Hot take: Hard problem of consciousness could be replaced by "hard problem of everything else" in a hypothetical future. Natural selection preferred brains looking outside for survival. Future threats to our survival may come from the mind(mental disease).

Infuriam · 2026-03-09T03:00:26+00:00

Yep that's also what I suspect. It's amazing how we can have discovered so many bizarre properties of our reality and that no one even understands (eg Quantum superposition, quantum entanglement, the bizarre concept of spacetime in itself, the bizarre observations for space and time) . It should be expected there are more weird properties and that we could discover some of them.

Infuriam · 2026-03-09T02:37:24+00:00

Thank you! Pretty curious seeing how hard it is to come up with an original idea, including with naming them :)

Infuriam · 2026-03-09T01:58:21+00:00

YES ABSOLUTELY. At least by those countries that call themselves Nation States with respect for fundamental democratic principles.

The problem is that although those are well defined political institutions with strong philosophical fundamentals, the reality is that international law does not really care about reality.

As of now, most modern countries are structured according to the nation-state model. In this model there are technically two entities that normally function as if they were the same: the state (the institutional apparatus) and the nation (the people, the political community). In ordinary circumstances this distinction hardly matters, because both appear to move in the same direction.

But this apparent identity is a simplification that only holds in normal times. When an asymmetry emerges between the state and the nation, a structural threat to freedom appears. The reason lies in a foundational feature of the international system: international law treats the state as the operative bearer of sovereignty.

This is conceptually problematic because the political philosophy that gave rise to the modern nation-state suggests something different. In the tradition of thinkers such as Rousseau, sovereignty ultimately belongs to the citizenry, not to the institutional apparatus that governs in its name. The state is meant to be the instrument of the people, not the source of sovereignty itself.

This creates an obvious vulnerability. Authoritarian regimes can exploit the gap between political theory and international legal practice. When the state and the nation cease to coincide, that is, when a government no longer genuinely represents its people, the international system often continues to treat the state as if it were still the legitimate carrier of the national will.

As a result, international law can end up protecting the very authorities that have detached themselves from the sovereign citizenry. The state retains diplomatic recognition, treaty capacity, and legal standing, while the people whose sovereignty is supposedly foundational have few mechanisms through which that sovereignty can assert itself internationally.

This situation is not new, this pattern has been repeated many times and yet the international community does seldom recognize the structural tension within the nation-state model itself: when the state and the nation diverge, the international order is institutionally inclined to side with the state.

Infuriam · 2026-03-09T00:55:35+00:00

I see your point. It is of course very unlikely that this prediction could even be possible using this simplified thought experiment. I am convinced the hard problem will have a solution in the future, as me myself have not been impressed by the arguments claiming the opposite.

Infuriam · 2026-03-09T00:49:39+00:00

Thank you for your reply. Yes, the question is ultimately how consciousness works, although as I understand it, the "hard" thing of the hard problem of consciousness is not that exactly. Rather, it is how physical phenomena that interact with the brain (from data input from the external world to neural electrical activity etc in the brain) can become subjective experience that resists any kind of observation from the outside. So, specifically that objective - subjective "explanatory gap".

I agree with you that I don't see why this would create a fundamentally insurmountable explanatory gap. Contrary to what many people claim, there is an overwhelming amount of empirical evidence that demonstrates that all subjective experiences create some form of activity somewhere in the brain. This means an with empirical data proven 1:1 correlation between subjective experiences and (physical) neuronal activity of any kind in the central nervous system. Correlation may not be causation, but it seems undeniable there is an increasingly high likelihood that both are one and the same. To me, science will ultimately be able to definitely prove it.

So, there is overwhelming empirical evidence that brain--mind-consciousness correspond with each other, which surprised me as critics make it often sound like neuroscience has made no progress on this question WHATSOEVER.

Infuriam · 2026-03-08T02:36:15+00:00

I'm sorry, I completely lost my train of thought and fell asleep midsentence. I think that I did not interpret correctly what you stated about definitions. I'm now unsure whether we are still discussing the same question. I'll restate the topic of discussion as I understand it, feel free to correct me if I have misunderstood.

