The problem with the mind-body problem
Actually consider what our mind is doing when it’s trying to figure out the mind-body problem—the first step in trying to figure it out is mental replication of the world. We then work with this shadowy replica in order to account for the mind. This inadvertently sidelines the mind itself, as attention shifts entirely to the replicated world of objects. The mind cannot be rediscovered within this second-hand, object-focused representation. This model is inevitably a derivative output which is twice-removed from original reality. This will always be a profoundly unsatisfying discrepancy, all the more annoying given that the problem always and inevitably ends up with only this output.
When theorising on top our immediate impression of the world—which, remember, is itself already a replicated representation of the world—we subtract even further from the immediate lucidity and clarity of original reality, i.e. our own consciousness.
No matter how clever we get with it, no matter how much we throw things like quantum physics or higher-dimensional space into the mix, we always stray our mind away from consciousness itself, which is the real and original datum we are trying to understand.
This is a problem not only for materialists but for idealists too, because idealists (like me) are also imagining the world beyond its objectified appearance, and so we are likewise forced to conjure up an imaginary world that is really just an enfeebled shadow world. It’s as if we want the luxury of emulating the emulation from within the emulation—and we hope somehow to get a clearer picture out the other end.
What is there to understand about understanding itself? How can consciousness be the object of consciousness? It’s like trying to grasp your right hand with your right hand. We’ve hit some kind of bedrock here. It’s like we have arrived at a glitch. We want to somehow be bigger than our consciousness. We want to get on top of it and say “consciousness is this”, but the act of calling it “this” instantly transforms it into an object of consciousness, meanwhile consciousness itself will remain unreduced. Consciousness is inherently the non-graspable and non-objectifable thing. It is the thing which does the objectifying and apprehending. Given this elusiveness, one can sympathise with the old image of the soul being a kind of ghost, because it really is something you cannot get your hands on.