What does it FEEL like to be a basketball game?

A complete mechanical solution to the hard problems of consciousness.

I knew as I looked at it that there was something very strange here. But the strange thing was so strange, so entirely incomprehensible that I found it difficult to form coherent thoughts about it. I could see the strangeness with my eyes, but I could not think it with my mind.  
  .Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

Magic, it must be remembered, is an art which demands collaboration between the artist and his public.
  .E.M. Butler, The Myth of the Magus

It is a matter of perspective, the difference between opponent and partner.
  .Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

.1 Cracking the hard problem—of gravity

The first problem to get anointed “hard” by science was the invisible tug of gravity. The enigmatic force was proclaimed intellectually intractable and existentially befuddling by none other than the Godfather of Science himself, Isaac Newton:

Tis inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should affect other matter without mutual contact. . . that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else is to me so great an absurdity that no man who has any competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.

How was the hard problem cracked?

A complete engineering account of the interrelated dynamics of space, time, and matter, as governed by mathematical principles. Albert Einstein’s dynamic framework revealed, to the dramatic surprise of all—

There is no invisible force.

It only seems that way as massive objects roll along the invisible curves of spacetime. Einstein solved the hard problem of gravity by trespassing the consensus bounds of the problem to harvest new concepts and perspectives none thought relevant.

Today, scientists have pronounced the existence of a new hard problem. Consciousness. There are several formulations of the hard problem of consciousness. We will tackle four of them, but our principal effort is devoted to the most prominent and challenging version, voiced by philosopher David Chalmers:

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 has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism.

Let’s dub this Hard Problem Prime:

How does physical activity in the brain get CONVERTED into my experience?

We can crack the hard problems of consciousness the same way gravity got solved: by rejecting mistaken assumptions, transgressing the consensus confines of the problem, and bringing the math. The result?

A complete engineering account of consciousness that proclaims:

There is no conversion from activity into feeling. It only seems that way.

2. What is a hard problem?

Hard problems are inevitably expressions of ignorance. They are frank declarations, I cannot even conceive what a solution could look like! Either it’s impossible—or the solution will transform our conception of reality!

In advance, it’s difficult to imagine what sort of notion might transform reality.

How can there be an invisible force leaping across space from out of the hearts of material objects?

Whenever humans encounter a fresh mystery contrary to all we know, we attempt to fathom it using old ways of seeing, old vocabularies, old theories, old math. But the only way to comprehend this flummoxing new puzzle is to break free of tradition and consider possibilities that violate convention.

Here are the mistaken “Newtonian” assumptions that informed the hard problem of gravity, as embraced by Isaac Newton and two centuries of physicists:

• Space is fixed and absolute—and therefore irrelevant to the problem.

• Time is fixed and absolute—and therefore irrelevant to the problem.

• Because space and time are irrelevant, we should treat mass as existing independently of space and time.

How did Einstein solve the hard problem?

He rejected Newtonian assumptions. He radically expanded the problem’s narrow perspective and considered factors nobody believed were pertinent, then attacked it from this elevated viewpoint with heaps of math and empirical data.

The new assumptions informing Einstein’s theory of general relativity:

• Space is not fixed or absolute—it is curved and endlessly malleable.

• Time is not fixed or absolute—it is endlessly relative.

• Space and time are not merely relevant, they are essential to any understanding of gravitation, because mass does not exist independently of spacetime. Mass and spacetime directly influence one another.

Because space is bendy, massive objects move along its curves, which looks to humans like objects get pulled by an invisible force.

Einstein’s engineering account of the dynamics of gravity ended up expressing something unexpected, far outside the original scope of the problem:

Spacetime shapes mass and mass shapes spacetime.

The engineering account replaced what appeared to be an invisible force with large-scale dynamics more complicated and far-reaching than anyone anticipated.

The engineering account of consciousness replaces what appears to be a mystic conversion with large-scale dynamics more complicated and far-reaching than anyone anticipated.

In a sentence, here’s what the mathematics of experience proclaims:

Consciousness unites past and present within a dynamic that chooses the future.