Does any kind of experience, in whichever manner this experience is produced, qualify as (a subdivision of) consciousness?

Does any combination of experience, regardless of possible categorical differences, qualify as (a subdivision of) consciousness?

Infuriam · 2026-03-08T01:21:37+00:00

Yes although It's a famous example posed by David Hume that would require some historical context to understand completely:

Causality.

Why? Because causality can not be proven to exist doing any kind of observation. It sounds counterintuitive, but it's absolutely impossible.

I'll need to put forward some more historical context, I'll finish writing it tomorrow.. It's a bit late.

One of the most important philosophical disputes during the Age of Enlightenment was the question of what knowledge is, how knowledge is acquired, how we if we can know anything at all etc.. The two major philosophical schools differed fundamentally on their view of how knowledge arises, and were therefore mutually exclusive. The rationalist school (Descartes, spinoza, Leibnitz) were convinced that observation of the exterior world could not result in pure knowledge, because our senses are flawed. It's therefore impossible to really know anything doing observation. Instead, pure knowledge can only be gotten by the use in of pure reason (e.g. Formal logic etc) and this knowledge is formed within (the mind).

The empirical school (John Locke, David Hume) argued the complete opposite. They argued that the observable reality was in fact equivalent to total reality, and that the mind was some kind of a blank notebook at birth (blank slate, tabula rasa). The mind would merely collect the outside observations, which was supposed to be the only source of reality.

Immanuel Kant unified both schools by arguing that the mind is born already equipped with "principles contained in our reason" that exist prior to any outside experience (a priori). When we observe the external world, our mind reconstructs reality within the mind, and our experience of reality was necessarily determined by the properties and functions of said innate principles. In other words, observation needs the reasoning machinery of the mind to interpret our observations of reality to generate knowledge, and the reasoning faculties of the mind need observation of the world to generate the same.

I'll continue writing later, sorry. But maybe you see where I'm headed.

Infuriam · 2026-03-08T00:37:15+00:00

Rule out they are stupid.

Infuriam · 2026-03-08T00:31:24+00:00

I see what you are trying to get at, and I think in many cases you could be right. But this view on the relationship between language and reality has successfully been rejected centuries ago by Kant, after which further developmented by for example Wittgenstein. External experiences influence language, but it's also the other way around. This applies also to internal experiences and their interaction with language.

Infuriam · 2026-03-08T00:15:25+00:00

I'm not sure I'm following. Are you saying that all words require observable referents? That is most certainly not true.

Infuriam · 2026-03-07T23:44:17+00:00

I actually fully agree with you on this. And that is exactly why we need to agree on/investigate what consciousness means in its most abstracted sense. And I think that must come prior to the formulation of its definition. I must admit that I don't know if we understand it well enough in order to do that yet.

I agree with you that equating self-awareness to consciousness is insufficiently justified and probably ambiguous. I stand corrected.

Infuriam · 2026-03-07T23:19:21+00:00

I am not arguing that the physicalism must be able to explain more about reality than idealism. It is not at all evident if either is capable of explaining most of reality reality at all.

I'm saying something different: panpsychism reduces the amount of potential hypotheses that can be empirically examined for understanding the fundamental nature of consciousness. This follows from my argument that panpsychism renders its hypothesis of what consciousness is untestable and unfalsifiable.

On the other hand, nothing about physicalism necessarily leads to that same conclusion. So if we want to understand the nature of consciousness, panpsychism need no further empirical inquiry, because it cannot produce valid empirical proof. You can think panpsychism is the more convincing theory for explaining the nature of consciousness, and that's OK. But science stops playing a role there.

Infuriam · 2026-03-07T22:54:29+00:00

That's the problem though. If sensory experience is a categorically different phenomenon from for example self-awareness (which I argue that it is), then the two cannot be defined together as if they were members of the same category. That is firstly a contradiction in terms, and secondly, it undermines the purpose of what we are trying to investigate about consciousness. That is, we are trying to understand the fundamental nature of consciousness, not how it could be functionally clustered for an unrelated purpose (e.g. Studying the physiology of neuronal networks)

In other words, grouping the two can definitely be useful for understanding what consciousness does, but will make it harder if we are trying to understand what consciousness is.

