A counterpoint to Cc’s, “Chalmers’ Hard Problem and the Living Moment of Now — A story and a challenge for the philosophically minded.”
Introduction: I’m not looking to convince anyone so much as to connect with science-respecting people who are tired of gratuitous philosophical mysterianism and trust in physical reality and Evolution as guides to understanding ourselves, along with our deepest questions.
(March 9, 2026) - Citizenschallenge wrote: Thank you Professor for your invitation and I’ll gladly take you up on your offer.
Eight years ago when the Human Mind ~ Physical Reality divide snapped into focus for me, like an old time 35mm slide, the experience and clarifying perspective inspired me to write: “The Missing Key to Stephen Gould’s “Nonoverlapping Magisteria” - so titled because a rereading of his essay triggered the coalescence of decades worth of musings
As for consciousness, that interest goes way back to my youth, I even tried wading through Nagel's essay in the mid-70s until the vertigo got to be too much for me and I tossed in the towel.
In any event, my "Human Mind ~ Physical Reality divide" insight (clarification) started me on a path of knocking on the doors of genuine philosophers via email, occasionally letters, also engaging with the local College Philosophy Department and their Philosophy Club, showing up, listening, sharing handouts, inviting dialogue. The experience has been akin to the sound of one hand clapping. But that wasn’t going to stop me from learning about this philosophical conundrum.
It took eight years of living, questioning, reading, thinking, writing to reach the level of resolution that enabled me to write “Chalmers’ Hard Problem and the Living Moment of Now” that I finished this past April. A collection of fact-based scientific evidence and arguments doing its best to tell a significant story challenging the Descartes-Nagel-Chalmers paradigm with its Hard Problem of Consciousness and its assumed explanatory gap between body & brain, and sense of self & mind.
The D-N-C mindset can’t conceive of body-brain creating a sense of self and thought. For me, Evolutionary biology makes this intellectual-construct of a body-mind gap unnecessary — since, the moral of our cumulative scientific understanding is that creature and experience were never separate to begin with.
After years of unfruitful overtures, having a bona fide philosopher finally step up to work with me and help clarify what I simply was not getting about the Chalmers’ Hard Problem of consciousness, was perfect, its timing turned the experience into a cosmic giggle.
It started when I sent off a query regarding Nagel’s Bat essay, (it was my next project, at least until it was derailed by this addendum). I didn’t actually expect a response. But he did. Then one thing led to another and our focus shifted to the essence of “the Hard Problem.” Particularly philosophy’s insistence that there is an “explanatory gap” between the creature and experience.
I expected a short exchange, but it turned into something else altogether — becoming a perfect bookend to juxtapose against the points in my thesis.
Fair warning: This isn’t for casual readers. It’s a ‘student resource’ for the seriously interested — people who want to engage with the details, and make up their own minds.
I’m not looking to convince anyone so much as hoping to connect with science-respecting people who are tired of gratuitous philosophical mysterianism, and who trust in physical reality and Evolution as guides to understanding ourselves, along with our deepest questions. People who are looking for more compelling ways of communicating the scientific position.
The following exchange speaks for itself. It starts out feeling slightly disjointed, a bit like listening to one end of a phone conversation. That’s because I deleted all of my (at this point obsolete) emails in order to allow the professor’s message to be made without constant cross-chatter.
I step back into the dialogue at the professor’s email 17 to share my responses and observations. (I cut out our exchanged niceties for focus and brevity.)
I hope you find something of value within this exercise.
This is not where our dialogue began, but it feels the right spot for starting this recollection:
[Professor wrote] “I read over it at last, (that is, Cc’s notes regarding Nagel’s Bat essay) and I’m sorry to say you’re entirely missing the point of what Nagel is talking about.”
Cc: What did I think?
Sweet!
This will be interesting.
Let’s go.
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — Mar 9, 2026, 10:35 AM — to me (1)
Now about the Nagel, in case it helps I’ll copy my notes below.
And as for what you wrote, I must be frank: I will probably be able to take a look at it, but it may take a while. I’m very busy at my new job. I’ll probably have Gmail remind me until I can put it on my list of things to do, and then who knows how long it will take?