.3 The Four Hard Problems of Consciousness

In this essay, we use the engineering account of consciousness to explain the solution to four hard problems of consciousness. Yet the older hard problem of general relativity demonstrate that what matters far more than answering a hard problem on its own terms is a detailed physical account of the underlying phenomenon grounded in mathematical principles.

Being able to shout “There is no force!” was not nearly as useful or illuminating as recognizing that space and time are united in a dynamic structure both curved and malleable, and that one’s mass, size, and even one’s experience of time alters with one’s velocity. This mind-bending revelation unleashed a torrent of new discoveries: black holes, the Big Bang, gravity waves, wormholes, gravitational lensing, GPS in our cars and phones, cyclotrons, nuclear power, and hydrogen bombs.

The real value of a hard problem is that it motivates us to unmask a more capacious face of reality, an expanded purview necessary to identify the false assumptions propping up the erroneous formulation of the problem.

Here’s three other variants of the hard problem of consciousness we’ll tackle on our way to Hard Problem Prime.

The Perspective Problem: How does objective, third-person activity in the brain get converted into subjective, first-person activity?

The Zombie Problem: David Chalmers offers up this one, too: There could be a creature physically identical to me, and identical in all physical respects—molecule for molecule—but without any conscious experience. It would be just like me, but entirely dark inside. This creature would be a zombie.

The Qualia Problems: Why does redness feel so experientially distinct from loudness? What is this redness I’m experiencing even made of, physically? Is my experience of redness different from your experience of redness?

Each of the four variants makes a different claim upon reality that we will sort through and solve.

4. The Plan of Attack

Here is how we will proceed.

First we ask, What is consciousness made of? The answer: activity. If we hope to grasp the solutions to the hard problems of consciousness, we must first consider the nature of physical activity in the universe.

Second, we clarify the needlessly confusing nature of perspective. At the end of this section we solve the Perspective Problem.

Third, we investigate the uncanny and head-spinning assertion that every activity has a feeling. This requires a little physics and a little math, but the physics and math and ideas are as old as science itself. But just because every activity might have a feeling doesn’t explain why all the activity in my brain somehow comes together as my feelings.

Fourth, we lay out the engineering account of consciousness. Based upon more than sixty-five years of continuous research and 500 papers and dozens of collaborators, we share the mechanical explanation of the operation of consciousness (we’ll review it very quickly, as the full account of consciousness is available here on the Dark Gift). The engineering account of consciousness is entirely analogous to Einstein’s engineering account of general relativity, in that it describes the dynamics of a complex physical system governed by sophisticated mathematical principles. In this series, we will only focus on the aspects of the engineering account we need to explain away the hard problems.

Fifth, we use the engineering account to crack the Zombie Problem.

Sixth, we begin tackling Hard Problem Prime. We show how the engineering account of consciousness drastically expands the scope of the problem and empowers us to identify and reject the “Newtonian” assumptions embedded in Hard Problem Prime and replace them with more physically accurate assumptions. We also introduce a mechanical definition of qualia.

Seventh, we will use our new mechanical understanding of qualia to explain why we experience the universe as a collection of things—why reality feels so THINGLIKE—and how this artificially imposed THINGNESS is the reason for the existence of hard problems in the first place.

Eighth, we address specific qualia, such as redness and loudness, and mechanically explain why these experiences feel the way they do. This solves the Qualia Problems.

Ninth, the grand finale! We crack Hard Problem Prime! The star of our final act is purpose. Seeing purpose illumed by the rosy glow of the engineering account of consciousness, we can finally fathom the mind-twisting yet physically forthright mechanism that binds together all the melodies in your cranial jukebox into your symphonic experience of reality.

Let’s begin.

5. Consciousness is activity.

Imagine you visit a park with a basketball court. Pick out ten strangers at random, invite them onto the court, and toss them a ball. They stand around blinking at you. Is this a basketball game? No. Not even if all ten people, through an uncanny stroke of serendipity, happened to be professional athletes employed by the Boston Celtics.

A game is not defined by the identity of the players. A game is defined by the players’ activity.

If your ten randomly selected strangers formed into two teams of five and began to dribble and pass the ball around the opposing team as they attempted to hurl the ball through the hoop, well then. Now you’ve got a basketball game.

