Steve -
Here is a slice of text from what I’m currently reading that touches in this matter:
In addition to this difficulty of reaching firm results, capable of being self-evidently reidentified on many occasions, we have the further difficulty of stating such results, of communicating them to others. Completely self-evident truths essence, established by the most exact analysis, must be expounded by way of expressions whose rich variety does not compensate for the fact that they only fit familiar natural objects, while the experiences in which such objects become constituted for consciousness, can be directly referred to only by way of a few highly ambiguous words such as ‘sensation’, ‘perception’, ‘presentation’ etc.,. One has, further, to employ expressions which stand for what is intentional in such acts, for the object to which they are directed, since it is, in fact, impossible to describe referential acts without using expressions which recur to the things to which such acts refer. One then readily forgets that such subsidiarily described objectivity, which is necessarily introduced into almost all phenomenological description, has undergone a change of sense, in virtue of which it now belongs to the sphere of phenomenology.
Husserl, ‘Logical Investigations’, book II, section 3
Note: “object”, as Husserl uses the term, doesn’t refer to “physical object” - he uses ‘object’ so as to refer to any entity (imagined or otherwise, concrete or abstract)
When it comes to the ‘hard problem’ I’m fairly convinced - and have been long before I read the above quote - that we don’t currently possess a concise enough set of concepts to frame the ‘hard problem’ let alone possess a set of concepts to help navigate a better sense of understanding.
I’m not wholly cleaved to this as the only path to go down phenomenologically though. If it is a path you wish to explore at the expense of the full scope of phenomenology (as Husserl provides; a nascent set of Investigations into consciousness) then maybe you’ll find more satisfaction in Heidegger’s work Being and Time and find use for his take on the terminology useful for this kind if task - the ‘beings being of beingness’ and such; loosely framed as Dasein. Just be aware that Heidegger’s path is a hermeneutical path ,an interpretative path, rather than being like the raw open wound of the phenomenological ‘regard’.
Reading either is something akin to wading through treacle. It seems to me that Husserl’s disregard toward ‘conclusions’ is the strength of the phenomenological approach whereas Heidegger’s approach is constantly haunted by terminology, pursuit of meaning, and a necessarily narrow view through the lens of word play and a form of relativism - but he does manage to offer some decent examples of what Husserl is pointing towards in terms of the semiotics involved with language and understanding.
In short, I’m not interested in talk of the ‘hard problem’ if the question possesses a whole species of concepts embedded within it that remain unattended and/or willfully covered over.
As for ‘redness’ it is like asking about ‘numberness’. I don’t experience numbers in any direct sensible manner. I experience the concept, yet I am never ‘embracing’ the concept of number when I do mathematics. I simply apply the concept to my sensibility, as I apply my experience of the concept ‘redness’ to my sensibility. I don’t need the concept of ‘redness’ - the thought ‘redness’ - in order to have phenomenal experience of some red object. In the same manner I don’t need to articulate the concept ‘pain’ in order to feel pain.
Our major difficulty is reading between the lines (like with my fumbling attempts above). We can also look at this in terms of explicit memory. If you punch me in the face I feel pain, yet when I forget about the event the pain is no longer there and if my memory of the event only lasts for 10 seconds then, in some sense, I ‘felt no pain’ whilst in another sense I only possessed the experience of pain briefly. I can certainly feel the same pain again, yet when I do I won’t be ‘reminded’ of a previous event - it will be a wholly new experience.
In a reply somewhere above from Skepdick they touched on something true for us all. We don’t understand what we are saying, none of us. Getting to grips with such is an almost nihilistic task; it’s unsurprising that post-modernism took an ugly turn when you look at how close to the abyss such serious contemplation take place.
The wisdom I’ve found in the general underlying principle of phenomenology is not to understate the obvious. That which we pay no heed to is likely, and often so psychologically (you can confirm this to yourself if you’re brave enough to see mistakes made), the crux of the problem it seems wholly disassociated from.
The fact that I can move is utterly bizarre! I have legs that make weird movements and then I seem to traverse spaces and eat up distances whilst birthing a new distance in my wake. Then there is my temporal regard of this, where my ‘moving’ is an “-ing”, a continuity. My thoughts also have a sense of ‘movement’ to them as the culminate into worded items or are expressed into vague or vivid images. My knowledge of ‘being on Earth’ is hardly ever something I attend to consciously, it is a superfluous speck of knowledge on one hand yet a dauntingly abyssal beast that springs up like a leviathan when I bring my sense of being into direct confrontation with this ‘being on Earth’ - it both hulks over me and yet possesses a complete finite meaning; a strange comforting, and uncomfortable, ‘obviousness’ of my human experience.
Contemplating ‘redness’ is just a doorway into the whole regard we cloth our sense of being with. In the phenomenological mindset the ‘non-physical’ or ‘physical’ are bracketed out. All the matters is the phenomenon, the ‘consciousness of’ not some extrapolated ‘otherness’ as the ‘otherness’ IS the ‘consciousness of’ whilst having no qualitative possession (other than in this crude worded form).
I’m not the best at expressing these things and make no apologies for this. I understand there is a limit and sometimes I reach out hopefully in order to find a better means if expressing what is essentially an endless and infinite object - to explain ‘absolutely’ to me is not to ‘explain’ at all. No explanation is required for what is given with a ‘pure obviousness’.