distance” and went to his grave not buying it. Then John Bell came along. It might very well be that the Advaitists were correct all along and that existence and consciousness are the same thing, and that it is also Blissful! This is in fact provable via 1st person Science, so-called by the Advaitists, of course you would have to actually perform the experimentation, which is subjective and contemplative, but this is anathema to 3rd person scientists because it violates their fundamental methodology.

The easily accessible information In-form-ation shows that e-Pi-i functional infinitesimal Calculus of pure-math relative-timing ratio-rates, the basis of "spelling" equally of identity with Actuality is reducible to logarithmic resonance Interference bonding cause-effect. What is the problem, other than to teach this reasonable and rational understanding of a naturally occurring curriculum, by the default logic of maintaining metastability, to our collective succeeding generations in/of mutual respect, consciously.

If 'thought' is physical, then might it still be, that our five senses are still unable to perceive it ?

... 4) Ignorabimus Optimistic Relationism has got a weak point: there are no tools (yet?) to analyze subjective experience in an intersubjective way. Mysterianism has got at least one good supporting argument: it is possible to alter, or even switch off the consciousness just using chemical substances.

If consciousness exists commensurate with, and a result of, some hard-coded law(s) of the physical universe, then optimistism about sussing out substantive understandings of it are blown asunder...are they not? Similarly, such arguments and sentiments expressed by Chalmers on consciousness also can be carried over to physics...a 'hard problem of physics'...if you will. While we certainly can mathematically model quantum fields, doing so still never touches upon how (and from what) the fields necessarily manifest...not to mention the impossibility of trying to understand the manifestation of a rubric that served to establish quantum fields as but one of many baseline, hard-coded core items embedded in our universe. In the end, it seems our best effort leaves us with just a pile of fundamental laws and/or constants that are simply beyond our ability to probe. And therein, forever, dragons lie. But it's still an impressive pile...is it not?

*Consciousness* is an *emergent phenomenon* of the brain, *resulting* from the communication of information across all its regions and cannot be reduced to something residing in specific areas that control for qualities like attention, hearing, or memory.

Considering how little we know about how the brain works, it seems premature to make conclusions about the biological processes of self aware consciousness and the implications thereof. It's rather like having Ben Franklin's understanding of physics and drawing conclusions about quantum theory. We have a huge obstacle when it comes to such research because it would not be ethical to subject children to constant brain wave monitoring, beginning in utero, in order to study when and how their consciousness develops. It may be that we don't become full conscious until between 2 and 3, which would explain why memory of life before that age is nearly nonexistent in all people. Many kids don't have an existential crisis until the teen years, if they ever have one at all. How self aware are other animals? I think the mirror test is an interesting experiment in that regard

While I agree that the problem of consciousness is hard, I don't really like the way he's cherry picked examples from a field he isn't qualifiied in to condemn all possible research as being unconnectable with the problem. It's clear that physical systems affect consciousness and that when they fail in specific ways we lose the cohesive, centralised identity that for most people is a unexamined normal state. In THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT there's the story of a man whose sense of his own identity with his body had broken down. He was asked if he was in pain and replied "There's a pain in this room but I can't say who has it." (I should probably add that I'm no more a neuroscientist than Chalmers is.)

Before I watched this I saw/listened to 96 Tears by ? And The Mysterians. Coincidence?

Spectacular presentation.

I am interested in your opinion about Gazzaniga work. I read The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind

Enjoyable presentation. Thank you. Have you read Dr. Johnjoe McFadden's latest paper?

I think it’s dangerous to get bogged down in considering sense-perception as being part of consciousness. This is the line of thinking that gives rise to people saying that AI could never be conscious because it has no senses. 😑 I’d even go so far as to say that sense-perception has nothing to do with the essence of consciousness. This is because one can have senses doing their job unconsciously, like in the case of reflexes. Also, it seems plausible that some organisms with simple brains have advanced systems of sense-perception but no consciousness. The key ingredient is self-awareness… As for the mechanisms of how this self-awareness might be achieved, that’s a separate topic, not a different theory of the definition of consciousness.