It’s the same with Mind. A mind is not defined by the identity of the physical stuff inside an organism. A mind is not defined by its neurons or molecules. A mind is defined by its activity. A man dead an hour has the same physical stuff in his brain he had the hour before, but no thinking is going on because his mental activity has stopped.

A basketball game is activity. Where does this game activity come from? The players. All game activity consists of player activity: Shooting. Blocking. Passing. Fast-breaks. There is no game activity that is not player activity. Put all this player activity together and you got a basketball game.

It’s the same with a mind. Your mind consists of all the biological activity going on inside your skull. Perception is activity. Navigation is activity. Knowing is activity. Feeling is activity. And experience is an activity. Put all this mental activity together and you got a Mind.

“Consciousness” is an action noun, like explosion, dance, or game. Consciousness is comprised of physical activity in the brain. Neural dynamics, in large part. That’s why understanding the nature of activity is fundamental to any approach to consciousness. And its hard problems.

The activity that embodies conscious experience belongs to a cosmic class of physical dynamics. Mental activity is purposeful activity. Aimed at a goal. Striving for an objective. There are two cosmic categories of dynamics in our physical reality. One is aimless dynamics, more commonly regarded as physics. The other is the dynamics of purpose.

Physics ensues, purpose pursues.

Let’s consider the purposeful activity in a basketball game. The overall game activity pursues a clear purpose: to determine a winner. How is the winner of a basketball game determined? By whichever team scores the most points before the game activity is over.

But there are also two teams of five players. Team activity has its own purpose: to score more points than your opponent. So team activity is competitive.

There’s also ten individual players. There is a purpose to individual activity, too—but each individual’s purpose can be quite different. All players strive to help their team win. But one player’s personal goal might be to defend the paint while another player’s goal might be to attack the paint.

A game is composed of many sorts of activities pursuing many sorts of purposes all at the same time: determining a winner, scoring baskets, preventing your opponent from scoring, getting revenge on that player for her hard foul in the first quarter. Yet all these overlapping activities are physically embodied within the mechanical activity of the ten players.

Game activity consists of player activity.

Here’s one key thought to consider before we move on. There is an obvious sense in which each player is a thing—a physical object. A human. But during a game, the players are better understood as activities. That is their physical identity within a game. A player gets called for a foul because his activity was illegal. A player scores a point because her activity put the ball through the basket. The official game activity begins when one player performs the activity of throwing the ball into the game or two players perform the activity of a jump ball.

Nothing happens in the game where a player’s identity as a thing is more influential than their identity as an activity.

We can now identify the first mistaken “Newtonian” assumption informing the hard problems of consciousness:

WRONG: Consciousness is made of a special substance, energy, or thing.

RIGHT: Consciousness is made of activity.

Many great thinkers have been seduced into believing experience is a thing. William James believed there was a “pontifical neuron” responsible for our experience of thought. The psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich claimed “orgone energy” was responsible for conscious cognition. Oxford mathematician Sir Roger Penrose asserted “quantum microtubules” inside neurons generate deliberate reflection. Nobel Prize–winning biologist Sir Francis Crick insisted that the source of human consciousness lay in the claustrum, a thin and otherwise unremarkable layer of neurons just below the cortex, echoing the famed philosopher René Descartes, who declared that conscious thought originated in the pineal gland.

David Chalmers takes the objectification of experience to its furthest limit, championing the view that “consciousness may be a property of the world that is as fundamental to the universe as electric charge or gravitational mass.”

But they are all wrong. The entire mind, including consciousness, is activity. Just like a basketball game.

If you ask, “I see all the shooting and the blocking and the passing and the dunking and the rebounding. . . but where’s the game?

It’s exactly like asking, “I see all this perceiving and recognizing and remembering and feeling and planning. . . but where’s the consciousness?”

6. A Mechanical Clarification of Perspective.

Let’s carefully examine perspective.

