CHALMERS: 'It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C?... It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all?' -----
----- WIKIPEDIA COMMENT: 'Chalmers argues that a "rich inner life" is not logically reducible to the functional properties of physical processes. He states that consciousness must be described using nonphysical means. This description involves a fundamental ingredient capable of clarifying phenomena that have not been explained using physical means. Use of this fundamental property, Chalmers argues, is necessary to explain certain functions of the world, much like other fundamental features, such as mass and time, explain significant principles in nature.' ----- What struck me about this paragraph in the wikipedia.org is I recalled a lecture by Adyashanti I attended in New York some time in the past couple of years. He was talking about pointers to various states of consciousness, and that each level in the progression of enlightenment becomes more difficult to point out to someone. For example what we call CC in the TM movement is pretty easy to point to because there is a strong contrast between relative and absolute, there is stuff going on outside, and inside is unbounded awareness. But unity is more difficult because there is no contrast. Then he said the 'inner life disappears', it just goes silent. And this is essentially impossible to point to, that is to describe and tell someone what the markers of the experience are. I am experiencing this somewhat, though the progression is hardly complete, but it is very definite as an experience. Now if we suppose this is what happens, and the 'rich inner life' of experience goes by the wayside, what does this mean in terms of the hard problem? I take it that experience, consciousness, and the 'qualia' are not a cause-effect relationship, that they are integral and rise together, they are never separate realms where one predicates the other in time or level. In other words, the bifurcation we make about consciousness and the world only experientially exists in those states of experience the movement describes as being between Sleeping, Dreaming, Waking and Brahman Consciousness. Meaning these are transitional states (TC, CC, GC, UC) which eventually die away in succession as various levels of mental illusion are stripped away, and then you end up where you began, but with the caveat that you are wiser in that you no longer or searching for something that is not there (metaphysical worlds and an individual soul or self). In other words 'Sleeping, Dreaming, Waking' = 'Brahman Consciousness'; the mandala is completely traversed. This is Guru Dev's doll of salt vanishing in the ocean, and Buddha's no-self: there is no self, no inner 'person' or even inner consciousness. There is 'consciousness' (as we all feel we are conscious), but it has no location or existence apart from anything as a separate something, so even saying there is something called consciousness might be misleading. It is not owned by anything. So are qualia the *rope and the snake delusion*, or are they real in some way? In the early stages of meditation, what we call consciousness is definitely an inner kind of experience. I do not have that experience any more. Does this mean I am just crazy? It is actually really interesting. It is definitely not disassociation, something some meditators feel after they start TM for a while. It is kind of like a homecoming that never really had to happen. Even before I was a meditator, there was this strange feeling that everywhere I went was the same place. Now this sense is very dominant but it no longer feels like it is happening to anything, it is just happening. This makes it seem more like Dennett's argument, but I have always had some difficulty trying to grasp what Dennett is trying to say, perhaps because Dennett has no sense of what spiritual practice is about; it is totally unreal for him the kind of things people on this forum have engaged in in the past, and some now also presently. Dennett claims is that qualia do not (and cannot) exist. 'Dennett's main argument is that the various properties attributed to qualia by philosophersâ"qualia are supposed to be incorrigible, ineffable, private, directly accessible and so on â" are incompatible, so the notion of qualia is incoherent. The non-existence of qualia would mean that there is no hard problem of consciousness, and "philosophical zombies", which are supposed to act like a human in every way while somehow lacking qualia, cannot exist. Dennett claims that our brains hold only a few salient details about the world, and that this is the only reason we are able to function at all. Thus, we don't store elaborate pictures in short-term memory, as this is not necessary and would consume valuable computing power. Rather, we log what has changed and assume the rest has stayed the same, with the result that we miss some details, as demonstrated in various experiments and illusions.' Dennett says we are 'p-zombies', that is, we are zombies like humans with consciousness, but without the added consciousness. By this I take it he means that consciousness as some added feature in the material world is a mistaken conception. If I understand his view, then it is impossible to discover there is such a thing as consciousness objectively. Subjectively, it is an illusion created by the mind's interpretation of experience. This idea does have some similarity with the Indian idea that the world is illusion, though it takes a point of view that *seems* diametrically opposite from spiritual systems in that it only allows materialism. This really does not make much difference to me, but I am sure the idea is abhorrent to many people involved in spiritual exercises directed toward 'enlightenment'. I take the statement 'the world is illusion' to mean the world that the mind represents verbally, representationally, is illusory, that is our mental understanding of the world is what is out of whack. The world is illusion, only Brahman is real, the world is Brahman. No escape. The subjective aspect, as understood in our minds, and the objective aspect as understood in our minds merge imperceptibly in experience, and the mind no longer can find a way to justify their separation, their separate identities.
