David Chalmers and The Hard Problem of Consciousness

David Chalmers and The Hard Problem of Consciousness

Form is emptiness, emptiness form. (The Heart Sutra)

Existence occurs at the merger between form and emptiness. In Buddhism, this situation is expressed by the Heart Sutra. In Advaita, it is called Awareness. In either case, emptiness recognizes itself as what arises within it. Those are merely words but are the best language can do although the subject has no doubt of what they signify, the foundation of conscious life.

This realization goes to the core of "The Hard Problem of Consciousness," as termed by David Chalmers. (Among various explanations of it as a problem one is, Why do you have such a rich inner life?) Those who research and think about consciousness cannot truly understand the Hard Problem without this realization.

Daniel Dennett explains it all away by saying Chalmers' proposal is a non-problem. Dennett, though, is a proselytizer at base. He doesn't engage issues that do not fit his agenda. Instead, his strategy is often to downplay the opposition.

The realization of true issues surrounding The Hard Problem cannot occur without "experiential expertise." That is, it will remain inaccessible so long as there is insistence on a level playing field--tools, techniques, and concepts available to everybody engaged in consciousness philosophy and research.

One might argue that this experiential expertise does not fit the scientific model in that the solution cannot be assessed, falsified, or verified by a community of peers. That is not the case. The community of peers need not be a democracy--that is, a large pool of peers. The Special and General Theories of Relativity are still not profoundly understood by most physicists.

The discussions and debates about The Hard Problem of Consciousness will continue, but the real field of study is at hand, and those who don't see it are rather like the boy who proclaimed that the emperor had no clothes.

Like quantum theorists with the findings of people such as Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and Bell, perhaps the consciousness community will eventually develop consensus that the standard concepts and techniques simply can not yield an answer to The Hard Problem. In the meantime, let us hope that a few will take an approach considered to be slumming by some of their peers.

I refer to an intensive skeptical search (not this, not that), probably lengthy, for who they are by using a Dzogchen Buddhist or Advaitan discipline--while separating wheat from the chaff of teachings until--as supposedly phrased by St Francis of Assisi--they find out that they are what is being looked for, and this realization takes over their lives, both as a contributing peer and as a private person. It is not spiritual. It is not religious. It simply is.

Theist Versus Skeptic

A Hairbreadth Difference and Heaven and Earth Are Set Apart: Theist, Skeptic

Why is there something rather than nothing? Lucretius

• The skeptic: The universe is eternal. It simply is. There is no need for a creator. Moreover, If the universe has a creator, then it is impersonal, merely a force.

• The theist: The universe couldn't have happened by itself. All results from an uncaused Cause, which is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, purposeful, and personal. Astronomer magazine's Robert Naeye: "On Earth, a long sequence of improbable events transpired in just the right way to bring forth our existence, as if we had won a million-dollar lottery a million times in a row. Contrary to the prevailing belief, maybe we are special."

Stephen Hawking: There may or may not be a creator, but the Big Bang didn't necessarily depend on it. Hawking to a science writer who asked him about any connection between Hindu myth and Black Hole evidence: "It's fashionable rubbish. People go overboard on Eastern mysticism because it's something that they haven't met before. But as a natural description of reality it fails abysmally to produce results."

My comment: In our daily lives we can believe or disbelieve, but we can take away from quiet moments a different understanding of the matter. In that understanding, the questions no longer seem important. The understanding does not imply atheism or theism as the final truth, the ultimate meaning. Rather, it allows us to see things in a new light * by a method that is empirical and verifiable--not some abstract, debatable notion. Part of our discovery is that thoughts beget thoughts, that they are "mechanical" things requiring no thinker to think them. ( Empirical philosopher David Hume said as much in the Eighteenth Century.) In turn, self is created by mind, neurons if you want, and no ego, no little man or woman, presides over the course of our daily affairs. This understanding derives from a state that precedes all our usual questions and doubts. Unlike some scientists' claim, the state is not wrapped in mist, but is one of high, generalized, awareness. When asked what happened to him, Buddha said that he awakened. Buddha made no claims whether all was finite or infinite, godless, or godly. From the vantage of this state, the questions disappear and are seen as more creatures of the mind.

That is the meaning of the leader for this article's title, an old Zen saying by Seng-Ts'an--"The Perfect Way is only difficult for those who pick and choose. Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear. A hairbreadth difference, and Heaven and Earth are set apart." Theist and skeptic impose the difference that sunders Heaven and Earth.

* (In Zen's Heart Sutra, form is emptiness, emptiness form. Each enables the other and is the other.)

Daniel Dennett, along with various other researchers and thinkers, has arrived at this view of no-self without any "mystical" experience. Theirs, however, seems to remain a largely intellectual understanding. Articles on them can be found variously in this blog. As an example of scientific explanations that don't rely on Eastern thought, see Space Capsules and Eastern I-Told-You-So, 29 January 2004. Another example can be found at Shakey, Beavers, and Cartesian Theater, 12 February 2004.)