The hard problem of conscious experience

[Soul_of_Shu]

Yet further questions:
1. Are you saying that imaginations, feelings and perceptions are also ideas? They seem to have qualities different form thoughts. We can linguistically label them all as "ideas", no problem with that, but this is just language games. Everyone knows that imaginations, feelings, perceptions and thoughts have different qualities, and we differentiate them by these qualities. But in general, in the philosophy of consciousness people usually call them all "qualia", but linguistically we can as well call them "ideas", it does not really matter, as long as we are not implying that they are all only "thoughts". Again, the issue with such terminology is a possibility of confusion when people may interpret the claim "all are ideas only" as "all are thoughts only". So I would still personally prefer calling them "qualia" just to avoid confusions. But if you want to stick with "ideas", I'm OK with that.

These are valid questions. I only know that if, for example, my spouse's embodied presence in my life were to pass away, I would surely feel the quality of sadness. But that sadness still somehow feels inextricable from one's ideation about that passing away ~ e.g. "I will no longer have that cherished company in my life." So it's hard to make a clear distinction. Whereas, the praying mantis (or is it 'preying?'), while devouring her mate during copulation, presumably knows no such ideation, or feels any sadness correlated to that, and only feels the satiation of hunger. In any case, what M@L, absent alter-mode, feels in any of this, I can only imagine.

[Cleric K]

I get what you are saying, Cleric, thanks. But I have a very disciplined mind and always want to clarify all assumptions and axioms in every paradigm I investigate. So, here "The great difficulty is that we can't really grasp the idea in its supposed pure reality" you are saying that there is a "pure reality" of living ideas even when no subjects/alters experience them through thought?

No. My experience doesn't at all depend on the postulation of pure reality of living ideas. That's why I said 'supposed' pure reality - it can only exist as abstract thought in our mind (as FSM). As far as our given experience is concern we always have qualia (perceptions) together with meaning (idea).

This relates to my second question of the possibility of existence of ideas in "pure form" without the immanent aspect of experiencing. Because if we pose that ideas can exist in a non-experienced form (in which no subjects whatsoever experience them), then it means that the "experiencing" is not longer a truly immanent aspect of reality, and then we run into the "hard problem" again - how the immanent ideas can make non-immanent experience to happen?

What I said above answers this question. It's useless to try to imagine pure ideas without experience, precisely because, as you say, we only create a hard problem for ourselves. Yet this doesn't preclude the fact that the experienced ideas exist in certain relations. To give a simplified example, if I think about 1 and 2, then 4 and 5, does this mean that 3 doesn't exist until it is experienced? From experiential perspective every idea exists for me only when I experience it. But still, the relation between 2 and 4 is such that they can only be what they are if there's 3 in between. That's why I've always said (when you bring the Platonism argument) that it's irrelevant to me to fantasize some abstract container for ideas, which I can never experience in its purity. The important thing is that when I discover 3, nothing really changes for 1,2,4,5 - they are only complemented, the ideal picture becomes more complete. Even if 3 was never discovered, the relation between the above numbers would be as if 3 exists. This would be different if after the discovery of 3 all other numbers change relations. Then we would really have justification to speak of ideas being created. The act of creation of the idea has measurable effect and displaces all other ideas in some way. But as long as I discover ideas and beings, which only complement my own experiential ideal landscape, all talks about if these ideas and beings exist in 'pure form' before I experience them, is pointless.

We can look again at Indra's net.
(Scott, thank you for mentioning this. I was not familiar with this Buddhist metaphor. I was very excited to read it. It's practically word for word as what I tried to present in my metaphor using modern terminology, as states of being, which interfere, similar to Feynman path integration. I've never heard of Indra's net but clearly I've been exploring in meditation the same domain of the invisible world from which this ancient metaphor was inspired).
So our every state of being is a bead, an experiential unity of perception and idea. Yet our momentary (impermanent) state of being is such that it can only be what it is, if it exists in certain relations with infinite number of other states of being. Whether these states of being (and their corresponding meaningful/ideal content) 'really' exist is immaterial. The fact is that when I expand the horizon of my cognition to include other ideas I would discover these idea-beings and they'll complement my current experience as if they have always been there. I gain nothing if I fantasize some special container for not yet experienced states of being (and their corresponding ideas) - I only add intellectual weight. On the other hand I also don't gain anything if I insist that these states and ideas are created for the first time when I experience them. As said, this would be justified if the creation moves and displaces other already experienced ideas but this is not the case. The newly 'created' idea simply fits perfectly within the ideal landscape, only complementing the picture, as if it has always been there.

