An Even Harder Problem
An Even Harder Problem
People like to talk about “the hard problem”, meaning the problem of consciousness. The phrase itself invites scrutiny: it contains the definite article and thus implies uniqueness, unlike “a hard problem”; and “hard” is an attributive adjective associated with cognate words, i.e., “harder” and “hardest”. So, we must ask: is the problem the only hard problem, and what problems is it harder than. I am concerned here with whether there are any problems that are harder than it: it may be hard but that doesn’t imply that no problems are harder; it might be, logically, that many problems are harder. It would then not be the hard problem singular, but just ahard problem among other hard problems, some of which are even harder. It might even be an easy problem compared to these, and certainly not harder than they are. In a ranking of problems, it might be somewhere in the middle—harder than some, easier than others. The really hard problems might sniff snootily at it and call it a doddle or other nasty names. It might even be terminal for human minds but still not that hard in the broader scheme of things that includes problems not soluble by any conceivable form of intelligence. If it turned out that the majority of problems were harder than this problem, it would be semantically correct to call it “an easy problem”, because to be a hard problem it would need to be harder than most problems, and it isn’t. The phrase itself begs many questions and may not be very helpful in the long run.
What other problems might be deemed hard problems? Many problems are hard relative to the capacities of chosen types of intelligence; they are all hard relative to some. Hardness is a relational characteristic, being an epistemic notion in its current use. For us humans now, we can list a bunch of notoriously difficult problems: the origins of space and time, the nature of gravity, the origins of life, the possibility of free will, the biological point of dreams, the workings of creativity, the nature of mathematical knowledge, the grounds of ethical judgment. What, by contrast, are the easy problems? I suppose we could list many of the problems of astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology: the structure of the solar system (heliocentric), the basic laws of mechanics (Newtonian), the chemical composition of water (H2O), the origin of species (Darwinian). These problems have been solved and are thus ipso facto easy, unlike the list of so-called hard problems. In the case of evolution, we might even say that the problem is intrinsically easy, though it took a long time to hit upon it: it’s just a matter of differential selection applied to antecedent species (see Darwin’s Origin of Species). Our question must be: are any of the hard problems harder than the problem of consciousness?
There is one feature of the problem of consciousness that stands out: we know what it is. We have, as the old philosophers used to say, an “adequate conception” of it, a “clear and distinct idea”. We are indeed intimately acquainted with consciousness, nothing more so, since we live with it every day. We don’t say “Consciousness, what is that?” (compare dark matter, or even electricity). We don’t know consciousness just by its effects, or merely structurally, or purely functionally; we know it intrinsically, personally, as it actually is. It is therefore surprising that we are also so ignorant about it: you would think it would be an easy problem! You would think we would say, “Oh consciousness, yeah, I know all about that, it’s just XYZ”. You would think its relation the brain, which we also know about directly, would be perfectly transparent, intelligible, and long since figured out. But it isn’t so. The continuing puzzlement is itself puzzling. The point I want to make here is that the fact of direct knowledge suggests that other problems might be harder simply because we have no direct knowledge of their subject matter. Take the case of causation: ever since Hume we have accepted that causation is deeply puzzling, a mystery to the human mind. We believe in it but we don’t see it: we have no impression of the necessary connection in which causation consists; we don’t know its inner nature. We are acquainted with constant conjunction and individual events but not with the causal glue that binds them. The case is precisely unlike the case of consciousness, with which we are intimately acquainted. This puts causation on a different level from consciousness: we are not even in the know about what it is—we just have a word for we-know-not-what. This might well make the problem of causation harder than the problem of consciousness in the end; at least we can test theories of consciousness against our ordinary knowledge of its nature, which is what we can’t do with respect to causation. How could we verify or falsify a theory of causation? We perceive consciousness in ourselves whereas we don’t perceive causation anywhere.
