chapotraphouse

I used to consider myself a dialectical materialist, but I moved away from it because dialectical materialists don’t offer compelling answers to the "hard problem." After obsessively studying this issue in depth, I’ve become convinced that the "hard problem" results from a flawed philosophical view of reality known as metaphysical realism. The phrase "subjective experience" only makes sense under this framework, where reality is presumed to exist independently of what we perceive.

Metaphysical realism dominates philosophical discourse, creating a false dichotomy between it and idealism. Bogdanov, unlike Lenin, rejected metaphysical realism by arguing that we directly perceive reality, not a "reflection" of it or some illusion created by the brain. Lenin, by accepting metaphysical realism, incorrectly accused Bogdanov of idealism, failing to grasp that Bogdanov wasn’t claiming reality is created by the mind but that perception is material reality from our frame of reference.

This is why describing perception as "subjective" only makes sense if you assume there’s an unknowable "thing-in-itself" beyond perception. Thomas Nagel's argument, in "What is it like to be a Bat?" assumes that objective reality is independent of perspective, but modern physics—relativity and relational quantum mechanics—shows that properties depend on perspective. There is no perspective-independent reality. Therefore, perceiving reality from a particular perspective does not imply that what we perceive is unreal or a product of the mind or "consciousness," but rather that it is reality as it really is.

Jocelyn Benoist’s contextual realism replaces the term "subjective" with "contextual." Experience isn’t subject-dependent (implying it only exists in conscious minds) but context-dependent, meaning it only exists under specific real-world conditions. For example, a cat in abstraction isn’t real, but a cat pointed out in a specific context is. Benoist argues that objects only exist meaningfully within contexts in which they are realized.

Kant argued that appearances imply a "thing-in-itself" beyond them, but Benoist flips this: if we reject the noumenon, it no longer makes sense to talk about appearances. What we perceive isn’t an "appearance" of something deeper—it just is what it is. This distinction between phenomenon and noumenon collapses, and idealism is rejected as incoherent, as it still insists upon treating perception as phenomenological despite rejecting the very basis of that phenomenology.

Thus, the "hard problem" is not a genuine issue but an artifact of metaphysical realism. Frameworks like contextual realism (Benoist), empiriomonism (Bogdanov), or weak realism (Rovelli) do not encounter this problem because they reject the premise of an unknowable, hidden reality beyond perception. Dialectical materialists, despite claiming to oppose metaphysics, still cling to metaphysical realism by positing an invisible reality beyond experience. Most tend to make a distinction between "reality" and "reflected reality" whereby only the latter is perceptual. This inevitably leads to contradictions because, if one assumes such a gap exists between reality and what we observe as an a priori premise, they cannot bridge the gap later without contradicting themselves.

When I first read Dialectics of Nature, I heavily interpreted Engels as actually thinking along these longs. Similarly, Evald Ilyenkov’s Dialectical Logic also discussed how Feuerbach showed the mind-body problem (essentially the same as the "hard problem") arises only if you assume a gap between perception and reality. Rather than resolving it with argument, you must abandon the premise of such a gap altogether.

However, I later realized my interpretation was rare. Most dialectical materialists, including Lenin in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, cling to metaphysical realism, perpetuating the very dualism that creates the "hard problem" in the first place. I am not the first one to point this out, if you read Carlo Rovelli's Helgoland he has a chapter specifically on the Lenin and Bogdanov disagreement. Honestly, I think dialectical materialism would be far more consistent if they abandoned this gap at its foundations. I mean, you see weird contradictions in some diamat literature where they talk about how things only exist in their "interconnections between other things" but then also defend the thing-in-itself as a meaningful concept, which to me seems to be self-contradictory.

I agree. I brought up no self because multiple people in this thread suggested that it could only be “them” if they had the same memories and picked up right where they left off. I find this implausible despite my agnosticism on the question of rebirth. More likely would be the same life lived exactly again from birth like “eternal recurrence” or the widespread idea of samsara where you will simply experience more lives without the memory of past ones (except possibly accessible through meditation).

The idea that it could only be “them” if they pick up where they left off implies that there is a self or soul that continues from their past through their current circumstances. Buddhists have ideas about general consciousness as well mind you.

If you are constantly losing this body and mind then maybe those aren’t necessary for continued consciousness. Buddhism posits consciousness like a flame passed from one candle to the next. Each moment contains no essence from the last and yet it is experienced consciously. It’s not all about seeing through identification (though that is what allows that flame to finally cease), non-self also means that everything else is empty. The concept of essences is just [useful] bullshit. Things still exist colloquially, this is just how things have always been if you paid enough attention.

Thus, I argue that everyone who is willing to consider this question should consider the theory of samsara rather than limiting their thinking with certain fallacious dogmas.