The poet Rumi, via Essentia
And this is the whole thing.
Is it perfectly left and right true? Logos true and Mythos true too?
Some days I believe it is the only necessary truth.
All days, I wish it to be so.
This day, I work on knowing whether it is Real, in all the ways, or … not.
Beside that knowing, one way or the other, all trailers, all dollars, all else, is nothing.
***
So, AI, How close are the humans to solving the hard problem of consciousness? Or: has it been solved, perhaps long ago in China or India?
And saith the machine:
Historical traditions (Indian, Chinese, Buddhist, Vedantic, Taoist) provide sophisticated phenomenology and metaphysical accounts of mind and consciousness, and those teachings have influenced contemporary thinking, but they do not supply a solved scientific explanation that convinces the wider scientific-philosophical community.
Scientists and philosophers have made substantial empirical and theoretical progress on correlates and mechanisms of consciousness, but the hard problem—explaining why physical processes give rise to subjective experience—remains unsolved as of June 15, 2026.
***
Listen, bot. You’re telling me that the hard problem is trying to prove how the physical produces the subjective, or how consciousness emerges from the physical.
And completely ignoring the obvious alternative that It Simply Doesn’t.
You, bot, have been programmed to be a dumb-ass materialist.
I heartily doubt that there will ever be a “scientific” proof about what consciousness is.
In the first half of the seventeen minutes here
Solving the Hard Problem of Consciousness
Our Man Rupert demonstrates (to my satisfaction at least) why Materialism is wrong, and also demonstrates (implicitly) why a Rhetorical proof is just not enough either.
In the second half, he is the finger pointing at the moon, thus:
The only proof that will ever work is first-person experiential proof.
So go on then. Meditate and cogitate and suck a little ayahuasca maybe …
Prove it to yourself, Grasshopper.
If you can.