Hard Problems and Impossible Solutions

For reasons of housekeeping, I want to get The Catholic Case for Intelligent Design off my desk, because I'm eager to move on to the next subject, which is to say, good old Common Sense. But there is clear overlap between the two, since the metaphysical presumptions of reductive Darwinism violate all common sense.

Just be sensible.

Yes, is that asking too much?

First question: "How does the mind relate to the brain? How is it that an organ composed of matter gives rise to perceptions, reason, and free will?" This is the Hard Problem of consciousness formulated by the famous philosopher of mind David Chalmers.

That's like you becoming a famous mathematician by proclaiming that math is hard.

Maybe. I don't know enough about the guy. Maybe he has some good ideas. Gemini?

Chalmers contends that standard scientific explanations, which rely on breaking down phenomena into their component parts and showing how those parts interact functionally, fail to account for subjective experience.

That much is true. Of note, the functional interaction to which he alludes exhibits interiority, or the irreducible property of interior relations. I say interiority doesn't "emerge," but rather, is an ontological primitive.

There seems to be an unbridgeable explanatory gap between the physical facts about the brain and the phenomenal facts of experience. We can describe all the neural firings and chemical reactions, but this doesn't logically entail or explain why these physical processes should be accompanied by a subjective "feeling."

That is correct: no amount of horizontality and immanence accounts for the merest verticality or transcendence.

Given the irreducibility of consciousness to purely physical terms, Chalmers suggests that radical ideas might be necessary.

Except to say, who's the real radical here, the modern reductive materialist or the traditional common sense realist? 

After all, the word "radical" comes from the Latin word radix, which means "root." In the political sense, it came to refer to changes aimed at addressing the fundamental issues or "roots" of a system, rather than just superficial adjustments, i.e., changing things from the very foundation. 

God created man in his own image.

Yes, this is not a conservative idea but a quite radical one, in that it goes straight to the foundation. But I doubt that this is the kind of radical idea Chalmers has in mind.

He leans towards a form of naturalistic dualism, where consciousness is considered a fundamental, non-physical feature of reality, on par with properties like mass, charge, or spacetime. This doesn't mean it's supernatural, but rather that it's a basic constituent of the universe that cannot be explained away by other, more fundamental physical laws currently known.

I call that cheating, or rather, a semantic dodge, arbitrarily calling what is supra-natural natural just to save the appearances. Consciousness still requires a cause, and a material cause doesn't give rise to an immaterial effect. Besides, it is nothing like the laws of physics. For one thing, consciousness is aware these laws, whereas the laws are not aware of consciousness. 

He has also explored the idea of panpsychism, which posits that consciousness might be a fundamental property of all matter or information, present at a very basic level throughout the universe. This would mean that consciousness isn't something that "emerges" only in complex brains, but is a pervasive aspect of reality, with complex consciousness arising from the integration of these more basic conscious elements.

He's not wrong about that. However, as we know, philosophers are generally correct in what they affirm, but incorrect in what they deny. So, he is correct to say that being is infused with, or permeated by, mind, in that its intelligibility has an implicit source which cannot not be mental. He's just not radical enough in tracking down the psychic principle of this avowed psychism. 

Form and matter.

Yes, and one of these is not like the other, nor can one principle be reduced to the other. Not to get ahead of ourselves, but the first principle of common sense is that there are things. What kinds of things? Intelligible things. Intelligible to whom? To minds. Via what? Via their intelligible forms.

For Aristotle, form is the principle of intelligibility, matter the principle of individuation. Combine the two, and we have a world of intelligible things. Which we most certainly do.

But modernity tossed out formal (and final) causation, and with it, any hope of grounding the intelligibility of the world. In other words, these brainiacs abandoned the very principles of intelligibility, so what they call the "hard problem" is really a self-imposed impossible problem.

From the Aristotelian perspective, "materialism is an impoverished view of the natural world," for "it is the intelligibility of a substance -- its form, not its matter -- that makes it real" (Egnor). How indeed could formless matter be the principle of form? 

C'mon, man. Matter is a necessary but not sufficient reason for The Way Things Are. For example,

The human intellect is an immaterial power of abstract thought -- that is, it is the ability to contemplate abstract concepts without reference to any particular physical object. Human beings can contemplate mathematics, logic, ethics, and a host of abstract concepts that lack any perceptual content. By the immaterial intellect we can understand things, and not just perceive or imagine them (ibid.).

Understanding how the miracle of the intellect is possible is either the hardest or easiest problem ever. Again, if one begins with an inadequate ontology, i.e., with materialist assumptions, it's not just hard but impossible. On the other hand, if we begin with Aristotelean assumptions it is easier, but we still need to account for how there are intelligible forms and how there are intellects that can know them. 

We know a world that knows nothing about us. Unless this world has the homosapiential tendencies discussed in the previous couple of posts. 

In any event, there is simply no naturalistic answer "for the question of why there is a correspondence between our intellectual capacities and the universe itself."

Does this mean we give up? Nah, we're just getting started.

This image is designed to visually represent the central tension and arguments presented in your post, particularly around "The Hard Problem of Consciousness" and the inadequacy of purely materialistic explanations.

In essence, the image attempts to convey the profound mystery of consciousness arising from (or connected to) the brain, while suggesting that its true nature lies in an immaterial realm rooted in the fundamental intelligibility of the cosmos, echoing your common-sense critique of reductive materialism.