__________________________
Peter Miesler — March 9, 2026, 11:31 AM — to a Philosophy Professor
Thank you for your response and the additional information you shared (notes on Nagel’s Bat essay — a gold mine for a beginner, since it clearly maps Nagel’s ideas.). I’ll do my homework and be patient on the feedback part of this.
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — March 16, 7:01 AM — to me (2)
I read over it at last, and I’m sorry to say you’re entirely missing the point of what Nagel is talking about.
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — Mar 16, 4:33 PM — to me (3)
Good afternoon.
What can I say? You actually don’t get it. You are off topic. You are (mostly or entirely) not talking about the same things Nagel is talking about.
Try to set aside everything you know about science, philosophy, and everything else. Just focus on one category, one thing Nagel is talking about:
Is there such a thing as awareness?
I don’t know how far we can get. But I do know that is Step One.
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — March 17, 7:01 AM — to me (4)
No, I’m saying you are off topic.
Good. Step One: Awareness exists.
Step Two: When X is aware of Y, is there always something it is like for X to be aware of Y?
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — March 18, 7:00 AM — to me (5)
Good. Now for Step Three: If materialism is correct, then every fact — every true statement — is a description of some arrangement of matter and energy.
Correct?
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — March 19, 7:00 AM — to me (6)
Half the answer or not, is it correct?
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — March 20, 7:00 AM — to me (7)
Wouldn’t that mean that the question is valid but the answer is “No, that is not correct”?
The main thing at this point would seem to be the following:
I do not know what you mean. What is vitalized matter that has harnessed energy? Is it something other than mere matter and, if so, what is it? And if it’s not, then the definition of matter is what matters. What is your definition of matter?
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[Professor wrote] — March 23, 7:00 AM — to me (8)
You have these Dr. Nick Lane-inspired words about elemental matter and energy as “the stuff that creates everything we know” and biological matter and energy which is, therefore, itself matter/energy and is created by elemental matter and energy and yet is . . . different in some way.
But what IS it? I don’t know what it IS.
Are you talking about something made by matter which is not itself matter?
It doesn’t sound like it. It sounds like you’re saying that it IS matter but matter with different characteristics from elemental matter/energy.
But what actually IS matter? Or if materialism is correct what actually is it that exists?
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — March 25, 7:01 AM — to me (9)
So it sounds like you’re saying that it IS matter, but we have no idea what matter IS.
Hold off on the theology (for a moment), and try a simple philosophical lesson:
It seems that your approach is to categorize matter as unexplained and indefinable. You’ve abandoned the project of traditional materialism. Traditionally, the whole point of materialism was to explain reality in terms of matter; but you are just defining all reality as unexplained.
But if that’s NOT what you are doing, then what ARE you doing? If biological matter is essentially different from elemental matter, what IS matter? Why even call it matter?
Speaking of which, have you considered hylomorphism? (Cc - have not, and looking at it all I see is ancient human idealism - of little value in trying to assess our modern scientific and evolutionary understanding.)
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — March 26, 7:00 AM — to me (10)Friendly enough! (But just very short on time on my end.) Can you give a definition of matter that helps me understand why you classify both kinds of matter as matter even though they are so different?
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[Professor wrote] — March 27, 7:01 AM — to me (11)
You are not answering my question and are doing something very similar to arguing in a circle.
My question:
What IS matter? What IS it that has these relatively simple properties and then somehow turns those properties into less simple and very different properties? What IS it that unites stuff with both kinds of properties into the same category? What IS that category?
Your reasoning:
Matter has already created consciousness, and therefore there is no question about how it can create consciousness.
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — March 30, 7:00 AM — to me (12)
I don’t believe I’ve said anything at all for myself yet. I’m just asking you to explain your views.
My question is: What IS matter according to you?
I think I know what you think elemental matter is, but if something very, very different is also matter, what actually IS matter as such?
Or, based on this — “This new biological order was not anything new to elements or atoms, it was the molecular structures that were radically changed.” — why say that biological matter has different properties at all? Here it sounds like you think the new properties are just rearrangements of the old ones.
Are you not understanding this question? I’ve not noticed even the beginnings of an answer to it.