Imho, this line of thinking misses the mark on what consciousness is. It's self awareness, that is, being aware of your thoughts, or worded another way, being able to watch your own thoughts. It's a level above neurons firing, and our six senses. That watcher of thoughts is like a seventh sense. Its an open question how this comes about, whether it can emerge from physical processes, or whether it comes from non-physical sources. Can one neural network "watching" another neural network develop into "consciousness", perhaps through two or more neural networks watching each other in a circular fashion? As AI is further developed we'll find out if consciousness can emerge from "neurons firing" or whether it comes from some other dimension, perhaps non physical.

Good Stuff, I'm finally glad to see someone at least addressing this question in a scientific approach, which I feel is right, that what we call the soul is sort of a matrix of polarities of sub atomic particles whatever, and that the only current way to even deal with it is through religious and mystical pursuits. One thing I'm very curious about though, in your video which is well presented, how to you write backwards so well?

There is a huge difference between why the qualia of consciousness is the way it is for us and what consciousness truly is. "What it is like to be a bat" is not about "what consciousness is" but "why is the qualia of consciousness the way it is". What consciousness is, is actually relatively simple, because we have a well defined relatively simple definition. >>> Consciousness is the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings. >>> Consciousness is the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world. >>> Consciousness is the having of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings; awareness. perceive

In some of my previous comments, I might have been disrespectful for which I would like to apologise! But I do have reasonable doubt.

If you could answer why consciousness exists and what exactly it is, what new concepts would you need to know in order to answer that question?

It's so easy to keep falling into the trap of explaining it in terms of matter. And perhaps that is the way, though if it were we would need to recognise that no two particles are identical. If we claim we know how to build my consciousness for example from lots of the same fundamental building blocks, then we will have a problem explaining why there might still be a difference, why they might be two me's with two separate points of view rather than one me seeing from two points of view. One side of this has to be false, and I've got a feeling the latter could not be true. Though having said this, that can simply be explained for the fact that they weren't physically connected, as there have been plenty of medical phenomena recorded to suggest a physical connection could make a 2-bodied single-consciousness possible. But there's something which seems completely one-off about consciousness, something like the "us" correlating with our unique supply of the electromagnetic field or our unique positions in space. I believe attempting to upload consciousness onto even the correct substrate (if we knew how) could simply corrupt me and create a clone of me instead which could fool everyone it was the real me in every situation, but it wouldn't actually be me. Rather that I am more body than mind. Or that I am the continuouation of undisturbed electronic feedback loops, a potential (but not necessary) face of the electromagnetic spectrum.

he's clearly #1, we have long since understood that our understanding of physics and quantum mechanics is flawed and are trying to create a proper theory of everything that does not have those flaws. Once that is solved, we will then have a way to explain how and properly do science to figure out the hard problem of consciousness.

The philosophical reasoning presented by the speaker is flawed in the way he leads us back to dualism. There is only a need to explain consciousness as a separate but necessary adjunct to physics if it manifests downward causation, and that is not merely unproven, but as our AI implementations being increasingly humanlike it must seem more and more indefensible as a claim. In reality, it is not possible for any person A to prove their consciousness to person B. Ergo it has no physical existence at all. It exists only as a complex dynamic abstraction (like a song or a poem) made out of the interactions of lower level abstractions (like memories beliefs and ideas). So it’s a purely informational thing. The end of this chain of reasoning is that conscious experience is really just an informational shadow of some kinds of physical data processing system that are constructed to maintain an awareness of themselves. Being an abstraction, that shadow doesn’t really exist in the real world at all, and it doesn’t affect anything that does, so there’s no need to amend or supplement physics.

