The hard problem of conscious experience

[Eugene I]

The "hard problem of conscious experience" exists for any ontology that claims that conscious experience is reducible to something else.

For materialism, the "hard problem of consciousness" poses that conscious experience is irreducible to matter. The unsolvable challenge for materialism is to explain how matter can make the conscious experience happen.

For the idea-based idealism (that claims that the totality of reality is reducible to ideas only), the "hard problem" poses that conscious experience is irreducible to ideas. The unsolvable challenge for such idealism is to explain how the idea of conscious experience can actually make the conscious experience happen.

The conscious experience is irreducible to anything, and that is the postulate of the consciousness idealism. But the conscious experience always has some content of it, something being experienced without separation of the experiencing from what is experienced. The question whether or not a state of "pure" experiencing without any content can exist is completely irrelevant.

[ScottRoberts]

For the idea-based idealism (that claims that the totality of reality is reducible to ideas only), the "hard problem" poses that conscious experience is irreducible to ideas.

If one thinks of ideas as consisting of those like "cows have four legs" or General Relativity, then no, consciousness is not the sum total of them, and consciousness is not reducible to them. But ideas that interpenetrate all others, where each encompasses the whole of Eternity, then we're talking about something else. It sounds to me like Indra's Net.

I am an experiencing idea, though I am far from recognizing myself as encompassing all of Eternity, Now suppose after eons of polishing I recognize myself as a jewel in the Net, reflecting all the other jewels as they reflect me. What I don't get is why you see the need to add "Consciousness" as something other than or beyond this reality of interpenetrating and all-encompassing experiencing Ideas.

The unsolvable challenge for such idealism is to explain how the idea of conscious experience can actually make the conscious experience happen.

These Indra's Net Ideas are not "ideas of". like mathematical ideas are not "ideas of" something else. They always already are conscious experience. Hence there is no challenge.

[Soul_of_Shu]

The experiential content of 'transpersonal' Consciousness can only be its own activity/excitation ~ i.e., under idealism, its own mentation/ideatiion. The imagined 'hard problem' is that there is a prior state of inactive Consciousness that at some point becomes active, as if it suddenly conceives of being active, and that its activity is not immanently fundamental, but reducible to some ultimate, most fundamental inactivity, and thus some need to explain that transition. However, while any given active idea may be provisional, if there is no discernible point of origin for the activity of Consciousness, with no causal factor outside of Consciousness, and its activity is immanent and uncaused, as such, that imagined 'hard problem' is a moot point. However, I still concede an explication problem for idealism, which is the objectification of its activity so as it appears as phenomenal percepts 'out there' to a subjectified locus of Consciousness, or what BK refers to as a dissociative process.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Another point to consider, that under idealism if the sole conscious unicity, aka M@L, were ever to cease all activity whatsoever, then there would be utterly no content whatsoever, no alters, no you and I, no quantum mechanics, no cosmos to inhabit, nor alternate ones, no archetypes, no imagining of novel idea constructs, no dreaming, no memories of such, as all of it without exception would cease to exist, and then there truly is a really, really, really hard problem.

[Eugene I]

What I don't get is why you see the need to add "Consciousness" as something other than or beyond this reality of interpenetrating and all-encompassing experiencing Ideas.

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.

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.
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?

[Eugene I]

Another point to consider, that under idealism if the sole conscious unicity, aka M@L, were ever to cease all activity whatsoever, then there would be utterly no content whatsoever, no alters, no you and I, no quantum mechanics, no cosmos to inhabit, nor alternate ones, no archetypes, no imagining of novel idea constructs, no dreaming, no memories of such, as all of it without exception would cease to exist, and then there truly is a really, really, really hard problem.

Sure, I agree. As I said in my first post, the question whether there is "pure experiencing" absent any ideal content is actually irrelevant. And the "hard problem" has nothing to do with it.

[Soul_of_Shu]

For the idea-based idealism (that claims that the totality of reality is reducible to ideas only), the "hard problem" poses that conscious experience is irreducible to ideas.

Aside from the notion of idea-based idealism being a tautology, I'm not sure who is positing the premise that the activity of Consciousness can be reduced to any given provisional idea/s. As stated, regardless of the impermanence of any given idea, the activity of Consciousness ~ i.e. ideation ~ if it has no discernible point of origin, no cause outside of Consciousness, and is immanent and uncaused, then it can be understood to be an eternal singularity that is forever now beginning, as opposed to some one-time event that occurred umpteen billion years ago. Indeed, I'm good with saying that under idealism the ontological primitive is Ideation, which by definition implies consciousness, so needless to say entails consciousness.