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — April 1, 7:00 AM — to me (13)Well, now you’re going back to more usual basics: periodic table and then adding to that the harnessing of electricity. It sounds like you think all matter (and all reality) is an arrangement of particles and energy.
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[Professor wrote] — April 2, 2026, 7:00 AM — to me (14)
There may be merit in that, but I’m not seeing any. At best it’s not dealing with the point.
Now you state that you think all matter (and all reality) is an arrangement of particles and energy. Perhaps we can get back on track.
Step One: Awareness exists.
Step Two: When X is aware of Y, is there always something it is like for X to be aware of Y?
Step Three: If materialism is correct, then every fact — every true statement — is a description of some arrangement of particles and energy.
Right?
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — April 7, 2026, 7:01 AM — to me (15)
What do you mean “Idealistically, perhaps”? The answer is “Yes.”
From all reality is an arrangement of particles and energy and every true statement is a description of reality it follows that every true statement is description of arrangements of particles and energy. Doesn’t it?
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — April 8, 7:01 AM — to me (16)
It’s not a Gotcha question. It’s just facts and logic. If the answer is still “Yes,” then you need to consider the argument that follows on it and stop accusing philosophers of category errors.
But if the question commits some category error, then you should be able to explain why “Yes” is not the right answer to this question, or where in previous steps a mistake was made.
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — April 8, 7:02 AM — to me (17)
Responding to your side note: The argument I’m trying gradually to elaborate on would prove rather than assume a separation of physical processes and subjective experience.
Cc: How’s that?
Here in our physical biological world, every indicator points at our biology creating mind, all the way down, the deeper scientists look the more sense it makes. Folds within folds of constructive, harmonic complexity, all diligently focused on pushing along internal awareness.
Scientists are mapping the surprising number of unique processes interwoven and engaged in the communal effort to follow biology’s prime directive — Further Life’s Drive to Thrive.
Our internal biology is not the Easy Problem, it contains the essence of how X transforms into Y.
But if you insist on responding to one of its premises that there’s SOMETHING — I still have no idea WHAT — about biological matter which renders the argument flawed, then you are assuming something against the argument.
It looks suspiciously like begging the question, but you’re not clear enough on the matter for me to be sure.
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — April 10, 7:01 AM — to me (18)
Good morning.
If you want to be clear, set your assumptions aside while answering a question. What is the flaw in “Every true statement is a description of arrangements of particles and energy”?
No one ever said it was a complete or satisfying description of everything. But you did say that it is true.
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — April 13, 2026, 7:00 AM — to me (19)
Possibly your mistake in this conversation is no more than jumping ahead. I’ll try a hypothesis. You said “Thoughts are “energies” produced by cells, just as iron and magnet and motion creates electricity.”
__________
Cc: What I said was more nuanced, to clarify.
Iron+magnet+motion=electricity (and its potentials);
Radio transmitter+electricity=signals pulsing throughout the global atmosphere, that can be received, then refocused/tuned into music (and stir one’s heart).
The metaphor was meant to demonstrate that within our physical reality of Earth and life, the philosophical X creating Y isn’t some impossibility.
It is an idealized notion.
So, yes, thoughts could be considered energies.
The relevant point is the origins of the bioelectric energies that create our sense of self and experience are diffused, nay woven, throughout our creature senses, body, brain, as it’s interacting and living.
__________
[Professor continues]That means maybe you’re doing Step Four early.
Where we are so far:
Step One: Awareness exists.
Step Two: When X is aware of Y, there is always something it is like for X to be aware of Y.
Step Three: If materialism is correct, then every fact — every true statement — is a description of arrangements of particles and energy.
__________
Cc: How do we describe the arrangement of thoughts?
Beyond that, when discussing “consciousness” we are not discussing particles and energy and such quantum level musings. That stuff belongs to the atomic realm. Mind you, where the sharp tip of a needle contains many hundreds of billions of atoms.
We are biological creatures that exist within the macroscopic realm. Where hard stuff really is hard, and evolutionary biology made us who we are. That deserves some serious consideration rather than being walked away from because some judge it an“uninteresting problem.”
