Jim Cross wrote: ↑Thu Apr 22, 2021 8:37 pm
In a post on my blog I call Chalmer's easy problem a serious problem because it isn't really easy at all. It actually is hard but potentially solvable by science. I call his hard problem an unserious problem because it isn't a scientific problem. You can't explain subjectivity from an objective viewpoint.
Yeah, Chalmers said that the "easy" problems are not easy at all, they are difficult, but by far not as "hard" as the "hard problem".
IMO science is supposed to explain all observable phenomena. The "objectivity" criterium is only a specific method to abstract and "extract" the experimental data from irrelevant information, such as information pertained to subjective content. For example, when studying the behavior of physical particles, any subjective content would be irrelevant, and that is why it is removed from the description of the data: when all relevant particle state measurements conditions are listed, a mood of an observer is excluded as irrelevant. But in the science of consciousness such irrelevance is no longer the case. For example: how can we establish any correlations between brain neural states and conscious/mental states without referring to the subjective data? When we study for example the neural states in the visual area of the brain and their correlations with with visual perceptions, we have to include the subjective visual perceptions in the experimental data, but those are the 1-st person subjective data only. So, if we only include the objective and 3-rd person data, we can not even attempt to study any correlations between neural and mental states in the science of consciousness at all, which means we can not even address all those "easy problems".
So basically what you are saying is: let's accept the subjective 1-st person perspectival experiences of mental states as a valid data for studying the correlations and all phenomena relevant to the "easy" problems, but lets not accept the basic experimental fact of the very existence of the subjective experience as a datum for scientific investigation. The problem is: if you deny a scientific validity of the fact of the very existence of the subjective experience, then how can you use the data of any subjective experience in the correlations studies for the "easy" problems? By doing this science would simply shoot itself into the foot. So, if you are an "honest" scientist of consciousness, you have only two choices: accept the validity of the data of the subjective experiences for the correlation and "easy problem" studies, but that also means that now the very experimental fact of even the existence of such data becomes the data point due for the explanation by the science of consciousness (per the "hard problem"). Or do not accept the validity of any subjective data for scientific investigation, but then you can not do any correlation studies at all, and all science of consciousness would be limited only to objective measurements of the neural states.
Now, if you do accept the existence of subjective experience as a valid experimental fact for the science, then there are three ways for the scientific method to approach such fact:
1. Demonstrate, at least in principle, how this fact can be derived from or reduced to a set of axioms and fundamental elements (fields, particles, fundamental equations) that the existing scientific models are based on. Such derivation would demonstrate that such fact represents an "emergent" phenomenon.
2. Or, if such reduction is not possible, include it in the list of the fundamental elements and declare it to be a "non-emergent" phenomenon.
3. Or, take a "mysterianism" approach and declare that such fact is actually an emergent phenomenon, but science has no way to show and prove it. This is the same as to accept that there are experimentally observable phenomena in the world that science can never explain.
So far there have not been a single hypothesis proposed to explain how to derive the fact of the very existence of conscious experience from the axioms of physics, and there are strong reasons and arguments (see Chalmers works) to believe that it is impossible in principle, so we can cross out the option 1. We are left with options 2 and 3. The option 2 is essentially panpsychism, but this time panpsychism not as a metaphysics, but as an actual scientific theory, as a variant of physical theory that includes the ability to have conscious experience into the set of its fundamentals. Option 3 is something scientists would try to avoid, because it is at the root of the scientific method to attempt to explain every observable phenomenon, or include it into the list of fundamentals. Taking the option 3 would basically mean for scientists to accept the failure of the scientific method at least in certain cases. So far the option 3 has never been "officially" exercised in the history of science.