Terry Hyland this sounds fascinating! Can you brief us a little on this theory of Hoffman's and why it may solve this problem? (Also on the problem for those unfamiliar with it?)

Hello Alan and Michael - Many thanks for your comments. The hard problem consists in the attempt to make sense of our subjective conscious experiences (intentions, hopes, wishes, or just everyday sensations and experiences) in a world which, according to mainstream physics, is made up only of material objects (plus fields and forces). The panpsychist solution involves either (with Galen Strawson) proposing that all material objects contain elements of experience or (in idealist versions explored by Kastrup and others) that conscious experience is fundamental to everything (following Berkeley and Leibniz).

As you correctly note, Michael, Hoffman goes beyond all this with his notion of the primacy of conscious agents out of which everything is constructed. I agree that there are many parallels here with Eastern philosophy and I bring out some of the Buddhist links in the attached monograph. If, as Eddington and others speculate, the world is really made up of 'mind stuff', then Buddhist mindfulness seems a reasonable way of trying to understand this!

Hoffman is a consummate lecturer and communicator - well worth looking at some of his many videos on youtube.

Best of luck with everything!

Dear colleague - many thanks for sending me your comments and the links to your work. My interest in the area is as an educator and member of the community of conscious agents, and I don’t make a distinction between philosophy and other forms of knowledge and understanding. I will read your work with interest but - if you think you have put the issues in this sphere to rest - there are a number of theorists (Kastrup, Hoffman, Harris, et al) who might wish to dispute this claim!

Best of luck with all the work.

An inspiring quote, and how true. One of my own favourites is from Aristotle: “It is the mark of educated mind to expect that amount of exactness, in each kind, as the nature of the particular subject admits”. I also find the Buddha’s words inspirational: “The end remains untold”. When it comes to the development of knowledge and understanding, there can never be a final word about anything under the sun. This is what makes education such a wonderfully rewarding endeavour!

Thanks for all the contributions. Following sound advice, just done a bit of homework and concluded that brain state materialism (notwithstanding fancy sophisticated empirical theory and research) still only deals with the easy problems of consciousness. The hard problem remains and, thus, we will do better to look to the work of Kastrup and Hoffman for useful ideas for future progress in this sphere. Socrates lives!

Dear Terry,

Thank you for initiating this discussion. I am reading your paper and find it an excellent short survey of the question. I will finish it and later make some specific comments about the different theoretical positions that you are surveying.

Lets for now discuss the central question, the hard nut that can,nt possibly be crack theoretivally by science: the hard problem of consciousness. So this catchy name is in fact a misnommer since the expression sudgest it is a problem and thus implying a possibility for a solution although Chalmer did not initially claimed such solution was possible.

In his Hard Problem of consciousness's papers, Chalmer reformulated the old Mind Body problem in term of the distinction between the hard problem of consciousness and the so callled easy problems of consciousness, those which the different cognitive sciences have worked on for more than one hundred of years along the modern scientific method. All these easy problems can be formulated in terms of functional problems as all scientific problems are formulated. Some of them may never find a solution, some other have been solved completly or partially, many more will be solved and some will later be dissolved because our advance knowledge will make us realized that are borned out of own conceptual confusion. The hard problem of consciousness can'nt be formulated in such functional manner, it is about why all these phenomena of consciousness exist in the first place. It is not about finding order in these phenomena but about why such conscious phenomena exist. This is not a functional problem. Since it is not a functional question then it can’nt possibly be given a functional answer and so it is ipso facto totally outside the realm of science. Whatever function you would attribute to consciousness , you could in principle posit it as solvable by a non conscious mecanism which would immediatly deny the necessity of consciousness for solving this functional problem. Then what is the point of consciousness? It exists, there is no question about it; it is the most self evident fact among all the fact.   Its falsification is impossible. A point Descartes made in his meditations.

Regards,

- Louis

Many thanks for the comments, Louis, most of which I would agree with. Kastrup and Hoffman (in my view, currently the leading theorists in this sphere) would also agree since they both demonstrate the failure of materialism to answer questions about consciousness. If materialism is illusory so is the hard problem so what remains is the quest to understand the nature of consciousness whether it is in the form of radical idealism (Kastrup) or the even more radical notion of a network of interacting conscious agents as the foundation of everything (Hoffman). This latter view has so many fascinating implications for all spheres of knowledge and understanding.

Best wishes for all the work!

Dear Terry,

Here is my own perspective on the Nature of consciousness, it is Descartes with a twist.