[Eugene I]

OK, thanks for clarification, Cleric, this is good. You are right, all experiences-qualia exist always in relations to each other as a whole "network".

[ScottRoberts]

I'm just following a convention of calling the encompassing wholeness as "Consciousness", as BK does for example, it's just a convenient one-word label, but I can easily drop it. I'm OK with the assumption that there is nothing beyond the reality of experiencing ideas (although I have some further questions to it - see below). But what I'm saying is that every idea has the experiential aspect irreducible to its ideal content. For example there is an idea of number 2, so the number 2 is its ideal content. However, this idea has an aspect of experiencing it (when I or you experience it) and that aspect is irreducible to its content. Then if we take any other idea, its content will be different, but its experiential aspect will be the same. The experiential aspect never changes and ever-present, and this is what "glues" the world of ideas together into the unity of the total field of experiencing (hence we arrive at experiential non-duality, as opposed to intellectual idea of non-duality). And lastly, the experiential aspect by itself is not a content of any idea, even though there is an idea that reflects such aspect.

Ok. It appears that we just have different ways of expressing this, and so what is up to debate is whose is the "better" expression. What you ascribe to the "experiential aspect" I ascribe to formlessness. Formlessness is necessarily present in all conscious activity but, I maintain, is not itself consciousness (if there were only formlessness there would be no awareness). Hence I add "self-awareness" to the formlessness/form polarity to adequately account for conscious activity (with another argument needed for the "self-", but I'll skip it here).

Yet further questions:
1. Are you saying that imaginations, feelings and perceptions are also ideas? They seem to have qualities different form thoughts. We can linguistically label them all as "ideas", no problem with that, but this is just language games. Everyone knows that imaginations, feelings, perceptions and thoughts have different qualities, and we differentiate them by these qualities. But in general, in the philosophy of consciousness people usually call them all "qualia", but linguistically we can as well call them "ideas", it does not really matter, as long as we are not implying that they are all only "thoughts". Again, the issue with such terminology is a possibility of confusion when people may interpret the claim "all are ideas only" as "all are thoughts only". So I would still personally prefer calling them "qualia" just to avoid confusions. But if you want to stick with "ideas", I'm OK with that.

Calling them all "ideas" comes from Locke and his contemporaries -- it was this usage of the word "idea" that was used to form the word "idealism". But you are right that today it can cause confusion. On the other hand, I hold that fundamentally, one can reduce feeling, sense perception, and so on to thinking, that is they all have ideal content. I discuss this in my Divine and Local Simplicity essay, with particular comment on equating thinking and feeling in this short essay. Anyway, I agree that in exposition one needs to make this all-encompassing usage of the word 'idea' explicit.

2. The "Platonic" question. OK, we can assume that "pure experiencing" does not exist without ideal content (although it's still an unverifiable assumption). But similarly, can ideas exist without experiencing? Do ideas actually exist when they are not experienced by any subjects? Or perhaps "potentially" exist (and what the heck is "potential existence" anyway)? If yes, do all possible ideas (with the whole uncountable infinity of them) actually exist absent of experiencing by any subjects?

No to all these, but I doubt that Platonists would answer "yes" to any of them. The divine Ideas are experiencing themselves, or one might say God is experiencing them,

[Eugene I]

Well, Scott, apparently we have no disagreements then

And what do you think about Ashvin's idea that MAL/God is experiencing the actual infinity of all possible ideas (all-the-time, or in no-time, whatever)?

[AshvinP]

Well, Scott, apparently we have no disagreements then

And what do you think about Ashvin's idea that MAL/God is experiencing the actual infinity of all possible ideas (all-the-time, or in no-time, whatever)?

Was that "my idea"? Or did I start a thread to "speculate" on such notions? I am pretty sure it was the latter. Regardless, Scott answered to my satisfaction when he stated the possibility that there is only one expanding ideal Form.

[lorenzop]

I'm not sure if I'm properly following the discussion above - what I would offer is that according to Idealism - ideas, conscious experience, mind and what we call matter, all arise together. They can not arise from each other - they are the same 'substance'. According to Idealism, this 'substance' arises from consciousness - where consciousness is unbounded being, unbounded knowingness (awareness).
Your question is 'The unsolvable challenge for such idealism is to explain how the idea of conscious experience can actually make the conscious experience happen.' . . . an idea IS conscious experience.
The problem for Idealism then is: how does the appearance of boundaries, properties, attributes, (matter/mind, etc); how does all this arise from consciousness where consciousness is unbounded and having no properties, attributes.
I'm not necessarily following Bernardo re Idealism - but perhaps in BK's worldview the hard problem you pose is: given M@L, how does one get alters?
Well, we can hope that someday there will be an interest in consciousness, and this question will be investigated. For now I'm sticking with the answer It's Impossible - - - the world is impossible and that adds to the tasty treat.

