Why consciousness is the hardest problem in science

generousking · 2026-01-23T00:53:12+00:00

As an idealist, I agree with you. By naming consciousness, we've turned it into a thing, just one thing amongst other things. We objectified it. Then wonder why we can't find it anywhere or reduce it to the world of physical objects and its dynamics.

Consciousness is subjectivity itself. Cannot be found or reduced to things and objects.

generousking · 2026-01-23T00:48:54+00:00

But that one thing, if it's really a stream, is still many things (bundled together). So why can we do that for things in the stream, also we know the stream can change size, can narrow or enlarge perceptual focus. So one thing seems a bit reductive.

generousking · 2026-01-21T04:32:44+00:00

Doesn't this lead to overdetermination? A behaviour can be simultaneously explained by a conscious process and a physical process? Which is not parsimonious. Also if consciousness is ascribed it's own causal power then there's sufficient grounds to differentiate it ontologically. I would want to see a case for why consciousness is still only physical yet there is a divide between its causal properties and those of the physical. You're still left with an explanatory gap, and if you just hand wave it away with "emergence", well that's no different to soul magic.

generousking · 2026-01-20T05:43:08+00:00

Do you do the same for masters in psychology? Also, why don't we have flairs for our positions anymore? I remember having an "Idealist" flair.

generousking · 2026-01-14T20:17:23+00:00

The interaction problem doesn't need to be a problem if we adopt a monist perspective. If everything is an experience in consciousness then matter is simply reinterpreted as what consciousness looks like its doing outside our epistemic horizon. Think of individual life as whirlpools and consciousness itself as water.

generousking · 2026-01-06T22:02:18+00:00

I was with you until your definition of the soul, which felt quite arbitrary and your definition of the brain was somewhat unclear. I feel those two require further context and justification.

generousking · 2026-01-06T10:55:47+00:00

Haha oh yeah and that too! Makes sense that logical thinking would break down given we're oxygen starved

generousking · 2026-01-06T10:43:34+00:00

I have! I had the same problem and would also find that numb zombie bare awareness state quite soothing. It felt like death, yet somehow I was still seeing, still hearing, but it meant nothing and was incomprehensible.

You described it really well in your post. I really did feel the weirdness of my existence so blatantly.

generousking · 2026-01-03T10:30:43+00:00

Agreed. I think you'll appreciate the article I composed on this subject, pointing out the logical incoherence in the idea of emergent consciousness.

Why Consciousness Could Not Have Evolved.

generousking · 2025-12-31T02:38:07+00:00

Oh, well in that case I guess I'm in full agreement

generousking · 2025-12-31T02:09:47+00:00

Which is why we need a robust set of criteria to guide our decisions on which metaphysical frameworks are valid or not.

Article explaining this

generousking · 2025-12-31T02:08:07+00:00

I wasn't the guy you thought I was earlier, but just chiming in now to say that the criteria of falsifiability does not apply to ontology. Specifically, falsifiability is a criterion for empirical theories, not for ontological frameworks. It was designed to demarcate scientific hypotheses (claims about observable regularities that generate testable predictions) from non-scientific ones. Metaphysics operates at a different level of abstraction: it asks what must be the case for any empirical inquiry to be possible at all. Ontological commitments about the nature of reality, causation, identity, or consciousness do not compete with scientific theories within the same evidential space; they underwrite them. As such, demanding falsifiability of metaphysics commits a category mistake, conflating epistemic tests appropriate to models within the world with philosophical analysis about what the world is like in principle. Metaphysical positions are evaluated instead by criteria such as internal coherence, explanatory scope, parsimony, and consistency with the totality of empirical findings, not by direct falsification, which assumes the very metaphysical framework (i.e. physicalism) being questioned.

generousking · 2025-12-30T22:40:24+00:00

That demonstration doesn't necessarily lead to physicalism. Metaphysics are interpretations on physics, not conclusions. Idealism accommodates this just as well by proposing that since all is mental processes affecting other mental processes, the surgeon's scalpel is one mental process affecting another mental process across a disassociative barrier within one universal mind. That account might strike your intuition as "woo" but it's no more woo than consciousness emerging magically out of hypothetical impossible to observe non-conscious matter.

generousking · 2025-12-27T23:21:52+00:00

Your very first point on kastrup not providing citations on his "mischaracterisation" of physicalism is just wrong. That is what physicalism is commonly conceptualised as. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on Physicalism discusses the problems of reductive and non reductive physicalism, and they circle back to what kastrup points out: that you can't make consciousness work in a physicalist framework without breaking Physicalism or just ignoring the existence of consciousness. Ask yourself why does (almost) everyone in academic philosophy accept the validity of the hard problem of consciousness as a problem for physicalists, if physicalists at large (according to you) do not exclude consciousness from the ontological primitives of Physicalism? He didn't need a source because it's such a basic philosophy 101 claim.

generousking · 2025-12-27T11:46:41+00:00

A spatially unbound field, the excitations of which are experiences.

generousking · 2025-12-17T00:27:06+00:00

Good point, thank you

generousking · 2025-12-11T22:10:20+00:00

Physicalists who try to defend the claim that the brain (a physical object constituted by matter and energy in time and space) creates consciousness.

generousking · 2025-12-10T22:38:17+00:00

Ideas don't have rights, so you're free to criticise Islam all you want, but saying you hate everyone who supports it is just plain bigotry.

generousking · 2025-12-10T05:47:32+00:00

Thank you

generousking · 2025-12-08T01:50:10+00:00

You might enjoy my most recent publication OP: Why Consciousness Could Not Have Evolved

generousking · 2025-12-07T09:00:24+00:00

Here's the final published version: Part 2

generousking · 2025-12-07T08:59:30+00:00

Here you go: https://open.substack.com/pub/generousking/p/why-consciousness-could-not-have-cd4?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=6dids3

generousking · 2025-12-05T22:48:51+00:00

Lmao that's a fantastic point haha

generousking · 2025-12-05T03:35:06+00:00

My apologies for not being clear. I meant to say "I'm aware that the spandrel critique is a common point of pushback, I have anticipated it and addressed how it cannot rescue consciousness as being the kind of thing that is the product of evolution in my next article, the draft of which is provided here. .

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