From what I read, informed opinion in the field is that only the 'Hard Problem' of consciousness (Chalmers) is not, in principle, open to scientific explanation. Many aspects of conscious experience already have at least partial explanation (e.g. belief can be characterised as a persistent 'truthy' informational pattern);
What is this 'truthy' informational pattern'. There is such a thing as phenomenal belief as opposed to other beliefs that are more disconnected or superficial. Phenomenal belief involves a deeper conviction and belief based on experiences that have been integrated and confirmed to the experiencer. They have a reasoned basis despite there being no objective evidence or countering evidence.
For example those who experience NDE believe their experience was more real than everyday reality. A deeper reality. Tests have shown its not imagination, self deception or irrational but align with a genuinely real experience like everyday life. Unreal beliefs are usually disconnected and inconsistent.
but the fact of subjective experience itself, i.e. that there is something it is like to be conscious, is inevitably beyond all but correlative explanation.
Subjective experience is inherently inaccessible, and explanation is communication, i.e. inherently objective.
I am not sure what you mean by this. Subjective experience can only be understood directly from the experiencer. We can investigate the quality of experiences, their consistency overall among many experiencers and derive some factual information as to their content.
An abstract high-level correlative explanation for subjective experience might be something like, "When certain kinds of information are processed in particular ways by certain kinds of systems, there is an associated subjective experience."
But this would not be an explanation as to the nature of why or how certain kinds of information would produce subjective experience. The colorblind Mary thought experiment shows that no matter if Mary knew everything there was to know about the brain and light waves as to the experience of the color red.
It wasn't until Mary could see colors and experience red that she understood it. Then in trying to explain this no amount of information could do justice to experiencing red. In that sense Mary came to know something about reality that the information and physical processes could never tell her.
This could be narrowed down to the specifics of the requirements in much the same way as the mystery of life was unravelled and resolved, though with more difficulty (unless we can agree on a robust objective test for subjective experience!).
If your talking about the 'Life Force' once thought to eminate from non life matter I don't think the mystery of life has been solved. That is just as much a mystery as consciousness.
That doesn't follow. Knowledge is associative information resulting from the way a brain stores, retrieves, and processes sensory information. Intentions are goals derived from feelings (sometimes via reason). Agency is (generally) the capacity to act on intentions. All are compatible with physical causality & explanation.
If we go back to Mary we can see that she had all the information to rationally understand the phyical correlates and explanations but still never experienced red. When she did it was new knowledge the physical could not give her. This new knowledge, perhaps a deeper knowledge. It is this non physical experiences and knowledge of a deeper reality that is associated with free will and agency.
It injects the subject into the equation and adds a new dimension which is not disassociated from reality but becomes a part of creating reality. This is Wheelers Participatory Principle. We are part of unravelling and creating reality and not just passive machines acted upon by the physical.
That sounds more like a description of philosophical intentionality, which is not related to intent but to representation, 'aboutness', or content in mental states. On second thoughts, you described attention rather than intention...
Well first I think there is attention. We have to attend to something to become conscious of it. But then once engaged we gain a deeper knowledge of what is going on and then our intentions and choices are based on that. On knowledge the physical world could not give us. As opposed to the processes we are no aware of or give little attention to which do drive us along.
You seem to be using 'non-reductionist' as a synonym for non-physical (are you?), but it's not clear - (weak) emergence is often said to be non-reductionist, in that emergent behaviour of the mass is not predictable from an individual element of the mass, but that doesn't make it non-physical. The wetness of water is one example, Conway's 'Game of Life' is another one.
Yes thats like consciousness is an epiphenomena. But like water this is still reduced back to the physical causes. A quantum field though nothing physical is still an element of the physical.
Whereas conscious phenomena cannot be reduced to its physical components. Like radiowaves cannot be reduced to a radio box. But unlike radio waves conscious experience itself cannot be reduced to the physical.
Plus it may be yet that other phenomena like how swams of insects forming another level of phenomena may be associated with some basic form of consciousness. Water is not a good example as its basically due to molecules being more loosely packed. As opposed to tightly constituted like solid objects.
So our belief in free will is concrete evidence of our free will? We certainly participate in creating reality, we have influence in and on the world, but so does the weather...
Except the whether is random. Consciousness is focused and particular. Belief is a completely different phenomena to whether. Proper beliefs are not random or untethered. Belief involves the subjects reading of reality due to being immerced in it. Its fundemental because it can alter our reality. We can only know this by asking the subject and investigating how this works in humans.
If you're suggesting that free will is a feeling, I would agree - as Isaac Bashevis Singer said, "We must believe in free will, we have no choice".
As Toto's song goes, its more than a feeling. Feelings are more superficial. Conscious experience goes deeper, into the psyche, but also transcends our senses. Like its another set of senses or a sixth sense like they say.
I think the idea that we must believe in our free will is not just because we have no choice. That implies its not real but its better that we believe because of its practical benefit. But once again I think it goes deeper. Theres not just a superficial belief but a deeply integrated belief based on knowledge through our experiences.
We may not be able to as yet completely understand this but nevertheless our conviction and belief is justified and doesn't leave room for doubt over being a false belief due to loosely connected beliefs and secondary influences.
Chalmers has a paper I have read on phenomenal belief and explains the difference and compares its quality with sense perceptions. I will try and find it as its quite enlightening.
People tend to dismiss belief as unreliable but really everything we do involves some sort of belief. Even in the objective world for example. We cannot get outside our minds to check that there is really an objective world. For all we know we could be living in a simulation and everyone is having a mass illusion. But we believe the objective world is real.