__________
[Professor continues]
Next up: Step Four.
Step Four follows on this question:
Is there any overlap between the two categories of arrangements of particles and energy and what it is like for Y to be aware of Y?
Your answer is “Yes,” isn’t it?
__________
Cc: Yes.
That is what the science is showing us.
Rationally I understand the professor’s four steps, my contention is not with this arrangement. My problem is an interpretation that ignores important underlying evolutionary biological facts in favor of an all too human idealized construct that leads down a dead-end alley.
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — April 14, 7:01 AM — to me (20)
Good.
Now you think elemental matter has different properties from biological matter, and you think that arrangements of particles and energy create and/or overlap with these properties.
__________
There is a profound difference between the molecular arrangements of CHNOPS atoms and the molecular arrangements of the entire table of elements.
For the record, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfurmolecules play dual roles, and it’s true that with time CHNOPS atoms have learned to occasionally kidnap other elemental atoms and incorporate them into biological hardware. An example of Evolutionary emergence in action.
The key reality to absorb is that it’s the Krebs cycle’s harnessing of energy, at its most fundamental level, that created the basis for Life’s Drive to Thrive.
[Professor continues]I suppose not much is in the particles or in the arrangements.
__________
Cc: Actually, molecular arrangements make all the difference in the world. It’s what makes the study of the very microscopic world so mind bending.
__________
[Professor continues]The magic comes mainly from the energy?
__________
Cc: Sure, in that same way that the magic of our society comes from hydrocarbons.
__________
[Professor continues]Does energy actually have the same properties as biological matter after all?
__________
X does not make Y. Yet, Y is certainly dependent on X.
_________________
[Professor wrote] — April 15, 7:00 AM — to me (21)
Good morning.
Studying the biology is fine, but all I’m asking — indeed, all I thought you were asking — is a little clarity on what we’re saying about metaphysics.
It seems you think biological matter really is basically different from elemental matter, and is better not thought of as overlapping with it.
__________
Cc: What I think is that consciousness can’t be explained, nor understood, without the Evolutionary, biological, deep-time component.
Recognizing that consciousness, that is creature sense of self versus the world outside, has run through the entire sweep of complex cells, creatures, and animals, then a special one came along, one who wanted to be god.
We’ll see how that plays out.
__________
[Professor continues]But its unique properties are created by elemental matter’s properties — somehow one causes a transition to the other.
__________
Cc: That’s what makes the Krebs cycle so utterly profound. It is how electricity originally got harnessed, making biology possible to begin with.
Still, it took another very, very long time for that first achievement to be followed by a myriad of other essential transitional events, to reach today’s human level consciousness.
Which is unthinkable without those more primitive layers of consciousness continuing to do their biological chores that make our introspective mind possible in the first place.
__________
[Professor continues]I do not know what that means. I know what it means to say that my car is bigger than its tires because size is a property they both have. I do not know what it means to say that a Beethoven symphony makes a bowl of oatmeal, or that the color 9 has a smell (90s song title) because these are different kinds of things and I have no clear idea how one can connect to the other.
__________
Cc: Nor do I know what you are talking about with that paragraph.
__________
[Professor continues]Do you have any account of how the properties of one overlap with and/or create the basically different properties of the other?
__________
Cc: Sure, the answers are in the pageant of Evolution. With science providing the details.
__________
[Professor continues]Or is the only answer you have to read some other people or study biology and hope that more detail on the claim THAT it happens will somehow answer this question to which there is, so far and from you at least, not the slightest hint of an answer?
__________
Cc: Harsh. I don’t pretend to be an expert, I have a story to share. For a lay-person I have a good grasp of the scientific overview, which I’m doing my best to explain coherently. But learning, like dancing, is a two way process.
I do reference specific scientific experts who can explain the details with an authority beyond my modest abilities. (See the end of this addendum.)
I’m not trying to convince, so much as pointing out what sober Earth sciences has been uncovering.
As for audience, I’m searching for people for whom Evolution makes sense and striving to share how science is becoming capable of clarifying philosophical conundrums.
It’s not enough to know Evolution happened. The curious person looking for serious existential answers regarding “Self” needs to understand what actually happened and how that relates to the body one possesses and the world one inhabits.
