WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO FEEL: APPLYING OCCAM'S RAZOR TO THE MIND/BODY (FEELING/FUNCTION) PROBLEM  

DA: "But If I recall, that is not the 'hard problem' or the 'easy problem' as Chalmers defines them?"

Chalmers is talking about the same problem, the mind/body problem. Putting it in the language of a causal explanation of the "how/why" of feeling is my own way of putting it, but it's exactly the same (age-old) problem. If it sounds like a different problem, that just shows how the way we put it can fool us (including fooling us into thinking that we have found a "solution" -- or that there is no problem, or more than one.)

Let me do a reductive transcription of Chalmers's way of putting it. (And let me note that his is already one of the simpler, more economical, and direct ways of putting it, even before I apply Occam's razor and a little anglo-saxon uniformity.)

DC: The really hard problem of CONSCIOUSNESS is the problem of EXPERIENCE. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a SUBJECTIVE aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it IS like to be a CONSCIOUS organism. This SUBJECTIVE aspect is EXPERIENCE. When we see, for example, we EXPERIENCE visual sensations: the FELT QUALITY of redness, the EXPERIENCE of dark and light, the QUALITY of depth in a visual field. Other EXPERIENCES go along with perception in different modalities: the *X* sound of a clarinet, the *X* smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily SENSATIONS, from pains to orgasms; MENTAL images that are conjured up internally; the FELT QUALITY of emotion, and the EXPERIENCE of a stream of CONSCIOUS thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it IS like to be in them. All of them are states of EXPERIENCE.

Cutting out the redundant and superfluous parts:

"The really hard problem of FEELING is the problem of FEELING. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a FELT aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it FEELS like to be a FEELING organism. This FELT aspect is FEELING. When we see, for example, we FEEL visual sensations: the FEELING of redness, the FEELING of dark and light, the FEELING of depth in a visual field. Other FEELINGS go along with perception in different modalities: the *FELT* sound of a clarinet, the *FELT* smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily FEELINGS, from pains to orgasms; FELT images that are conjured up internally; the FEELING of emotion, and the FEELING of a stream of FELT thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it FEELS like to be in them. All of them are states of FEELING."

(Note the slightly odd-sounding special case of how we speak of some of our sensations: We say we feel surface textures, heat, emotions, but to distinguish the sense modalities, we say we see (rather than feel) colors, hear (rather than feel) sounds, smell (rather than feel) smells, etc. That the invariant in all of these is in reality still feeling (and the variation is just in what it feels like, not in whether it feels like something at all), all of these instances can be readily replaced by a still more perspicuous variant of Tom Nagel's already more perspicuous way of putting it, which is "what it feels like to X": what it feels like to see, hear, smell, etc. That is, and always was, the essence of the mind/body -- feeling/function -- problem, just as "sentio ergo sentitur" ("I feel, therefore there is feeling going on") was always the essence of Descartes' cogito.)


-- SH