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There is nothing delusional about the fact that the first-person experience exists and is the basis of all science, but is very hard to connect with the scienti

There is nothing delusional about the fact that the first-person experience exists and is the basis of all science, but is very hard to connect with the scientific view of the universe. If science has to "discard" this fact as inconvenient, that says more about science than the fact.

joe_the_user 10y ago
There is nothing delusional about the fact that the first person experience exists and is the basis of all science The most commonly agreed thing is the people agree they have first-person experiences. That this is "the basis of all science" is a fine example of how people jump from this highly value quality to any old thing - I've also heard that subjective experience refutes all materialism, shows humans aren't computers, proves the existence of God and so-forth.
- chanakya 10y ago
  Why are joe_the_user's comments being downvoted? He's presenting a well known view among philosophers, just doing so forcefully.
Houshalter 10y ago
But he isn't talking about "first-person experience", he specifically said "consciousness". Which is a confused word. He can't give any solid definition to it, not without using other similar and "fuzzy" words. He can't give any test that distinguishes "consciousness" from "non-consciousness". You can say "that's the point of the hard problem", but that's as silly as making up a "hard problem of defining blegness". And insisting that I have "blegness" but refusing to define what I mean by that. The problem of consciousness is a purely empirical question. That is we can examine the brain, and we can figure out how it works. We can find a set of rules that explains human behavior. In theory, we could even model human behavior so well that we can understand exactly why some people insist they have "consciousness". We could record the neurons that fire to produce that thought, and we can trace back to what structures because it. And once such a detailed model exists, there is nothing left to explain! We would know exactly why people are saying they feel "conscious" or "blegness". There would be no need to introduce weird philosophies or supernatural beliefs.
- aninhumer 10y ago
  >he specifically said "consciousness". Which is a confused word. He can't give any solid definition to it We can't give solid definitions for anything without ultimately referencing some shared baseline of experience. So unless you're saying you don't experience qualia/conciousness, then it's as well defined as anything else is. >We would know exactly why people are saying they feel "conscious" or "blegness". But that still wouldn't explain the experience itself.
  - Houshalter 10y ago
    >So unless you're saying you don't experience qualia/conciousness I don't see any evidence anyone experiences this, including myself. It's just nonsense. >But that still wouldn't explain the experience itself. How would it not? If you know exactly what causes people to say they "experience" there is no need to explain anything else.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>There is nothing delusional about the fact that the first-person experience exists and is the basis of all science That is a wildly incorrect characterization of the Hard Problem. Remember, Chalmers and most of the rest of the Hard Problemers fully admit that all the "merely" functional aspects of consciousness actually exist. They think that a p-zombie can in fact perform scientific experiments, reason about the world, figure out what time the bus will come, etc. So in fact, first-person experience, as characterized in the Hard Problem, is not the basis of any science. Functional cognition is fully admitted to be the basis for every field of human domain knowledge, and it's also the object of study for cognitive scientists.

joe_the_user 10y ago

There is nothing delusional about the fact that the first person experience exists and is the basis of all science The most commonly agreed thing is the people agree they have first-person experiences. That this is "the basis of all science" is a fine example of how people jump from this highly value quality to any old thing - I've also heard that subjective experience refutes all materialism, shows humans aren't computers, proves the existence of God and so-forth.

chanakya 10y ago
Why are joe_the_user's comments being downvoted? He's presenting a well known view among philosophers, just doing so forcefully.

Houshalter 10y ago

But he isn't talking about "first-person experience", he specifically said "consciousness". Which is a confused word. He can't give any solid definition to it, not without using other similar and "fuzzy" words. He can't give any test that distinguishes "consciousness" from "non-consciousness". You can say "that's the point of the hard problem", but that's as silly as making up a "hard problem of defining blegness". And insisting that I have "blegness" but refusing to define what I mean by that. The problem of consciousness is a purely empirical question. That is we can examine the brain, and we can figure out how it works. We can find a set of rules that explains human behavior. In theory, we could even model human behavior so well that we can understand exactly why some people insist they have "consciousness". We could record the neurons that fire to produce that thought, and we can trace back to what structures because it. And once such a detailed model exists, there is nothing left to explain! We would know exactly why people are saying they feel "conscious" or "blegness". There would be no need to introduce weird philosophies or supernatural beliefs.

aninhumer 10y ago
>he specifically said "consciousness". Which is a confused word. He can't give any solid definition to it We can't give solid definitions for anything without ultimately referencing some shared baseline of experience. So unless you're saying you don't experience qualia/conciousness, then it's as well defined as anything else is. >We would know exactly why people are saying they feel "conscious" or "blegness". But that still wouldn't explain the experience itself.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  >So unless you're saying you don't experience qualia/conciousness I don't see any evidence anyone experiences this, including myself. It's just nonsense. >But that still wouldn't explain the experience itself. How would it not? If you know exactly what causes people to say they "experience" there is no need to explain anything else.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

>There is nothing delusional about the fact that the first-person experience exists and is the basis of all science That is a wildly incorrect characterization of the Hard Problem. Remember, Chalmers and most of the rest of the Hard Problemers fully admit that all the "merely" functional aspects of consciousness actually exist. They think that a p-zombie can in fact perform scientific experiments, reason about the world, figure out what time the bus will come, etc. So in fact, first-person experience, as characterized in the Hard Problem, is not the basis of any science. Functional cognition is fully admitted to be the basis for every field of human domain knowledge, and it's also the object of study for cognitive scientists.