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — April 17, 2026, 7:00 AM — to me (22)
I should probably confess that I’ve spent very little time looking over things you sent because I have very, very little time at all due to my new job. (And we’re busy moving this weekend and the next.) But I do hope to read over the four-pager you sent yesterday.
I don’t understand why this is confusing to you. It seems very simple to me:
We’re talking about two things, elemental matter and biological matter.
__________
Cc: Yes.
__________
[Professor continues]
If they have the same kind of properties, then I can understand the claim that one either IS or at least MAKES the other. But if they have completely different properties, then I cannot understand that claim.
__________
Cc: Why not? Elemental matter and biological matter have profoundly different properties because the Krebs cycle enabled six elements CHNOPS to harness electricity as a “motive force”.
Please note, the professor isn’t clear on what properties he’s referring to.
__________
[Professor continues]
“I don’t know if you’re even doing metaphysics, but metaphysics is the only thing I’m doing (and very nearly the only thing I know how to do).”
__________
Cc: Flash, Bang, Boom! There it is.
>> Metaphysics is about the only thing philosophy is doing. <<
That brings us to the need for appreciating the “Physical Reality ~ Human Mind divide.”
Everything in our mind is metaphysics, still there’s an evolved physical reality upon Earth and within her systems that we need to recognize as fundamental and absolutely independent of human thought processes and conceptions.
Accepting that reality requires us to come face to face with being an evolved biological sensing creature, with half a billion years’ worth of successful generations that went into this body/brain that is me.
While my mind is the cumulative total of my current body/brain’s lived experience. Same as it ever was — and it ever is, for all creatures, each according to their type.
For example, I come from working class stock, survival depended on oneself, no safety net. After some vagabonding and adventuring, my milieu was getting on with the chores of living and family.
Giving me a much earthier pragmatic view of life, one that requires more than idealism and philosophical notions of perfection for my intellectual/philosophical/spiritual foundation.
__________
[Professor continues]I’m talking about X and Y and a lack of clarity as to how, if they do not have the same kind of properties, X is or else creates Y.
__________
Cc: I find no clarity in this question and it feels like word play. Can it be put into regular speak? Perhaps related to living biological creatures and how our bodies function?
__________
[Professor continues]If the response is “This thing in chemistry and biology happens, and you can go study it,” then what actually is the explanation?
__________
Cc: “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” It is impossible to answer without including the Evolutionary details.
The explanation is that awareness of inside vs. outside was a requirement for single-celled creatures, that requirement never went away as those cells created ever more complex organic "communities". On the contrary, modern science is showing us how sense-of-self has demonstrably driven Evolution from the very beginning.
Not to be mistaken with introspective self awareness.
__________
[Professor continues]“Then what actually is the explanation?”
__________
Cc: Creature success and Evolution would have been utterly impossible without Self awareness, along with exterior awareness.
That is biology, admittedly not metaphysics, thing is, biology is where I place my bets when it comes to learning substantive lessons about our Self and who we are and our place in this world.
__________
[Professor continues]Is it “I don’t know, but you can go ask the experts”?
__________
Cc: That’s not fair.
Actually, it’s a case of serious learning requires expert teachers who have achieved an amazing degree of understanding and are willing to share their insights.
Each of us must do our own homework.
__________
[Professor continues]I can respect that approach, although I’d prefer it said directly. Is it “Just look at the details of X and Y”? That’s a fancy way of ignoring the topic, which is the already observed difference between X and Y.
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Cc: But, philosophy is leaving out the living biological creature that this Hard Problem is supposed to be about.
The difference between the periodic table, plus the fundamental laws of nature — with living, experiencing, aware creatures? It began with your X, lifeless elements, Earth and then — the Krebs cycle started harnessing energy.
Then it took many eons worth of deep time for that beginning, going through an amazing series of changes and emergent stages, to develop and mature. Billions of years worth of one day at a time, eventually creating living, experiencing, aware physical biological beings engaged with their personal survival. Eventually, given the appropriate physical vehicle, such as our hominid body/brain, lead to memory and introspective thinking with its rich mindscape. That being your Y.