[Cleric K]

Yet further questions:
- 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.

I'm not OK with that This is not what it's meant with 'idea' and it would be wrong to switch its meaning in this way.

First, we should be very careful when we use the word "is" (I see now that Shu has addressed this). This is something that will cause much confusion for quite some time. When we deal with the intellect we can never experience in the true sense that 'something' is 'something else'. We can only observe how they relate. We simply need to pay attention to what we are doing with our thinking. "Are you saying that imaginations, feelings and perceptions are also ideas?" I personally am not saying that. The idea is the invisible element that gives the meaning of the imaginations, feelings and perceptions. The great difficulty is that we can't really grasp the idea in its supposed pure reality, as some pure meaning. When we think about ideas as pure elements (in isolation of everything else), we're already casting them into thought-forms - the verbal word 'idea'. In other words we can imagine pure ideas only if we forget that we're thinking them through our thought-forms. This is what must be overcome. We can no longer pretend that we think about reality as if our thinking is some third-person pure process. This is almost as the fact in QM that we can't ignore the measurement. In the same way, we'll never make any progress, unless we understand that we can no longer think about things without taking thinking itself into account. In fact this should be at the core of our investigation - not stand-alone end-user thoughts with their assertions but how thoughts come to be.

We live in meaning with our intuition but when we think about it we cast it down into a thought-form, as a snake that casts down its skin. As far as we are concerned with reality and not with abstract speculation we always have some perceptions (qualia) and some meaning (idea). That was the point of the cup meditation - to distinguish the ever present meaning (ideal essence), which we experience even when we contemplate the cup thoughtlessly, and the incarnation, condensation of this essence in the thought-form verbal symbol 'cup'.

All difficulties arise because you snap back to viewing ideas only as thoughts. If we are to ever settle this discussion we have no choice but experience livingly that thoughts are only vessels that carry packets of meaning/ideal essence. But this essence is always present in different configurations - even in the comatose state. With thoughts we only take 'samples' of this meaningful essence and condense it into perceptible symbols. To grasp this we need precisely the sense of sacredness. The meaningful essence is infinitely greater than us. It is our humble attempt to arrange our thought symbols such that they reflect more truly the harmony of the Macrocosmic meaning/ideas. And this is only a starting point. It's not the goal to cast down all meaning into thoughts. We need this only in order to orient ourselves within the world of meaning and metamorph our view appropriately. Then we read out meaning directly from the Book of Living Nature - we read how World ideas are reflected in the phenomenal world, which we can call World thoughts. These are higher order forces that shape the World content. A plant is only the vessel of higher living ideas (Scott's example). Without higher cognition, a plant is like a word written in unknown language - we grasp the form but not the deeper idea that it reflects. Of course this analogy falls short to address that the plant-idea is not the rigid abstract concept within the intellect but an actual higher force. Our thinking casts down ideas into though-perceptions - the thought reflects the meaningful essence that we grasp through intuition. Similarly, higher idea-beings shape the life-processes of a plant - the life-processes are the reflection of their living ideation. Needless to say, this ideation is very different from our verbally-intellectual ideation. That's why we need a completely new kind of cognition, a mobile, metamorphic kind of spiritual activity with which to resonate and feel the activity of the higher beings. Our activity must become self-similar to theirs if we are to have direct experience of the Macrocosmic creative processes. Here lies the secret of the Logos (the Word) and why we need to find our proper relations and union with it, if we are to find our being in the Macrocosm.

[Eugene I]

For the idea-based idealism (that claims that the totality of reality is reducible to ideas only), the "hard problem" poses that conscious experience is irreducible to ideas.

Aside from the notion of idea-based idealism being a tautology, I'm not sure who is positing the premise that the activity of Consciousness can be reduced to any given provisional idea/s. As stated, regardless of the impermanence of any given idea, the activity of Consciousness ~ i.e. ideation ~ if it has no discernible point of origin, no cause outside of Consciousness, and is immanent and uncaused, then it can be understood to be an eternal singularity that is forever now beginning, as opposed to some one-time event that occurred umpteen billion years ago. Indeed, I'm good with saying that under idealism the ontological primitive is Ideation, which by definition implies consciousness, so needless to say entails consciousness.

