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If your conclusion is that this is all explicable on physicalism, then I don't agree, because these perceptions exist and should have an explanation, yet are inexplicable given physicalism. I'm not really sure how to go from what you said to the conclusion that this is all there is to the hard problem.

With that being said, if I understand you right, I think your meditative insight was a good one. That even things like thoughts and feelings (including things like the realization itself!) are themselves perceptions or phenomenology. Again -- if I understand you right -- I think that is a powerful realization. It sounds almost like your own view is on a path towards an idealist one.

I also agree that this level and structure of complexity is representable by our brain. Even though I think brains ultimately reduce to facts about the idea of a physical world in God's mind, I think the perceptions we have (including experiences like realizations) are because of the brains we have (and perhaps other facts about the world).

I'm afraid what I'm saying may not make much sense, given the short space I have to say it.

>I'm afraid what I'm saying may not make much sense, given the short space I have to say it.

It doesn't, not to me. You mention gods but how do you know of gods? I'm sure if not for the material experiences of others, the material by which we communicate through such as books, computers, verbal communication, etc, I doubt you'd have any concept of gods.

>The materialist has no way -- not even the vaguest hint of a way -- to explain the mental, the phenomenology of our consciousness.

That's right, because to do so relies on giving objective proofs to explain subjective experience and to a pure subjectivist, it won't be good enough. But then again, subjectivists can just make things up and say 'it's real and true because I experience it' which is what most of them do or just rely on what they've read from others, ie, objectivity from the materialistic world. But there are other ways of explaining consciousness through objectivity or physicalism, if you want to call it, such as panpsychism so you can also argue your point isn't true there.

Either way, any time you argue through physical methods (computers, text, etc) to discount the physical experience, it stifles your argument. And any time you try to validate the subjective, you also validate the subjective arguments of the people you're arguing against because why can't their subjective argument be just as true as yours? So either way, subjective arguments are just as weak as the objectivity or physicalism (I use both interchangeably sometimes because they're dependent) you're arguing against. Personally I consider both valid. Subjective minds are still slaves to the objective world (needs food, shelter, etc) and the objective world, that's alive anyway, is composed and "validated" by subjective experiences.

> there’s really nothing there but what you perceive.

Some Buddhists take the view that what you perceive is not fundamental.

The mind is often spoken of as a perfect mirror, that reflects the world but is itself not visible. But some types of Buddhist meditation are aimed at recognizing "the nature of mind", i.e. the mirror itself. It's described as being "luminous", which I take to mean that it somehow expresses qualia. What is reflected is not the mirror. To see the mirror itself, you have to somehow look past the perceptions.

According to some views of this kind, perceptions and feelings emerge from this "nature of mind", which in turn produces sensory apparatus, through which the material world is projected. This is almost exactly the opposite of the model usually proposed by materialists. If you can find the mirror, then the instruction is to "rest in the nature of mind".

I like this fairy story, partly because I like fairy stories, and partly because I like the kind of joke that flips things back-to-front, like The Russian Reversal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Soviet_Russia

> The mind is often spoken of as a perfect mirror, that reflects the world but is itself not visible. But some types of Buddhist meditation are aimed at recognizing "the nature of mind", i.e. the mirror itself. It's described as being "luminous", which I take to mean that it somehow expresses qualia. What is reflected is not the mirror. To see the mirror itself, you have to somehow look past the perceptions.

I don't see this as inconsistent with the materialism we're referring to here. I think by the 'mirror' they refer to the brain itself. I think the Buddhists are saying 'Don't blindly trust your perceptions: perceptions are not reality. Perceptions are created by your brain, the mirror, and they reflect reality; but they are not reality. So you should understand your perceptions and how your internal reality is created from the external reality'. Which is pretty much understanding yourself (in psychological and why not even neurological ways if you can), your limitations and potential.

edit: I hadn't submitted this comment as I usually leave some for later editing, my apologies for coming in late.

Does that suggest that computer software that can refer to itself (quines, reflection, ...) is also conscious?

Like Python programs that do things with their own bytecode (and have a symbolic means of referring to or accessing that code):

  def self_ref():
      print(self_ref.__code__.co_code)

or

  def self_disassemble():
      import dis
      print(dis.dis(self_disassemble.__code__.co_code))

And perception just means input. As far as I’m concerned, that’s all there is to the “hard” problem.

My thoughts exactly. A hard problem is often a simple question. You consider all the possible answers, except the only one that works, because you don't like it.