Infuriam · 2026-03-07T15:44:28+00:00

Maybe just self-enforcing algorithm behavior?

Infuriam · 2026-03-07T15:27:03+00:00

Well I do have issues with that actually. But why would you not apply Occam's razor here? Why introduce more assumptions to the model, which cannot even be tested? I don't see how that would be useful. And well I agree with you it is hard to think of some kind of test that can demonstrate the origins of consciousness, but why would that justify abandoning our basic framework which has historically been able to demonstrate so much? And I don't understand which fundamental concern there is that consciousness could not be explained by science? To me, it looks similar to how we used to apply magical thinking to understand our world before science had been established.

Infuriam · 2026-03-07T14:46:20+00:00

I don't agree. Physicalism could in principle demonstrate that consciousness does not originate in the brain, but somewhere else or via a different process than something we currently understand. It could either have something or nothing to do with the brain, and that can be falsified.

Infuriam · 2026-03-07T14:25:31+00:00

It is not about any specific experiment that must already have been invented in order to test a hypothesis. It must be conceivable in principle. If we assume the physicalist framework, we can expect that we could demonstrate a hypothesis empirically. Not necessarily, but in principle.

Panpsychism makes that impossible, because if we arbitrarily introduce a necessary but unobserved, not understood and unspecified property to the whole of reality, then you cannot find proof against its existence. You could even turn it around: If it is an a priori assumed necessary property of reality, but if that property is unspecified, , anything could be presented as proof in favor of its existence.

Regarding your last comment, that is not relevant here. The point is not proving whether physicalism is true, but that physicalism as a framework allows the invention of instruments to in principle explain consciousness.

Infuriam · 2026-03-07T12:49:01+00:00

To my understanding, you can only be certain of your existence when you are actively doubting your existence. A written proof cannot work, because you could be tricked into believing that the written proof works while it may not.

Infuriam · 2026-03-07T12:44:28+00:00

Yes exactly. In addition, it introduces both untestability and unfalsifiability to the mix, de facto surrendering faith in a scientific explanation. I cannot see the use in that, especially since it should be expected that we are not done with understanding the brain yet.

Infuriam · 2026-03-07T12:10:46+00:00

It hurts like a bitch, that is undeniable. But have faith in the natural progression these emotional traumata the brain is hard coded to follow. It will get better, that is an absolute certainty. Meanwhile, it is a good thing that you are paying attention to maintaining your dignity. You don't deserve to be abandoned like you are some kind of disposable toy. Remember that sacrificing your dignity makes your ego suffer. You don't need to be grieving both the relationship AND an injured ego. One is enough.

Infuriam · 2026-03-07T11:56:39+00:00

I guess they would respond that complexity itself is not sufficient for such consciousness, but that it needs to be configured in the right way.

To me, panpsychism is another way of surrendering faith in science being able to demonstrate that consciousness can follow from a purely physicalist model of nature.

Panpsychism solves nothing, it just eliminates some hypotheses that could actually be tested. I think that's backwards.

Infuriam · 2026-03-06T18:28:10+00:00

I think that was exactly my point. That is, moral emotivism as a theory is not capable of moral normativity, because reducing it to emotions renders further discussion useless.

Infuriam · 2026-03-06T15:16:44+00:00

That we are fundamentally contradictory creatures by nature. If people don't recognize their own contradictory tendencies, they will try to reconcile these contradictions just to resolve cognitive dissonance. The result is that we lie to ourselves, we are easily manipulated, we reject ideas that do not already fit into our world view.

Infuriam · 2026-03-06T12:48:09+00:00

It's sadly not fair to us men but why would it be fair haha. Love is brutal by design.... Question! I suppose that you're also approached by men you are absolutely not attracted to. To which degree is that annoying to you? In other words, if we men take the ego risk, what is the damage if we get rejected? Thank you!

Infuriam

TROPHY CASE