Part 1:

In the Hard Problem of consciousness's papers, the old Mind Body distinction is reformulated in term of the distinction between the so-called easy problems of consciousness, those which the different cognitive sciences have worked on for more than one hundred of years along the modern scientific method. All these easy problems can be formulated in terms of functional problems as all scientific problems are formulated. Some of them may never find a solution, some other have been solved completly or partially, many more will be solved and some will later be dissolved because our advance knowledge will make us realized that are borned out of own conceptual confusion. The hard problem of consciousness can'nt be formulated in such functional manner, it is about why all these phenomena of consciousness exist in the first place. It is not about finding order in these phenomena but about why such conscious phenomena exist. This is not a functional problem. Since it is not a functional question then it can’nt possibly be given a functional answer and so it is ipso facto totally outside the realm of science. Whatever function you would attribute to consciousness , you could in principle posits it as solvable by a non conscious mecanism which would immediatly deny the necessity of consciousness for solving this functional problem. Then what is the point of consciousness? It exists, there is no question about it; it is the most self evident fact among all the fact.   Its falsification is impossible. A point Descartes made in his meditations. He showed that the res cogitans can'nt be falsified and was necessarily true unlike the res extensa (scientific knowledge).  So what is the point of consciousness knowing it is not about solving a mere function? 

Part 2:

What is the most basic fact about Life? To persist in its interaction in a ‘’sea’’ of partially stable but also partially unspecifiable circumstances. This demand many mecanisms but above all which is the a priori of all the creation of these mecanisms, an intrinsic opening to, not a function, to create new mecanisms; lets call this opening: creativity,or the consciousness of the given organism. A fundamental aspect, not specifiable in term of any mecanism, but is the source of them all. This is a generalisation for all of life (not limited to the organic realm) of the answer given by Shrodinger akbout what is consciousness in his 1958 Mind and Matter: ''The ensuing organic development begins to be accompanied by consciousness only inasmuch as there are organs that gradually take up interaction with the environment, adapt their functions to the changes in the situation, are influenced, undergo practice, are in special ways modified by the surroundings. We higher vertebrates possess such an organ mainly in our nervous system. Therefore consciousness is associated with those of its functions that adapt themselves by what we call experience to a changing environment. The nervous system is the place where our species is still engaged in phylogenetic transformation; metaphorically speaking it is the “vegetation top” (Vegetationsspitze) of our stem. I would summarize my general hypothesis thus: consciousness is associated with the learning of the living substance; its knowing how (Konnen ¨ ) is unconscious.'' So I draw an equivalence between the Mind Matter dichotomy  (res cogitans, res extensa) and the stabilized order (what science can know) and the creative unstabilized generation of this order (the consciousness at the core of all life) and make it a generalized Heraclitean principle of existence.  So a posit a dichotomy of the Existing in between the stably existing (The res extensa, the domain of order which science can explore) and the real of consciousness , i.e the unstabilized creating of new stabilize realities, the Coming in Existence.

In a nut shell, I re-interpret the old cartesian dualism into a fundamental dichotomy of Nature central to the creation of all life, the dichotomy between the the stable order of Nature the self-creation of new stable order. So Descartes with a vitalist twist. I prefer to call this position a vitalsm instread of a pan-psychism since only what is alive, i.e. self-constructing in a radical way is conscious. It do not dichotomize the world in two stable realms but split the world in between its creation and its stabilisation (persistence) at all its living nexus.

Regards, - Louis Brassard

Dear Terry,

You reports on p. 10 that Goff said that we know a lot about the brain but none of this has shred light on how the brain produces consciousness.

A lot has been discovered in beween the relation in between the physiological processes and the. psychological processes. The different cognitive sciences exist for more than a century and their subject matter has been to find these relation. So Goff's claim is basically wrong. For example we experience a trichromatic colour space and because of this we can produce all the colours with only three primary colours. This is used in all colour screen technologies. We understand well why it is the case since we have three different type of light receptors operating during daytime. On the other hand we can'nt explain the existence of consciousness in terms of any physiological mecanisms. These only provides us physiological relations , some may be related to exterior stimuli. We can correlate these relations with psychological relations but nothing in science may explain the existence of this domain of consciousness (domain od psychological relations). This is what Chalmer called the Hard Problem of consciousness and previous philosophers since Descartes called the Mind Body problem.