I am softening you up for the really interesting case, which I hesitate to unveil. Is there anything about the mind that is also unseen and unperceived but which raises similar problems to consciousness? Is there anything that stands to consciousness as dark matter stands to matter? If so, it might well present the same problems as consciousness and then some—it would be an even harder problem. Would it be the hardest problem of all? That would be a bold and reckless conjecture, but it might well be a lot harder than the problem of consciousness—it might be really really f***ing hard. The question is worth asking, even if it is impossible to deliver a definitive answer. I am thinking, of course, of the unconscious—of the part of the mind that lies beyond the reach of introspection.[1] We might call it the “unknown mind”—the mind that is merely postulated not perceived, hidden not apparent. What are its characteristics? We don’t know—it’s hidden from introspective knowledge—but we can responsibly speculate. It is mental after all. First, it must surely have intentionality: be about things other than itself, representational, symbolic. Second, it must be similar to the consciousness with which it interacts and which it parallels; it may even slide into consciousness occasionally. Take unconscious perception: sub-threshold perceptions of color, say, must have a nature similar to supra-threshold perceptions. That is, they must have a phenomenology; there must be something it is like for them to exist—though we are not consciously aware of it. Aren’t pains we are not currently aware of also pains? Suppose this is so: the unconscious mind is both intentional and phenomenological. Then we can say that it has these characteristics without benefit of conscious awareness of them (as dark matter is presumably extended, though not visibly so). So, it is unlike consciousness in not being a datum of awareness; we are not directly acquainted with it. Yet it presents much the same explanatory problems as consciousness without such direct awareness. We have no “adequate conception” of it, knowing it only by inference, structurally, functionally. We really don’t know what we are talking about. So, the hardness of the problem is multiplied: it has the problems of intentionality and phenomenology but without our having any real grasp of the subject matter of the problems. This makes it harder than the hard problem of consciousness; the unconscious is the really hard problem of the mind. Sure, consciousness is hard (a lot harder than evolution), but it isn’t uniquely hard (that “the”), and it isn’t even the hardest of the hard problems concerning the mind. The not conscious mind is arguably harder, more recalcitrant. In linguistics finding an adequate grammar of conscious language is pretty damn hard, but discovering the grammar of the unconscious aspect of our language is even harder, because it is hidden away in the unconscious part of the mind. What is the generative grammar of the unconscious language of thought? That is a problem even harder. When the mind operates unconsciously it becomes even harder to understand than when it is open to view.
And what is the hardest problem of all? I don’t know. We have quite a few to choose from. The problem of consciousness is hard (harder than many problems); the problem of the unconscious is harder still (arguably): but what problem puts these to shame in the competition for supreme hardness? My money is on the origins of space and time, because I have absolutely no idea where you might even begin with this problem (or pair of problems); they certainly didn’t evolve from earlier species of space and time, or from bubble gum, or from God stuff. I don’t even think we have much idea about what they are. It’s a hard problem what the hardest problem is, but probably not the hardest problem.[2]
[1] I write about this in “The Mystery of the Unconscious” in Philosophical Provocations (2017).
[2] I think “the hard problem” is a phrase that appeals to people who don’t know much philosophy, or much science for that matter. Philosophy is full of hard problems (compared to animal husbandry, say) and science also faces many unsolved problems. It is hardly illuminating or informative to call the problem of free will or the problem of skepticism “hard problems”—of course they are, they have been around for thousands of years. They are hardly “easy problems” compared to other problems already solved. The phrase is more of a meme than an insight. It is an outright banality—junk thought. People think they are being profound when they say it; in reality, it is platitudinous at best.
I’m with you all the way, except for “Aren’t pains we are not currently aware of also pains?” No. There are none that we are not currently aware of. Pain by definition is conscious.
On second thought, suppose that, while I’m sleeping, something goes wrong with my body that would be painful if I were awake. It is not painful until I am awake. But suppose that whatever has gone wrong with my body is what wakes me up. Has unconscious pain woken me up? That’s tempting, but I still don’t think that what woke me up can be called pain. But what was it? Maybe it was pain.
One sort of consciousness is attention and we can stop attending to a slight pain and forget we have it till we switch our attention back.
During the time that our attention was diverted, the pain might have stopped and then returned, and we became conscious of it again. There would be no way to know whether unconscious pain existed between the times that we were conscious of it. I suspect that Wittgenstein would have said that unconscious pain is an oxymoron.
It might have and it might not have–these are two hypotheses. There is no a priori proof that one is true and not the other, as with most hypotheses. It is the same with emotions that are attended to or not. Do beliefs remain when we stop attending to them? I have no idea why you say that about Wittgenstein–do you have a passage in mind? He said almost nothing about consciousness and tended to dismiss it.
There is a way to verify such claims: see if the underlying brain state remains the same. If it does, the pain (emotion, belief) was constant; if not, it went away. There are also considerations of simplicity, as well as impressions of persistence (recognition). Do memories disappear and then magically re-appear or are they persistent states. Etc.
I can’t refute your last two replies, but I continue to believe that “unconscious pain” is an oxymoron. If someone asked me, do you still feel anger at so and so, or do you still believe such and such, I might reply, I haven’t thought about it recently, but yes, now that you remind me of it, I do. I find it difficult to imagine that answer to the question whether I still feel pain. Emotions and beliefs persistent in the brain even when one is not thinking about them. But it seems different with pain; I would be surprised if an examination of the underlying brain state would reveal pain if one were not feeling pain. Pain seems conscious by definition. We never use the word to refer to something we don’t feel. Maybe that’s why I thought of Wittgenstein; he would say “look and see, don’t think.” You’re thinking too much and not seeing what to me is plain. This comment might not get me a high grade on a philosophy exam but so be it.