Why is that so difficult to picture?
[Professor wrote] — April 20, 2026, 7:00 AM — to me (23)
Good morning.
That doesn’t seem quite fair. What information have you given me to work with? I’m not doing theology or using mesmerizing words. I’m only asking you a question: What is the explanation for how X, being basically a different kind of thing from Y, creates Y?
Some lines from your article:
Cc: “. . . the Krebs cycle quite literally vitalizes a special subset of molecules, harnessing electricity, transforming it to do work and communicate, enabling appropriate organic molecules to be stitched together and accomplish ever more complex tasks.”
I’m pretty sure your point here is that the Krebs cycle is how X, being a different kind of thing from Y, creates Y.
__________
Cc: No, it is not that clean and simple. Not by a long shot.
My point is that the Krebs cycle is where biology was born. Defining the basic difference between a rock and living matter.
More than that, marking the category shift from aimless inanimate elements, to CHNOPS, biology and its defining trait — Life’s Drive to Thrive.
That is where the proverbial finger of God came down to touch Earth—not man.
Man evolved out of Earth’s processes.
__________
[Professor continues]But what answer are you giving to my question — more details on the Krebs cycle and the firm belief that X DOES create Y? That’s not an answer at all.
__________
Cc: Yes. I believe your sense of incredulity comes from not appreciating deep time Evolutionary biology and the insights it has to share.
The key understandings are stashed away in the science literature but that gets dismissed as the Easy Problem.
Thus our dilemma.
__________
[Professor continues]But enough, I suppose, of me failing to get clarity on your view. I will speak here for myself — maybe for the first time in this conversation. I cannot speak for philosophy as a discipline, but I can speak for myself — and probably for Descartes, and perhaps to some extent for Nagel.
More details on the Krebs cycle sounds like just more details on the arrangement of particles and energy — in other words, quite uninteresting when what we are talking about is the connection between such things and something completely different.
__________
Cc: What? The feeling of an experience? Qualia?
What's wrong with a straight forward logical conclusion - "Qualia" is our wet and slushy biological body physically processing the fire hose of incoming (physical) sensory experience, while integrating it into our internal dialogue.
That process is going to “feel” like something unique — like powering up a crushing plant IS going to feel like something, simply because that’s how physics in the material world is. Where’s the mystery?
How does philosophy justify sidestepping that reality?
__________
[Professor continues]Now you manage to avoid that particular problem with your position that arrangements of particles and energy do overlap with consciousness. Good. But you’ve given me as explanation only the claim that some other arrangement of particles and energy creates a more advanced arrangement of particles and energy that DOES have something to do with consciousness.
__________
Cc: Again, I’m doing Evolution, not metaphysics.
My goal is a rational understanding of my Self and my place in the world.
Regarding consciousness, you ask where’s the “overlap”? The “overlap” is the billions of years it took for biology to unfold into ever more complex living creatures with ever more complex subsystems to process information.
We have a half billion years of experience embedded within our biological structures, with a few more billion years before that building the stage upon which life unfolded in all it’s magnificence, but I’m finding philosophers implying we’re supposed to ignore all that in favor of human imaginings. What’s up with that?
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[Professor continues]Meanwhile, Descartes and I are over here thinking “I know what consciousness is, and I know what an arrangement of particles and energy is,
__________
Cc: Professor, think about what’s being claimed here.
How could Descartes, born in 1596, honestly know anything about consciousness, or biology, or neuroscience, or evolution? Descartes was clueless about our senses — the molecules of smell and taste, the composition of light, pressure waves of sound and touch.
Likewise, Descartes was clueless about how our body brain biology processes real physical stuff through our senses and so on.
Descartes didn’t understand consciousness, his insights were of a psychological variety and founded on epistemology and metaphysics upon the backbone of Catholicism. That’s why I’m insisting his mind-body dualism is closer to theology than science.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve read Descartes’ Meditations and appreciate what a deep and valuable thinker he was. I have gained a deep respect for him as a “thinker”, still he comes from the pre-science era, by definition he was scientifically illiterate. All he really knew was his own mind wrapped within a Catholic mindset dominated society.