My second comment about this Goff's comment is that he is focus on brain as if the other parts of the body were not involved. And not only the whole body is involved but what surround the body and with which the body is in interaction is involved. I say involve in order to avoid ''produce'' . The term produces implicitly take the view that consciousness is a by product of some physiological mecanisms. Surely these are involved and necessary . But our experience is rather not only our bodily interaction in the context of authoring of our life in various contexts. It is not a purely physiological affair. We act in the world, among a tremendous of world processes. totally outside physiology which is limited to the internal bodily processes.

The little section on the theory of Andrew Thomas sound frankly uterly ridiculous.

Physicalism is necessarily limited to functional models, what Chalmers called the easy problems of consciousness. There is no way within science and thus within physicalism to explain the existence of consciousness although the cognitive science without explain this has succeeded in explaining a lot in terms of functional models: the easy problem of consciousness.

The idea of emergence does not help. It is easy to explain within physics why water is liquid and how this property emerged fro H2O molecules which are not by themself. We are not quitting the domain of physical relations, we simply change the scale and other phenomena always emerged at other scale. NOTHING to help explaining the existence of the whole realm of consciousness. Ridiculous idea. It seemed a thing a while back but not many people is trying to ride this dead horse.

Continue commenting content within your paper later.

Regards,

- Louis

Many thanks for your interesting comments, Louis. Such views reinforce the case for arguing that the functionalist/materialist approach to this problem is a futile dead end, so we need to look to the mentalist/ idealist side for ways forward.

Dear Terry,

You briefly touchec on Goff's panpsychism . It says that the world as seen from its external behavior description is what science provides and that all that is so described has also an internal experiential aspect. I disagree. I do not think that that most of the phenomena that we can described physically have any associate experience. I hold a rock and let it fall on the ground. I do not think the rock is experiencing anything. I do not see an experiential side to what is happening to the rock. We built all kind of machines, I do not see that any of these experience anything. Take a wire into which a current circulate and thus emits a magnetic field. Why would experience be associate to this phenomena. If we make the hypothesis, it exists then it does nothing and is totally control by the physical phenomena. I take this as a maskerade physicalist. Tonomi's theory of consciousness is also a maskerade materialism. Experience in such theory does absolutly nothing. It is a ghost in the machine. In Tonomi's theory, you can calculate the amount of consciousness the ghost has. I think that calling these views panpsychisms is a mis-naming.

I think that we are are all naturally vitalist. Studies with babies have shownes that they make the animate inanimate distinction by about 6 months of age. What is perceived as animate , is perceives as living and what is perceived as inanimate is perceived as lifeless. Living entities are perceived as experiencing and the inanimate stuff is perceived as lifeless and experiencing nothing. All human language use verb for the action of the living entities. In English we use ''it'' for lifeless and he and she for living. This is in us a deep level of our consciousness and it is also in other animals. We also natually empathise with other humans , the more so as we are closed to them. We are borned with our life almost totally merged or entanglement in our mom's life and our dad's life. Love is this process of entangling or joining lifes. Here both of us are temporary and are weekly entangle, this is part of language communication where we both participate into a common dream : the communication. The word ''communion'' is closed to it. If you look at the ancient mythologies, they do not described an inanimate world. Deitists, Natural higher living entities are involved in their cosmos. The whole cosmos is alwas part of these cosmogonies, the earth , the sun etc..

None of these mythologies should be read at face value but these stories can speaks to our deep consciousness and be true to the world at a deep level. The first materialistic cosmology took place in presocratic where they remove life from their cosmogonies and only used inanimate forces. They censored their own animate side in order to developed it. But it never allowed philosophers to say much about the social and when the Socratic turn took place, the place of natural language became important and throw the attention to language cames the whole biological heritage built-in in this language. Modernity began with a step back to materialism but very soon the same counter movement towards language and deep history began with Vico and later romantics. Do you know about Iain McGuilcrist's theory of consciousness. It is primary about the structure of our consciousness as seeing the world along two very different perspective: one is at the center of attention and is focus, precise and fast and only about the here and now and the other large, not specific, vague but vastly more informed about the vast complexity of the world. I personally gives a twist on his theory in identifying these two sides of us as one is about life interration and the other is about inanimate interaction. McGilchrist spoke about that societal zetgeis as being about certain balanced in between these two side of us. Very rare historical period being caracterized by a domination of the living side followed by long period of civilisation decline where the inanimate side more and more dominate. It resembles also the civilisational phases of Vico. We are now in a deep materialistic phase, the barbarism of the intellect in Vichean terms. Young humanity (young babies too) was animist, fallen humanity is deeply inanimist and celebrate machinistic dead objects.

Regards,

- Louis