Agree, ideation is immanent. My point is: it is necessary to add: experienced ideation is immanent, because the "experiencing" aspect of it (as well as other "adverbial aspects" such as beingness/suchness, now-ness, here-ness) is equally immanent. (I like "immanent" more than "ontic"). And note that all of these immanent aspects are permanent (ideation included), they never change.

The remaining question is: what do we do with particular moment-by-moment content of ideation? Is each particular idea-form also "immanent"? It is surely impermanent as we experience it, as opposed to permanence of immanent aspects. Yet it is surely "real", no question about that, and we should not de-prioritize them with respects to immanent aspects just on the basis that they are impermanent. Yet the fact remains: they are impermanent, whatever you want to conclude from that.

[Eugene I]

I'm not OK with that This is not what it's meant with 'idea' and it would be wrong to switch its meaning in this way.

First, we should be very careful when we use the word "is" (I see now that Shu has addressed this). This is something that will cause much confusion for quite some time. When we deal with the intellect we can never experience in the true sense that 'something' is 'something else'. We can only observe how they relate. We simply need to pay attention to what we are doing with our thinking. "Are you saying that imaginations, feelings and perceptions are also ideas?" I personally am not saying that. The idea is the invisible element that gives the meaning of the imaginations, feelings and perceptions. The great difficulty is that we can't really grasp the idea in its supposed pure reality, as some pure meaning. When we think about ideas as pure elements (in isolation of everything else), we're already casting them into thought-forms - the verbal word 'idea'. In other words we can imagine pure ideas only if we forget that we're thinking them through our thought-forms. This is what must be overcome. We can no longer pretend that we think about reality as if our thinking is some third-person pure process. This is almost as the fact in QM that we can't ignore the measurement. In the same way, we'll never make any progress, unless we understand that we can no longer think about things without taking thinking itself into account. In fact this should be at the core of our investigation - not stand-alone end-user thoughts with their assertions but how thoughts come to be.

We live in meaning with our intuition but when we think about it we cast it down into a thought-form, as a snake that casts down its skin. As far as we are concerned with reality and not with abstract speculation we always have some perceptions (qualia) and some meaning (idea). That was the point of the cup meditation - to distinguish the ever present meaning (ideal essence), which we experience even when we contemplate the cup thoughtlessly, and the incarnation, condensation of this essence in the thought-form verbal symbol 'cup'.

All difficulties arise because you snap back to viewing ideas only as thoughts. If we are to ever settle this discussion we have no choice but experience livingly that thoughts are only vessels that carry packets of meaning/ideal essence. But this essence is always present in different configurations - even in the comatose state. With thoughts we only take 'samples' of this meaningful essence and condense it into perceptible symbols. To grasp this we need precisely the sense of sacredness. The meaningful essence is infinitely greater than us. It is our humble attempt to arrange our thought symbols such that they reflect more truly the harmony of the Macrocosmic meaning/ideas. And this is only a starting point. It's not the goal to cast down all meaning into thoughts. We need this only in order to orient ourselves within the world of meaning and metamorph our view appropriately. Then we read out meaning directly from the Book of Living Nature - we read how World ideas are reflected in the phenomenal world, which we can call World thoughts. These are higher order forces that shape the World content. A plant is only the vessel of higher living ideas (Scott's example). Without higher cognition, a plant is like a word written in unknown language - we grasp the form but not the deeper idea that it reflects. Of course this analogy falls short to address that the plant-idea is not the rigid abstract concept within the intellect but an actual higher force. Our thinking casts down ideas into though-perceptions - the thought reflects the meaningful essence that we grasp through intuition. Similarly, higher idea-beings shape the life-processes of a plant - the life-processes are the reflection of their living ideation. Needless to say, this ideation is very different from our verbally-intellectual ideation. That's why we need a completely new kind of cognition, a mobile, metamorphic kind of spiritual activity with which to resonate and feel the activity of the higher beings. Our activity must become self-similar to theirs if we are to have direct experience of the Macrocosmic creative processes. Here lies the secret of the Logos (the Word) and why we need to find our proper relations and union with it, if we are to find our being in the Macrocosm.

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? Or do you mean that there is a Divine subject that is always experiencing them? 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?

I'm OK with the rest of what you said, and it is also coherent with the BK's metaphysics. Yes, we alters experience the MAL ideations as both perceptions and thoughts across the boundary. But in BK's model those ideations are still the MAL experiences, and they do not exist in any other "pure" form apart from their experiencing.