Common sense argument - the mind and materialism

malf - I agree the hard problem may not be so hard - if one moves from airy "consciousness" and lands with pragmatic science. 

The hard problem may not be so hard - for idealists.

I think it would be fair to say that some here follow the Dennett line on "the hard problem" (or lack of such) while others seem to have a spread of ontologies. This is an article in The Guardian by the panpsychist Philip Goff which offers something of a short summary.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015...sciousness

[Note for our mods: I was tempted to quote the whole article as it is quite short but that would break the rules so I'll try to be selective.]

I participated in the Greenland consciousness cruise ... The majority of the participants were in the Daniel Dennett camp, according to which proper respect for science requires us to deny the very existence of consciousness.

... philosophers such as Dennett started from the idea that the physical sciences give us a complete picture of reality, which consciousness must somehow be squeezed into. But Russell and Eddington start from the observation that while physics may be great at telling us what matter does, it doesn’t really tell us what it is. As Eddington put it, “Our knowledge of the nature of the objects treated in physics consists solely of readings of pointers [on instrument dials] and other indicators.” 

Several decades of failed attempts to squeeze mind into matter resulted in Chalmers’ famous declaration that we have a “hard problem of consciousness”. But more recently a revival of the Russell/Eddington approach has started to bear fruit. It could be that the hard problem of consciousness is due to a wrong turn that scientists and philosophers took in the middle of the 20th century – a wrong turn we may be about to correct.

As Fodor notes these are actually 3 separate problems of consciousness:
For more on the three separate problems, see Feser's article Fodor's Trinity.

1. I really struggle with what people mean when they say 'consciousness is fundamental'...?

2. As regards Feser's article you linked to and the 3 so called problems, none of them are really a problem in my view. They are only a problem if you constrain ones thinking to old fashioned rigid rules... Dr Adrian Thompson's experimental work on evolvable hardware has given us a profound glimpse of the way ahead...

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/dow...1&type=pdf

About 4 years later he has moved onto single electron circuits...

https://www.computer.org/csdl/proceeding...9-abs.html

A few years later IIRC 2007 (I can't find now, everything appears to have been deleted) he turns up at a nasa/dod conference on adaptive hardware via video link, and had by then moved onto circuits using quantum spin.

Since then silence...

I see no reason to think he has not been successful in moving us forward... and although I doubt he's yet gone so far as to develop a totally plastic circuit substrate that can become quantum coherent with past states (add up past states)... If he has even developed a plastic circuit that works in real time and can adapt and become entrained by it's own fields, this would be a monumental step forward... the power of such a system to learn and evolve and adapt would be frankly frightening compared to the fixed pieces of rules bound silicone we have today.

On just a simple silicone substrates in 1996, he got the damn circuits to evolve by themselves to take advantage of the full capabilities of the silicone substrate when he freed the system to adapt by feedback. It's difficult to imagine just where he's got to by now, considering how fast he was moving forward. (But you can guarantee it's going into some new government device or weapon we've not seen yet).

But is anything less airy than the subjective experience that we use in all discernment, from baby-hood to adult-hood?

Surely it is the abstraction of mathematics that is "airy", an example of Whitehead's misplaced concreteness? How else does Science wander into the fictions like uploading minds, multiverses, and over a decade of "Not Even Wrong" String Theory?

I would like to defend how minds can seriously influence nature by understanding deep-meaning, as great minds and hero's have shown.  I am not to the task.  I will have time to dwell on it.  I leave for Asia on a technical call at an electronics fabricator.  I hope that my retirement comes soon enough - that this is the last Chinese visa and multiple overnight flights I have to wrangle.

That said, I would love for you to take a deep dive at Whitehead's view on this subject.  I do truly enjoy learning from your PoV, Sci.  My "go to" is the excellent article in the SEP.  Here is the set-up to the subject.   https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whitehead/

 Whitehead sided with Berkeley in arguing that the primary/secondary distinction is not tenable (1920 [1986: 43–44]), that all qualities are “in the same boat, to sink or swim together” (1920 [1986: 148]), and that, for example,

the red glow of the sunset should be as much part of nature as are the molecules and electric waves by which men of science would explain the phenomenon. (1920 [1986: 29])

Whitehead described the philosophical outcome of the bifurcation of nature as follows:

The primary qualities are the essential qualities of substances whose spatio-temporal relationships constitute nature. … The occurrences of nature are in some way apprehended by minds … But the mind in apprehending also experiences sensations which, properly speaking, are qualities of the mind alone. These sensations are projected by the mind so as to clothe appropriate bodies in external nature. Thus the bodies are perceived as with qualities which in reality do not belong to them, qualities which in fact are purely the offspring of the mind. Thus nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent: the nightingale for his song: and the sun for his radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves, and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the excellency of the human mind. Nature is a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colourless; merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly. (1926a [1967: 54])

“The enormous success of the scientific abstractions”, Whitehead wrote, “has foisted onto philosophy the task of accepting them as the most concrete rendering of fact” and, he added:

Thereby, modern philosophy has been ruined. It has oscillated in a complex manner between three extremes. There are the dualists, who accept matter and mind as on an equal basis, and the two varieties of monists, those who put mind inside matter, and those who put matter inside mind. But this juggling with abstractions can never overcome the inherent confusion introduced by the ascription of misplaced concreteness to the scientific scheme. (1926a [1967: 55])  Copyright © 2018 by 
Ronald Desmet
Andrew David Irvine

bolding mine.

I would like to defend how minds can seriously influence nature by understanding deep-meaning, as great minds and hero's have shown.  I am not to the task.  I will have time to dwell on it.  I leave for Asia on a technical call at an electronics fabricator.  I hope that my retirement comes soon enough - that this is the last Chinese visa and multiple overnight flights I have to wrangle.

Heh I think we might be in the same line of work.

But yeah I've been meaning to do a deeper dive of Whitehead, I've mostly been reading process philosophers interpretations of his work and haven't dug far enough into the original content.

The hard problem may not be so hard - for idealists.

Or for interactive dualists.

The line quoted by Stephenw,"These sensations are projected by the mind so as to clothe appropriate bodies in external nature" states a point of view that is consistent with emerging understanding in the study of perception. Sensed information comes to our conscious awareness after it is colored by memory.

Or for interactive dualists.

Likely this needs a different thread but curious who's in your lineup for Interactive Dualism - thanks!

The line quoted by Stephenw,"These sensations are projected by the mind so as to clothe appropriate bodies in external nature" states a point of view that is consistent with emerging understanding in the study of perception. Sensed information comes to our conscious awareness after it is colored by memory.

Only a moment to post.  Have you encountered J. J. Gibson and his wife Eleanor -- pioneers in perception studies?

Scholarly articles for the ecological approach to visual perception
The ecological approach to visual perception: classic … - ‎Gibson - Cited by 33838

Not many works are cited almost 34 thousand times!!

I cannot delete this post.