But the "hard" problem of consciousness has nothing to do with the contents of the experience, but with explaining how experiencing of any kind is produced by aggregates that themselves do not have any such experiences. The simple answer is that mind (experience, consciousness, whatever you wanna call it) is not produced by matter and is a completely different realm of reality.
Maybe if science simply assumed that mind and matter are different things instead they would have made some progress. For once, the "hard" problem of consciousness would be revealed to not be problem at all. As for non-scientific proof that you have a mind, you can just observe that for yourself in every instant of your own personal experience. No magic involved. If people want to deny their own minds that is up to them.
Two things here:
1) How do you know I have a mind? How do I know you have a mind?
2) What is even your definition of "mind", and why (at least I suspect) is "the ongoing result of information processing facilitated by the complex interlinked network of neurons in the brain" not a satisfactory answer to you?
As for why any materialist explanations are unsatisfactory is that even if you managed to map every physical interaction in a sentient being, you are only mapping physical phenomena. Maybe that is enough to account for how that maps into the contents of the experience.
I am not arguing about how the contents are generated though. I am arguing about the "field" of subjective experiencing, which I called a mind. How is that generated from a set of aggregates that has no subjective experience of any kind? The simplest answer is that it is not, even if those material aggregates are deeply involved in how the contents presented to this field are generated.
Maybe you want to argue that salt "tastes" something when it is dissolved in water, but materialism assumes that simple matter does not have any experience of mental events.
So that's a religious argument, then. It's real because enough people believe that it is.
> How is that generated from a set of aggregates that has no subjective experience of any kind?
How can a pile of sand and rocks smushed together real close play back video? How can it produce a process that understands natural language?
> The simplest answer is that it is not
You keep saying "simple" when what I think you're actually saying is "easy." They are not equivalent things. In the same sense that I think the "hard" problem of consciousness should really be called the "complex" problem.
> Maybe you want to argue that salt "tastes" something when it is dissolved in water
At no point did I ever intend to argue any such thing. I suggest you put away the strawman and actually engage with what I'm saying.
> How can a pile of sand and rocks smushed together real close play back video? How can it produce a process that understands natural language?
The laws of physics are enough to explain this because no one is arguing that computers are experiencing anything when they play a video or generate a set of numbers that are displayed as natural language.
> At no point did I ever intend to argue any such thing. I suggest you put away the strawman and actually engage with what I'm saying.
Sorry, I phrased that badly by using "you" when I did not mean that. I meant to say that if someone (not you) wanted to argue that simple matter has some sort of experience, then at least the position would make some sense. But materialism assumes that simple matter does not have any subjective experience of any kind.
Anyway, I won't be able to convince you that you have a mind, so I'll peace out.