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That's part of the trouble with subjective experience. It's not fully reducible to objective explanation. If it was, it would not be subjective experience. But

That's part of the trouble with subjective experience. It's not fully reducible to objective explanation. If it was, it would not be subjective experience. But it is such a central part of the human experience—it is experience itself—that when you nonetheless do your best to evoke it with language, reasonable people without philosophical agendas (e.g. the defense of a materialism, or relatedly, the absence of true mystery in the world) all know what you're talking about. I would be surprised if anyone who is not studied in the area would dispute the existence of phenomenal consciousness upon a quick explanation of what they are alleged to be. I imagine they would think there's something wrong with someone who did dispute it. Only an intelligent person well-studied in the area, understanding the implications of the problem, could manage to convince themselves of something so utterly ridiculous.

IIAOPSW 5y ago
My inherent philosophical objection is that "reality is shared consensus", or more accurately "reality is the set of things which forces there to be a shared consensus about them". The more people who corroborate the things I observe to be real, the less likely it is that I am delusional and imagining them all in my head (unless everyone I've ever met has been part of my delusion, but that's an excessively obtuse view). Reality isn't the shared consensus per se, but shared consensus is a multi-meter we use to measure reality. We can never directly observe "this battery has 9 volts", only that our instrument reads "9 volts". At some point we have no choice but to drop the abstraction and accept the measurement of reality as reality itself. The reality of the battery is whatever the multimeter reads. Maybe every single multimeter is wrong and by sheer coincidence and this battery is actually 10 volts. Maybe the multimeter is right but every single persons eyes have a glitch causing them to read 9 volts in this one particular instance. But neither of those "true realities" is distinguishable from the one where its actually 9 volts. So when we come around to "subjective experience", this thing which by construction no one but you can observe your instance of it, by definition its not real. Your personal "subjective experience" is not and cannot be part of the shared consensus. No one but you can honestly agree that your subjective experience is there. Even if they think they have their own subjective experience, they can't know if you're a p-zombie or not. Sure many seemingly reasonable people all seem to agree they know what you're talking about when you say "subjective experience", but each and every one of them might have a completely different idea of what that means. I can't possibly agree that I "know what you're talking about" when you mention subjective experience, as any time I ask someone to define subjective experience it eventually circles back to requiring me to acknowledge my own subjective experience first. It's infuriatingly circular! To define subjective experience you have to already know what subjective experience is. If I drink the cool aid and acquiesce that yes I have subjective experience, we could continue the conversation in perpetuity without ever confirming that we are in fact talking about the same thing. So my objection to the notion of subjective experience, aside from being a popular coat rack for tedious agendas, is that its inherently undefinable and untestable. Therefore the "hard problem of consciousness" isn't hard in the "you just have to work harder" sense. Its literally impossible because at its root the problem is worse than undefined, its undefinable. When you try to present a solution to it you'll find...a lack of consensus about your solution. Reality is shared consensus.
- legalcorrection 5y ago
  Your position is that your entire experience is not part of reality. Sure, you can define "reality" that way if you want, but it's obviously omitting something that exists, so it's not going to be a popular definition. And how can you base your moral/spiritual outlook on a view of reality that omits the central aspect of your world? Or another say of saying the same thing: I dispute that there's nothing useful or actionable to be found in the mystery of consciousness, even if it's true that we can't hope to make any further headway in our scientific understanding of it (which I also think is false). Which brings me back to my original point. Dennett's real issue is that he correctly senses that acknowledging this wonderful mystery of the mind is at odds with his physicalist, and somewhat nihilistic, view of the universe.

IIAOPSW 5y ago

My inherent philosophical objection is that "reality is shared consensus", or more accurately "reality is the set of things which forces there to be a shared consensus about them". The more people who corroborate the things I observe to be real, the less likely it is that I am delusional and imagining them all in my head (unless everyone I've ever met has been part of my delusion, but that's an excessively obtuse view). Reality isn't the shared consensus per se, but shared consensus is a multi-meter we use to measure reality. We can never directly observe "this battery has 9 volts", only that our instrument reads "9 volts". At some point we have no choice but to drop the abstraction and accept the measurement of reality as reality itself. The reality of the battery is whatever the multimeter reads. Maybe every single multimeter is wrong and by sheer coincidence and this battery is actually 10 volts. Maybe the multimeter is right but every single persons eyes have a glitch causing them to read 9 volts in this one particular instance. But neither of those "true realities" is distinguishable from the one where its actually 9 volts. So when we come around to "subjective experience", this thing which by construction no one but you can observe your instance of it, by definition its not real. Your personal "subjective experience" is not and cannot be part of the shared consensus. No one but you can honestly agree that your subjective experience is there. Even if they think they have their own subjective experience, they can't know if you're a p-zombie or not. Sure many seemingly reasonable people all seem to agree they know what you're talking about when you say "subjective experience", but each and every one of them might have a completely different idea of what that means. I can't possibly agree that I "know what you're talking about" when you mention subjective experience, as any time I ask someone to define subjective experience it eventually circles back to requiring me to acknowledge my own subjective experience first. It's infuriatingly circular! To define subjective experience you have to already know what subjective experience is. If I drink the cool aid and acquiesce that yes I have subjective experience, we could continue the conversation in perpetuity without ever confirming that we are in fact talking about the same thing. So my objection to the notion of subjective experience, aside from being a popular coat rack for tedious agendas, is that its inherently undefinable and untestable. Therefore the "hard problem of consciousness" isn't hard in the "you just have to work harder" sense. Its literally impossible because at its root the problem is worse than undefined, its undefinable. When you try to present a solution to it you'll find...a lack of consensus about your solution. Reality is shared consensus.

legalcorrection 5y ago
Your position is that your entire experience is not part of reality. Sure, you can define "reality" that way if you want, but it's obviously omitting something that exists, so it's not going to be a popular definition. And how can you base your moral/spiritual outlook on a view of reality that omits the central aspect of your world? Or another say of saying the same thing: I dispute that there's nothing useful or actionable to be found in the mystery of consciousness, even if it's true that we can't hope to make any further headway in our scientific understanding of it (which I also think is false). Which brings me back to my original point. Dennett's real issue is that he correctly senses that acknowledging this wonderful mystery of the mind is at odds with his physicalist, and somewhat nihilistic, view of the universe.