The sound quality is not good at all

Listening to this with earphones. Sounds like your talking from behind me

OK, I just watched this after making my previous comment on Frank Jack's argument on Mary's room. So I did not know what to call my argument against it but now see it is optimistic reductionism that would argue against Mary's room, so you taught me a new term. Thanks in that seems to be a good term to have in ones vocabulary! But that argument that physics needs only physics to totally describe it is not at all held by modern physics in that the quantum word can only be described statistically and not deterministically! So if one says something happens by change one is admitting one does not know the cause of it (or at least all the factors that cause it albeit one might know some. And to say no one is looking at the hard problem is not quite true for (albeit indirectly) I am, though maybe one might say I am a nobody, and maybe they would be right. But in my exploration of how to create a visual ontology modeling language I sort of accidentally(in that was not what I was trying to do) came up with a method that might not explain consciousness but at least might be able to model it. So (and I am trying to make this as short as I can but maybe am not doing all that good a job of doing that in this is a buit long) but here goes anyway: What I was trying to do was to come up with a way to just show (graphically) to a ontology model viewer just the things that they "cared about" at that moment and hide everything else. Thus say one has a model with 10 billions pieces of information and at a given moment one actually is only caring about say 5 to 10 of those 10 billion so that the model would just show those 5-10 9and maybe a bit more for context) and hide all the rest. And as such perhaps this is some way models consciousness, i.e. it is the thing that draws form all we know and reduces it to what we just need to care about a the the moment. It is not all that different than when we use a computer with billions of pieces of information stored on hard drives and we load a portion of that into RAM only that it is more dynamic and fluid and is continuously doing that and really fact at that. Thus we have two processes at work, one that hides and unhides the relevant data and the other that uses that data to do whatever needs to be done with it. Actually, the model that seems best to me I get from the Bible, though once again a bit by accident in that we read The Spirit of the LORD will rest on Him, The spirit of wisdom and understanding, The spirit of counsel and strength, The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. Isa 11:2 Thus we see two groups of three, one the one side (say the left side for arguments sake) we have knowledge, counsel, and wisdom and the other side (the right) fear of the LORD, Strength or power, and understanding. So one might construct a model (which actually it seems Aquinas did just that, almost in his Summa Theologica) where the left side is the intellect and the right side is the will. Only he put understanding with the intellect. But if one takes truth to be the proper subject of the intellect (i.e. to assess what is true vs what is false) while goodness (or how best to obtain it) as the proper subject of the will then one can argue that understanding is a goodness measure and not a truth measure in that one does not so much have a true understanding but rater a good understanding of a thing, the later being that one can (rightly) answer any relevant question about any subject that one has a good understanding. But Aquinas also says truth and goodness are convertible which perhaps by that he means one can say is it true something is good or good that it is true. And BTW, in this context fear of the LORD means that one does not hold that all outcomes are equally desirable but that to live is preferable over dying, easting is preferable over starving, etc. and that all these preferences as a whole is what we call goodness. And there is this center (7th) thing that one might call the heart where one holds their core beliefs and such. So using that model one might ask where does consciousness fit in? Well it seems to be a power so it might go with the spirit of power/strength (along with say moral virtues and such). But that spotlight as to what is at present relevant might fit under the spirt of counsel. For a counselor does not tell one what to do but what one might do and what that might entail. So I say all this (and yes it is a bit long) just to point out that no, there might be some (and not just me for all I know0 that are thinking about the hard problem, but maybe they all too are no bodies given that they may not be all that well known. Also, as an aside I have made a bunch of videos on this and upload them to my RU-vid channel under the banner of UniML (Universal Modeling Language) not to be confused with UML (Unified Modeling Language) albeit that none of them are all that good in that I am still trying to figure this out. .. and as you say, this is the hard part, or at least related to the hard part in that UniML attempts to model how one thinks... or something roughly equivalent, which leads to the idea of reductionism. But since the comment is already way too long let me end here other than to say that if something is emergent can it really be reduced to some thing lese when there can be an infinite number of other things that it also could be reduced to, just as say a computer program could be reduced to an infinite number of different computer hardware implementations. Thus even thou any of these can produce that emergent behavior that emergent behavior seems to exist independent of them jsut as say FORTRAN code does not care what computer in runs on (so long as it has a complier to make it work on that computer).

mmm how about our ability to respond. our responsibility. consider as an option for psychophysical law. being as we know already that we are held to account for actions in life, such as when we choose to juggle knives and end up with a cut. we also hold to account our response to our environment, we may make the choice to not eat that second candy bar, even though our environment has influenced the path of thought. i have not been convinced of the epiphenominal idea yet. in an epiphenominal world, there is no justification for judging the actions of another human, since they're seen as nothing more than exhaust from their environmental experiences. entirely possible that i failed to digest the video. love the insight, its a profound dilemma, this pursuit to understand oneself. which i see as being the hight of our capacity, since by nature our capacity to understand is limited to our dominion, or things lesser than us. might never be able to understand the conscious. but as long as we don't settle for a reductive declaration about us. i rather enjoy these experiments in thought.