[Eugene I]

I'm not sure if I'm properly following the discussion above - what I would offer is that according to Idealism - ideas, conscious experience, mind and what we call matter, all arise together. They can not arise from each other - they are the same 'substance'. According to Idealism, this 'substance' arises from consciousness - where consciousness is unbounded being, unbounded knowingness (awareness).
Your question is 'The unsolvable challenge for such idealism is to explain how the idea of conscious experience can actually make the conscious experience happen.' . . . an idea IS conscious experience.
The problem for Idealism then is: how does the appearance of boundaries, properties, attributes, (matter/mind, etc); how does all this arise from consciousness where consciousness is unbounded and having no properties, attributes.
I'm not necessarily following Bernardo re Idealism - but perhaps in BK's worldview the hard problem you pose is: given M@L, how does one get alters?
Well, we can hope that someday there will be an interest in consciousness, and this question will be investigated. For now I'm sticking with the answer It's Impossible - - - the world is impossible and that adds to the tasty treat.

This is a different problem, but in that respect idealism is not in a worse position compared to materialism, since exactly the same problem applies to materialism: how does the boundaries, properties, attributes - all these arise from matter where matter is unbounded and having no properties, attributes. Apparently we have to assume certain properties, whether fundamentally pertaining to matter or to consciousness, depending on the ontology of choice.

[Cleric K]

Well, Scott, apparently we have no disagreements then

And what do you think about Ashvin's idea that MAL/God is experiencing the actual infinity of all possible ideas (all-the-time, or in no-time, whatever)?

I think this should already be settled through what we discussed above. The idea that this infinity is a problem arises only because we try to imagine it in an inappropriate way. It seems that this infinity would be like trying to hold infinite number of apples in our hands and naturally this seems absurd. What was mentioned about Indra's net (or the interference of states of being) already gives us the solution. As said, even our limited state is already the interference of all the infinite other possible states. Whether these other states 'really' exist 'out there' is irrelevant. Our current state is as if they truly exist. For example, when we encompass the totality of our visual field, in a way we experience the palette of infinite number of states that can become our next state. Can we really place a limit on how many things are there on which our visual attention can focus on? Probably the household objects around us can be counted but there's no real limit on the number of things that can become the object of focused attention. My monitor is 'one' object but if I look closely there are infinite details on which I can further focus when I analyze it. My point is that the feeling of infinity doesn't need to be overwhelming, it's actually a holistic experience, we encompass as a totality an infinite number of seed points which have the potential to lead us to our next state. And these are only the immediate perceptions. There are also the infinity of states - past, present and future, of all possible beings - that we don't recognize, yet it's by virtue of them that our current state is what it is.

In this sense, states (beads of the net) differ only in the way all reflections interfere within them. We can find beads from whose perspective more and more other beads interfere 'constructively'. From that point of view it will be like we see how we reflect in everything else and how everything else reflects in us. Yet we experience a holistic state of being, we're not 'crushed down' by this constructive interference. Going further, we can even envision a bead from whose perspective the whole infinity of other beads interfere constructively. Whether this state can be humanly experienced is another question but there's no practical reason to put an artificial limit on how far this constructive interference can go.

This ties to "there is only one expanding ideal Form." From all we know we always experience a state of being - a bead of the net. What changes is that we go through a stream of metamorphosis and rhythmically our state reflects better or worse the infinity of other states. The net is only a metaphor, we never actually experience a third person view of all these states. Yet every our state is experienced as if it is the result of the reflection of the infinite other states. This is the realization that saves us from the picture of being crushed down by infinity. Our every state, even the most mundane one, even the comatose state, are the interference of the infinite other states. The difference between states is the degree to which we perceive this interference. This is the basis of higher cognition - recognizing how the World thoughts, the deeds of the beings, interfere within our state. The basis of the evolutionary metamorphosis is the realization that through every act of our spiritual activity we can either move towards states which better and better reflect the deeds of the beings within our bead, or the opposite - everything appears as a wall of phenomena against which we recognize only our fragmentary and abstract thoughts.