Witten: > But I think there probably will remain a level of mystery regarding why the brain is functioning in the ways that we can see it, why it creates consc

Witten: > But I think there probably will remain a level of mystery regarding why the brain is functioning in the ways that we can see it, why it creates consciousness or whatever you want to call it. How it functions in the way a conscious human being functions will become clear. But what it is we are experiencing when we are experiencing consciousness, I see as remaining a mystery... Understanding the difference between __workings__ and experience of consciousness, the hard problem of consciousness [1], is crucial for understanding what Witten says. Witten says that while science will figure out how mind works in great detail the hard problem of consciousness remains outside science. It's easy to be sympathetic to Witten. The problem with consciousness seems to be with intuitive meaning of a word and concept. Imagine that someone builds small programs -- or really small brains in a vat -- that are conscious of color blue, or feel universal love and nothing else. Program's attention and awareness never goes elsewhere and it performs no other cognitive tasks than being conscious in the moment without long term memory. Can you imagine scientists going trough the __workings__ -- code, neuron diagrams or state representations -- of it's mind and going, oh this thing clearly conscious, we can see it now and agree. There seems to be assumption that the hard problem of consciousness is tied to multiple high level cognitive capabilities. I don't see the connection. The crux of being conscious is having the cognitive ability of aware-consiouns-attentative-reflective at least tiny amount of time. If we could scientifically determine what consciousness is, we should be able to make nice hyper-aware-of-blue-and-knowing-it program and it would be relatively simple one. [1]: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Hard_problem_of_consciousness http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Hard_problem_of_consciou...