My thoughts on the Hard problem of consciousness

[emjay]

I'm sorry to say, you're losing me with all this  :-( So your view is a kind of materialistic/idealistic hybrid? Okay, 'immaterial formative principles'... 'physical rules' etc... those are 'ideas' to an idealist? How is that different from a materialist accepting physical laws of the universe, like gravity etc? I thought idealism simply referred to the qualia... the opposite of realism. I'm really sorry but it's just not making the slightest bit of sense to me, not even enough to know what sort of questions to ask to clarify it :-( What would a neuron be? an idea? an immaterial formative principle (in the sense that it is the ultimate functional building block of the brain, just as a gate is in an electronic circuit)?

As I said, I don't claim to be an idealist.  If I had to choose among material monism, dualism, and ideal monism, I'd probably go with the latter.  But I think reality is much more slippery and ambiguous than that-- I'd have to make up a new term, like "paradoxist" or something, to describe my view, but I usually just throw up my hands and identify as agnostic-- not only in the religious sense, but in pretty much every sense.  In truth, I believe very much in reality-in-context-- that reality not only SEEMS different but IS different depending on context.

As for idealism being different than materialism-- I've said before that idealism subsumes, rather than replaces, physicalism.  In other words, all that we believe or know about physical reality can be viewed simply as a collection of ideas; some things that are NOT readily explained by materialism, like the existence of qualia-experiencing mental agents, also work fine as ideas.  So do things like QM particles-- you cannot represent them unambiguously in a 3D spacetime framework, but you can encapsulate them with equations and descriptive terms-- more ideas.  Trying to fit modern science into a world view based on our everyday experience of life simply doesn't work.

Well, I hope to understand it better at some point, but you had me at 'layered' From that perspective, there is an appeal because that's what evolution is really... layers and layers of slow but sure development. Is there any particular idealist that inspires you or is this all you?  

The truth is I probably horribly abuse the term "idealism," but I don't really claim to be an idealist, so I'm okay with that.  I generally try to think of and express original ideas until someone says, "Oh. . . you're talking about boobledyboo-ism" or whatever.

I think you've just solved the name problem... instead of Agnostic or Paradoxist, why not call yourself a Boobledybooist? I will, even if you don't

But okay I get where we are now, back to subsumes and all that Does it basically ultimately come down to a kind of 'whatever I can coherently conceive of (as an idea) is real' sort of perspective... where ideas are the building blocks of the world that get around physicalist problems because they can be abstract? If so then I don't disagree with you at a certain subjective level (which I guess is all there is to an idealist... I know you said you're not one... but just relating it to that; it would also be the same for Boobledybooists I'd guess )... in the sense of what I've talked about before... that any coherent context is experienced as true/real whilst you're engrossed in it... a book or a film for instance. But for me that's as far as it goes; it doesn't make those things objectively true, just subjectively true/real in the moment. If that's what you mean by truth in context, then I understand that point of view to the extent I've said. Are you arguing a Descartes style case... that you can't tell a dream from 'reality' (at a fundamental level I mean)? Arguing that all those contexts are somehow equally valid regarding 'objective' truth? I realise that 'objective' is a prickly subject... especially to an idealist ... but unless you truly see no difference between the context that is dreaming and the context that is waking reality... then you know what I mean by it. Or arguing that they are equally valid in shaping the truth, or even causing it, since they're coherent contexts (ideas)?