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[Professor continues]and I know that they are not the same kind of thing.” Insisting that X nevertheless DOES create Y seems like materialistic hubris, and offering more details on some of the arrangements seems like missing the point.
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Cc: This mindset places metaphysics and intellectual idealism over pragmatic learning from the physical facts at hand.
Understanding Life’s details is always more complex than rigid logic run through our human biased mind can imagine.
For an excellent example there’s Robert Hazen’s experience with mineral catalyzing experiments. Using all the proper certified lab grade minerals, it was failure after failure. Time after time, the math and chemistry were checked and correct, but results were failures. What was going wrong?
Then his team changed tactics and gathered their minerals from down-to-Earth dirty sources such as hot springs. Using these “impure” mineral samples. Surprise, their chemical reactions started flowing. (See “Story of Earth — Hazen, Chapter 12: “Minerals to the Rescue” (page 155)).
It’s a reminder of how human logic can fail us when it comes to understanding Earth and life. Dismissing biological evidence as trivial and uninteresting, makes X≠Y unavoidable.
My question, what’s been achieved or revealed with the philosophical exercise?
__________________________
[Professor wrote] — April 21, 2026, 7:01 AM — to me (24)
Harder and sharper? I don’t mind; I don’t think I even noticed. (I rarely do.)
Not really. It’s just that you said that what I know is wrong, but you never explained why.
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Cc: That’s what I’m striving to do.
__________
[Professor continues]If your answer happens to reference something and I don’t change my views, that doesn’t mean I’m trivializing or dismissing the thing you referenced.
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Cc: Relegating the biological processes of thinking to the Easy Problem, is trivializing the very foundation of mind.
Thank you, and if this is where we end this then best wishes to you!
__________________________
Peter Miesler- Apr 22, 12:18 PM to Professor
Hello Professor,
I appreciate and thank you for the time you spent with me.
I’ll give you a break now, though I will drop in at some point again, simply to share my progress.
Best wishes, Cc
__________________________
[Professor] — April 22, 2026, 12:22 PM — to me (25)
Thank you. Sounds good. …
…
No, wait. Fort Lewis. No, wait — I’m thinking of a different place; I probably don’t know anyone there (in Colorado).
Afterword
What was so refreshing and respectable about my Prof. is that he took an interest and helped this, out of the box, student to arrive at a clearer understanding. He willingly took on my arguments, then explained his constructive dismantling, sidestepping a few, but that was okay. All in all, he left me better informed to understand my choices.
He helped me to more clearly recognize the Hard Problem for the idealistic metaphysical construct that it is and I thank him for that.
This exercise also has me thinking of the difference between philosophy, which starts with formalizing idealized human notions, then strives to fit the world through that lens. Whereas, science begins with observation and questions, and is committed to allowing the facts to drive our view of nature. That is key.
I understand the D-N-C construct seems intellectually irresistible. Still, by definition it is unsolvable. So I’m left wondering what real world good is it — beyond philosophizing for the fascination of it?
I’m an Earth-centrist, I do real life and science, not metaphysics. For me, it is self-evident that to understand my Self requires understanding my physical body. After all it is the vehicle through which I experience the world, while the world experiences me through my body.
That’s big and getting a grip on it requires learning about our body and its deep story. There we find keys to the dueling voices that dwell within us, and more. This learning process opens surprising insights that have a direct, and lasting, bearing on how I interact with myself.
Only science can offer the feeling — after years’ worth of homework, learning facts and more facts, over and over, ruminating on the growing knowledge. Then one day, cold facts burst into understanding — such as the brilliant flash that accompanies the realization that, holy heck, my body/brain possesses half a billion years’ worth of successful generations under its bellybutton. That’s not metaphor or myth, that is Earth’s reality coursing through my blood and I would not exist without it.
Then while digesting the new understanding, new insights pop into view. It’s been a spectacular journey for me, now I get to share.
Earth’s Evolution is where everything exciting and important about us human beings happened, and it is way more complex, interwoven, and relevant than our human intellect can imagine. Thus the adventure of Science.