We have to be careful not to equivocate on “conscious”: there can be states there is something it is like to have that we are not conscious ofand may not even know about. Sensation is not the same as knowledge of sensation. Is a blind person always conscious of his blindness? Having a subjective quality is different from conscious awareness of this quality.
If I were your teacher, I’d recommend reflecting on aches and discomforts as well as pains; also pleasures and moods. Or knowledge of one’s posture etc.
Non conscious pain:
Imagine a worm which touch a burning stone. It retracts and goes away, no?
Can we name the « What is it like » to be this worm other than « pain »?
But can we say that this pain is conscious (that the worm is conscious of it)? Difficult! It could be a case of non conscious pain.
I agree: the worm has pain but is not conscious of it. We might say the pain is a state of consciousness, but not that the worm is conscious of the pain. That would imply a double mental state: first the pain, then the consciousness of it. But there is no doubling for the worm.
If a worm touches a hot stone, feels pain, and moves away from the hot stone, but does not become conscious of the pain (which, not being a vermeologist, I will concede only for the sake of argument), isn’t that comparable to what occurs with humans? We will withdraw our finger from the hot stone instantaneously, an instant before we become conscious of the pain. If so, then, to that extent, I agree that we can feel pain without being conscious of it. Furthermore, if someone shoots us in the head during the instant that we feel the stone, we may never become conscious of the pain caused by touching the stone.
I’m sorry. Immediately after posting the preceding comment, I realized that Colin had said the same thing: “first the pain, then the consciousness of it.”
The reflex could precede the sensation. The crucial question is whether the sensation exists as a feeling before becoming conscious of it.
I am confused. You touch a hot stove and reflexively pull your hand away. Then you become conscious of pain. Are you suggesting that, in between these two events, you have a sensation of pain without being conscious of it? What does the sensation’s existing as a feeling mean? What is the difference between a sensation that does not exist as a feeling and a sensation that does exist as a feeling, in light of the fact that both are unconscious? And why is whether the sensation exists as a feeling before becoming conscious of it a crucial question?
The sensation exists as a pre-conscious feeling, i.e., it is not known or perceived by the subject: there is no second-order conscious act about it. This is quite a common position, especially among second-order thought theorists. The sensation exists as feeling because there is something it is like to have it. It exists in the way it would if there were a mechanism of repression that rendered pains unconscious, roughly.
But this was not the topic of my paper and I did not need to go into it there.
Hello,
Please consider some comments and observations about hard problems that you cite.
(1) The origins of space and time.
Let us reflect that we will most likely never be able to determine the origins of space. While space itself may submit to examination via inferences from matter and energy, as well as cosmological measurements, its origins lie outside our universe, that is, before the beginnings of space and time, before the Big Bang.
Time, I believe, is a different matter. In my view, time arises from motion and change. When I look out upon the universe, I see objects in motion. I do not see The Past, or the passage of time. Time constitutes a measure or an accounting for motion and change. Motions add up. Ergo: time.
(2) The nature of gravity.
I submit that gravity arises from an interaction of space and matter. Therefore, the nature of gravity necessarily involves the nature of space and the nature of matter. I believe that a gravitational field constitutes a gradient in the density of space, which entails a gradient in spatial energy density.
Matter constitutes, in my understanding, trapped vibratory spatial energy and, more particularly, trapped photonic energy. The action of gravity occurs because light speed decreases as a function of spatial density. Matter falls in a gravitational field because light slows down with increasing spatial density. (See John Duffield’s Website, the Physics Detective.)
(3) The origins of life.
This problem differs from that of the origin of space, in that solving or discovering the origin of life does not require information from outside the universe. Life arose completely within this universe. However, trust in any conclusion we might reach as to the beginnings of life will require evidence that most likely does not exist, owing to geologic processes. Computer simulations can assist in identifying probabilities of successive stages of life’s appearance in various possible environments.
It seems to me that life forms entail exactly two self replicating molecular structures, namely, DNA and lipid membranes. Lipid membranes evidently self assemble, and DNS molecules self-replicate. Genetic expression from DNA molecules requires RNA and enzymatic mechanisms. I suspect and RNA fragments and polypeptides existed in mutually catalytic equilibrium and then DNA appeared on the scene.
(4) The possibility of free will.