Perspective is a straightforward mechanical fact that frequently leads to wooly confusion when applied to brains and sentience. The philosopher Daniel Dennett once tried to express the vertigo many folks feel while contemplating the Perspective Problem (How does objective third-person brain activity get converted into subjective first-person experiential activity?), by comparing the conversion to landing on another planet:

From faraway comes the scientific explorer of consciousness, approaching Planet Descartes confidently, armed with instruments, maps, models, and theories, and starts moving in for the triumphant conquest. The closer she gets, however, the more uncomfortable she finds herself; she is being dragged into an orientation she knows she must avoid, but the force is too strong. As she lands on Planet Descartes she finds herself flipped suddenly into first-person orientation, feet on the ground but now somehow unable to reach, or use, the third-person tools she brought along to finish the job. How did she get there, and what happened in that confusing last-minute inversion?

Let’s answer Dennett’s boldface questions by clarifying the nature of perspective.

Perspective is the view from where you are standing. It encompasses exactly two mechanical facts:

· The position where you are standing.

· The direction you are looking.

If you climb to the top of a mountain and look down from its peak, you have a top-down perspective on the mountain. If you now climb down to the very bottom of the mountain and look up, you have a bottom-up perspective on the mountain. The mountain hasn’t changed. Your perspective has changed because you changed where you are standing.

If you wish to change your perspective, you simply move.

If you now walk to the middle of the mountain, you will have yet another perspective on the mountain—a central perspective. But notice if you look UP at the peak, you will have a bottom-up perspective on the mountain, while if you look DOWN, you will have a top-down perspective on the mountain. Again, a perspective includes both where you are standing and where you are looking.

Okay, now let’s consider a perspective switch that, mechanically, is no different from switching between top-down and bottom-up perspectives, but which nonetheless tends to stoke confusion:

How do we switch from a third-person perspective to a first-person perspective?

Let’s return to our basketball game.

If you’re a fan watching the game from the stands, you enjoy a third-person perspective on the game. You have a third-person perspective on the game activity.

But what if you’re a player?

If you’re a player in the game, you enjoy a first-person perspective on the game. You have a first-person perspective on the game activity. You are inside the game activity. In fact, you are physically part of the game activity. Heck—you feel like you’re the center of the game, because the action is happening all around you and relative to your own activity.

There is no mystifying magic switching from first-person to third-person or back, which we can see plainly by considering a basketball game.

If you are sitting on the bench watching the game, you have a third-person perspective on the game.

Now walk onto the court and join the game. You’ve switched to a first-person perspective on the game.

That’s it. Walk off the court to the bench, and your perspective on the game turns back to third-person. There’s no shuddering enchanted vibration as you approach the edge of the court and get closer and closer to switching to first person! At any given instant, your perspective is 100% determined by where you are standing and where you are looking. The moment the game activity starts and you’re part of that activity, you have first person perspective on that activity.

It’s important to note that while each player has a first-person perspective on the game—each perspective is different. Possibly very different. That’s because each player is standing in a different place as they look at the game around them. It’s exactly like several people standing in different places all over the same mountain. Same mountain, same game, different perspectives.

A short and speedy offensive player who is a good shooter might experience game activity as, “Dodging through a forest of tall trees!” A tall and beefy defensive player who is a good shot-blocker might experience the same game activity as, “Dashing around chasing squirrels!” The difference in their perspective on the same game activity arises because they are standing in different places, at different heights—and because their individual activity is different, taking them through divergent first-person perspectives as they move around the court.

There’s one last super-crucial notion about perspective to register here.

If a purposeful agent initiates an action—like a player shooting the ball—then from the agent’s perspective, that action is ALWAYS FIRST-PERSON.

This Law of First-Person Perspective on Activity is straightforward mechanics, nothing philosophical or quirky.

I am passing the ball.

I am blocking the shot.

I am sprinting down the court on a fast break.

Each of these activities is prefaced with the pronoun “I” because the agent who performed each activity will always see the activity “emerge” from the position where they are standing, no matter what direction they are facing. If you are the activity (you are stealing the ball, you are dribbling the ball) then your perspective on your activity will be first-person.

If you want to see a third-person perspective on your own activity, there’s a forthright mechanical solution. Just grab a camera or a mirror and look at you from outside yourself.

If you are performing activity, then mechanically you enjoy first-person perspective on that activity.

If someone else is performing the activity, you enjoy third-person perspective on that activity.

In Part 2 in the Hard Problems of Consciousness series, we solve the Perspective Problem and explain how even infinitesimal activity has a “feeling.”