I’m convinced it’s not enough to know Evolution happened. Our personal introspective journey requires learning about what happened, which leads to understanding why it matters to the making of you — along the way revealing insights that lead to a clearer appreciation for the evolved animal Self that we are.
Here we also discover strategies for better resolving life’s conundrums. It seems a perspective worth sharing and defending.
I’m told we can’t separate science from philosophy. Okay. Still, my experience has left me feeling traditional philosophers aren’t equipped to give scientific physical reality a fair shot.
I wish for some scientists with enough of a philosophy background to step up and present an evolutionary bottom-up physical reality coherent theory of consciousness. Such as Arthur Reber’s CBC (Cellular Basis of Consciousness).
As Dr. Mark Solms points out: The most productive way to think of our consciousness is as the inside reflection of our body communicating with itself. Seems a good start.
There’s even a formula: “Senses + Body + Brain + Interacting (with interior & exterior) = awareness, consciousness, mind.”
Why, you may ask? Because at its most fundamental, without internal and external awareness living is impossible, so nothing would have happened on Earth. Which is why I think it’s time we learn to temper our blinding human hubris and start learning from Earth and our Evolution.
{ I’m withholding the Professor’s name, (though he’s given me permission to share), because I like him and respect him. He’s an excellent professor whom I don’t want to denigrate by association. This is about my quarrel with the D-N-C paradigm itself, he’s the teacher, not the target. }
An introductory list of scientist author’s introducing the significance of biology to understanding consciousness:
Robert Hazen: — Mineral Evolution on Earth, preparing the ground for biology
Nick Lane: Geology and chemistry harnessing electricity to create biology,
>>> Lane’s most excellent summary of “SELF”
Jack Szostak: The Early Earth and the Origins of Cellular Life
Michael Russell: On the Emergence of Life Through “Negative” Entropy Trapping
Arthur Reber: The “Cellular Basis of Consciousness” proposal — CBC
Michael Levin — Bioelectricity in development and regeneration, exploring cellular cognition.
Biology together with time, and chemistry and geology, that is Earth’s processes created creatures and environments and competition, in short, Evolution. Self awareness was required for every step in this pageant.
Pageant of Earth’s Evolution, Index of noteworthy YouTube videos
Mark Solms — Regarding the Source of Consciousness
Antonio Damasio — Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain
Robert Sapolsky — Behavioral Biology with a Primatology background
Honorable mention, author David Quammen’s The Tangled Tree of Life, a front and center history of the ‘70’s genetics revolution, that ushered in this golden age of biology.
In the, for what it’s worth, department:
I asked my writing coach Claude.ai: “Under the category of what is philosophy? I’m told “Metaphysics is not about people’s ideas.” — then what is it?
Claude.ai:
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the fundamental nature of reality itself — not what people think about reality, but what reality actually is, independent of any mind thinking about it.
Here’s what it actually investigates:
Core questions of Metaphysics:
Existence — What does it mean for something to exist at all? Why is there something rather than nothing?
Substance — What is the basic “stuff” the universe is made of? Is it matter, energy, mind, something else entirely?
Causation — What does it really mean for one thing to cause another?
Time & Space — Are time and space real things, or just frameworks we use? Did time have a beginning?
Identity — What makes a thing the same thing over time? (If you replace every plank in a ship, is it the same ship?)
Universals — When two things are both “red,” what exactly do they share? Does “redness” exist as a real thing?
Free Will — Is the future genuinely open, or fixed by prior causes?
> The key distinction your quote is pointing to:
Epistemology asks: How do we know things? (about ideas, perception, belief)
Metaphysics asks: What is actually out there to be known?
So metaphysics is less interested in how the human mind perceives a tree and more interested in what a tree fundamentally is — what properties, causes, and categories of being it belongs to, whether those would exist even if no one were around to observe them.
In short: it’s philosophy’s attempt to describe the deep structure of reality — the “operating system” beneath everything we experience.
Seems to me there’s a prerequisite conceptual foundation required before that can make constructive sense. That is, getting clear on the Human Mind ~ Physical Reality divide.
We are stuck within our minds, but science enables us to cut windows of perception through that natural barrier between Mind and the Biological Body that is creating it, and Earth’s physical reality which created us biological creatures.
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