New book, "Heavens on Earth", by Michael Shermer

Personally, I don't think we need be concerned with "what it is like to be a bat" or what it is like to experience the colour red, or any of those things. By the time we ask those questions, we have already taken consciousness for granted, missed the boat as it were, it has already sailed without us.

In my view, we need to start earlier. How is it that we experience at all? Doesn't matter what the experience is, just the mere fact that we do.

I should say, this is just my wording, it may amount to the same as has already been said.

As an aside, I don't deem it impossible to experience what it is like to be "something else", there are lots of examples of altered states of consciousness, whether via the route of dreaming, or other routes, where we may experience other realities. Not to say that this would satisfy someone who wanted the answers nailed down and repeatable in the lab.

Personally, I don't think we need be concerned with "what it is like to be a bat" or what it is like to experience the colour red, or any of those things. By the time we ask those questions, we have already taken consciousness for granted, missed the boat as it were, it has already sailed without us.

In my view, we need to start earlier. How is it that we experience at all? Doesn't matter what the experience is, just the mere fact that we do.

I should say, this is just my wording, it may amount to the same as has already been said.

As an aside, I don't deem it impossible to experience what it is like to be "something else", there are lots of examples of altered states of consciousness, whether via the route of dreaming, or other routes, where we may experience other realities. Not to say that this would satisfy someone who wanted the answers nailed down and repeatable in the lab.

I'm not sure that those altered states or experiences of other realities are relevant to the point that Nagel, Chalmers and others are making. That point being that we can't experience what it is like from the perspective of the bat or the other person. We can experience other realities but that is still our own experience. We could be transported to an alien world and see their landscape but that would tell us little about how they experience that world. 

While I do agree that just by asking the question we have already acknowledged consciousness but neither Nagel nor Chalmers is questioning the reality of consciousness. That is something you would expect from Churchland or Dennett who does pose precisely that question about whether consciousness is real. It is called Eliminative Materialism.

I'm not sure that those altered states or experiences of other realities are relevant to the point that Nagel, Chalmers and others are making. That point being that we can't experience what it is like from the perspective of the bat or the other person. We can experience other realities but that is still our own experience. We could be transported to an alien world and see their landscape but that would tell us little about how they experience that world. 

You seem to be ruling out the possibility that altered states from your perspective can include experiencing "what it is like from the perspective of the bat or the other person". That was the very thing which I was suggesting was possible. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

I'm not entirely certain on your other point but at the end of the day I think it comes down to a label originally created by a particular person. Since I didn't originate that terminology I'll leave it to the originator to define their own terms.

You seem to be ruling out the possibility that altered states from your perspective can include experiencing "what it is like from the perspective of the bat or the other person". That was the very thing which I was suggesting was possible. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

I'd be interested in your explanation of how this might happen: how could I shift into an altered state that allows me to feel what someone else is feeling and as only they could feel about it? Perhaps, if we expand awareness to be inclusive of all experience - as, perhaps, it might be for the originator of all that is - then you could well be right. Or, alternatively, I've read accounts of the afterlife life review which describe how we get to feel the effects of our actions as those who were affected by them did. I don't discount those accounts either.

But the point of the proposition of the hard problem is to distinguish things that can be discerned by the scientific method and those things that can't. The argument of materialists like Dennett is that those things we call qualia are, in fact, illusory and that the source of the illusion is reducible to brain function. That is where Chalmers and Nagel (both atheists, by the way) differ fundamentally from the worldview of Dennett and Churchland. In effect, Chlamers and Nagel are saying that mind is not reducible and, on that point at least, I agree with them.

I'd be interested in your explanation of how this might happen: how could I shift into an altered state that allows me to feel what someone else is feeling and as only they could feel about it?

Oh, I don't know how. I'm not in a position to provide a recipe or a laboratory procedure. I only say it could/does happen.

Perhaps one example would be within a dream - but I think we need to be careful not to take the same "illusory" route in dismissing this sector of our existence. In my experience, there are a multitude of different things all embraced by the deceptively simple name "dreaming".

I've certainly felt the experience of being someone else during a dream, and it felt very different to my normal experience. It is as though our everyday life is conditioned by the body we inhabit and I had the insight of perceiving from another type of body.

I don't say that this is the only route, it was just one possibility.