In my view, there is a possibility that free will exists. I have two observations or judgments as to this question: (1) we cannot document or demonstrate the existence of free will, owing to casual indeterminancy because of information loss, and (2) the existence of free will, as an objective matter, is not vital to humanity. The essential necessity concerns our collective belief in free will. Such belief facilitates, if not enables, effective societal order. The actual existence or nonexistence of free will does not contribute to requirements of a stable society. In contrast, belief is paramount. Members of a society must act pursuant to a shared belief in free will.
(5) The biological point of dreams.
“Use it or lose it.“ This maxim of neural function applies to memory. If a neural circuit that encodes a memory does not activate for a long period, the synapses of the circuit might lose their receptor protein concentrations (due to natural molecular dissolution) and possible neurotransmitter reserves. Dreaming results from conduction along random neural circuits, in my view. Dreams arise from random neuron activations that invigorate existing connectivity and thereby maintain brain functionality. Dreams also promote neural circuit formation and stabilization: hippocampus activity stimulates memory acquisition and learning.
(6) The workings of creativity.
In the biological realm, new forms arise in part by mechanisms of mutation (DNA alteration) and natural selection. In the neurological realm, new forms (ideas, emotional composites, methods of action) arise via spatial and/or temporal juxtapositions giving rise to new neural connectivity or cognitive associations. Cerebral functionality of abstraction and new set or category generation generate further mental objects or cognitive forms.
Creativity thus constitutes processes of generating novel forms, all necessarily at least neurological or mental, some such neural forms leading to new physical objects such as unique works of art, inventions of compositions and devices, and useful new social procedures. Creation of new forms generally entails the performance of several neural functions, including abstraction and comparison of patterns. The creative faculty takes place in the vast unconscious mind, largely at the behest of the mind-brain as a whole (a top-down or holistic ontological process).
Creativity implements the attainment of goals by devising new methods. Creativity permeates and vitalizes the realization of subjective meaning.
(7) The nature of mathematical knowledge.
It seems to me that mathematical disciplines mainly involve respective techniques (rules, operations) of counting mathematical objects.
I am thinking mainly of mathematical disciplines that are commonly used in the sciences. The nature of mathematical knowledge arises
for me in the question, how is it that mathematics so accurately describes the external physical world and how is it that the human mind can apprehend the mathematical descriptions of external physical reality?
Each mathematical discipline entails (i) a respective elementary mathematical object, (ii) a set of axioms, and (iii) rules of combination or transformation of instantiations of the elemental object. Examples of elemental mathematical objects include number (arithmetic and number theory), set (set theory and group theory), algebraic expression (algebra), angle (trig), ordered pair or triplet (2D and 3D geometry), series element (series), infinitesimal (calculus, differential and integral), fraction or decimal between 0 and 1 (probability and statistics), mathematical function (Hilbert spaces), and likely some others.
Arithmetic (generalized and extended in number theory) serves as the primordial model of all mathematical systems that involved counting and accounting. Historically, arithmetic stimulated the abstraction and categorization functionalities of the human brain to eventually devise a panoply of mathematical systems. Euclidean geometry prompted Georg Riemann to invent other geometries with different axioms. Mathematical invention includes identification of new elemental mathematical objects, as well as rules for combining (counting) instances of the elemental object. It is to be noted that the rules of combining or transforming mathematical objects typically take the form of addition or respective kinds of addition, whereby the results of the reconfiguration or transformation are themselves mathematical objects of the same kind as the components prior to the transformative process. Mathematical systems thus provide closure and ideally completion or consistency, an ideal or goal of the human neocortex (witness attempts of philosophers to devise metaphysical systems and the efforts of mathematicians to create mathematical disciplines that are complete and consistent)(alas: Goedel’s theorem).
For example, algebra deals with such expressions as polynomials that set forth generic ways of adding numbers. Series constitute specific additions in sequence. Statistics deals with number distributions. Calculus adds infinitesimals. Geometry concerns simultaneous and coordinated additions within two or more respective dimensions. In complex numbers, operations on numbers within one dimension (e.g., the imaginary number line) affect values (accounting) within another dimension or number line. The same applies, of course, to higher dimensional complex systems such as quaternions.
The physical world behaves in accordance with the rules of mathematics. We apprehend this conclusion most clearly in the laws of physics, which mainly comprise mathematical equations. Evidently, then, the physical universe, comprises objects that retain and identity and unity of form so that the objects behave like numbers. Reality adds up. Physicists and other scientists think in numbers, like accountants. The grand conservation laws of physics set forth rules of accounting for nature.
(8) The grounds for Ethical judgment.