Soon you will discover that consciousness is an empty word much worse than dark matter or energy in physics, as those describe observable things with clear definitions.

What is a quale? Saying it is a quantum of subjective experience explains nothing because then you have to properly define experience in general. Trivial definitions end up at sensory levels which is probably not what was meant. Advanced definitions like say "symbolic representation of an experience" are more workable but anger philosophers. (it opens practical avenues of research such as: how humans assign symbols, what kinds of symbols they construct, how are symbols communicated, what are neutral correlates of experience that may relate to symbols, how are internal and external symbols discerned) Incidentally, AI may have such qualia in as much as it can self generate symbols.

Or you have to first define what consciousness is, and not in terms of qualia.

Or at least what is subjective without trying to say that is something that cannot be objectively quantified because this is a known lie.

Qualia is experience.

Rocks don't experience things, they perform chemical reactions according to physics. In a world without qualia, there is no such thing as experience. The hard question is how chemical reactions result in something like experience. There's no logical, causal relationship we can find as to why a chemical reaction should result in one.

And even though we don't know much about what experience is or how it works, we seem to be universally aware of it. In fact we seem to have a mechanism to directly observe it. This is another thing that's weird to us and that makes "experience" special and interesting, because it's atypical - usually we can only observe things through external means; sight, touch, etc...

With "experience", this is reversed - almost as if by gaining the ability to directly observe a thing, we lose the ability to externally observe it. There is significant debate over this is an inherent property of the thing or whether advances in our measurement tools will allow us to either inderectly observe the thing, or at least observe its effects.

You're coming into this with the assumption that the ability to communicate about a thing is a prerequisite to that thing existing. It's not. The map describes the territory, not the other way around.

We don't have good definitions of what consciousness is, which is why it's hard and why physicists and philosophers want to study it. It's a thing that we can see and we are trying to learn its properties. As we learn those properties we continue to attempt to map it into another medium - language.

Then why say that it's a hard problem, even that it's a problem at all? We will cross that bridge when we will reach it. And why do you say there's a jump? Or more precisely, which jump are you talking about? I hope you don't mean the jump between subjetive experience and the physical framework that supports it... Wittgenstein showed how that's a fool errand long ago.

From a purely physical perspective, there shouldn't be such a thing as subjective experience.

We don't, strictly speaking, need to solve that problem right now. We could wait and cross that bridge later. We could just leave it at "it's an emergent property, and it works somehow." In the same way we could also say, "well, big objects attract each other, and we're gonna leave gravity at that."

But for various reasons, philosophers and scientists find that kind of answer unsatisfying.

Why?

But for various reasons, philosophers and scientists find that kind of answer unsatisfying.

https://www.sciencealert.com/watch-richard-feynman-on-why-he...

Feynman's response in the video you link is not that it's unreasonable to ask about the mechanics of a thing. Quite the opposite - it's that simple questions are often very deep and very complicated and can't be described in a quick one or two sentences.

What he's not saying is: "Why is the sky blue? Well, why shouldn't it be?"

That's appeal to ignorance.

and we don't have any precedent for something similar happening in other situations

Precedent? Come on, that's like saying atoms shouldn't exist because there is no precedent for them.

We also observe that many properties of subjective experience are counterintuitive

That's vague and terribly subjective. Who decides what is intuitive and what's not in this context?

and seem to contradict what we would expect from an emergent system

Who would expect what? Again you are simply saying that you don't understand it so it must not be possible.

I linked Feynman response just to make you undestand that what you are saying lacks any reference frame. You are using your own intuitions to declare impossible a thing that, to begin with already exists :) and moreover it's exactly what generates you intuitions, so you are falling in a circular reasoning.

Oh and Feynman doesn't say that magnetism can't be explained or that it shouldn't exist, just that it can't be explained in terms of other phenomena, exactly the same as consciousness.

Edit: HN won't allow me to reply to your last comment, so I will put it below, though I won't comment further anyway.

It's not that I'm not interested in how consciousness emerges. What I object to is the characterization of the basis of consciousness as a hard problem. It's just an area of knowledge that we haven't enough information to talk about. Saying it's a problem, even a hard one, it's jumping to conclusions very prematurely.

I... don't think subjective experience is impossible. I think that our current knowledge about how it works is very limited, there's a lot for us to learn, and I'm encouraged when philosophers and scientists research it more. I'm discouraged when people say "it exists, what else do we need to know?"

Are we saying the same thing in different ways?

When I say "jump", I don't mean that there is no explanation for subjective experience. I mean that we do not currently know what that explanation is. It's a jump because it is currently a gap in our knowledge about a phenomenon that exhibits interesting properties and that we don't know how to reliably measure or reproduce.

When we talk about things like consciousness we have to "jump" over that gap. It would be nice to fill in the gap a little. Is it possible you thought that I meant something else?

For a lot of people, basic questions like "what are atoms," or "why is there matter", or "how does a physical process create a subjective experience" are really interesting. And to a certain extent, why should atoms exist? It's not a bad question - we can start talking about electrons, and then we can start talking about forces, and then at a certain point we'll have to say, "well, we don't know about this thing yet. Ask again in a decade and maybe we'll have some theories to propose."

There are large branches of science devoted to these types of questions, and pursuing them has lead to useful theories and practical applications in the past.