6 ms·

Agree with the first part but I also believe that physics can't explain the hard problem of consciousness.

Houshalter 10y ago
Nothing can ever explain the "hard problem" of consciousness. It's nonscientific nonsense that's totally disconnected from reality.
- monochromatic 10y ago
  Consciousness exists. Science either can explain it, or it cannot.
  - simonh 10y ago
    Presumably you're not familiar with the term the 'Hard Problem' of conciousness [0]. It's a specific supposition that there's something special about 'qualia' of experience that can't be explained by a physical model (or scientific explanation as you term it) of conciousness. There is considerable dispute as to whether the idea makes any sense or not and therefore if the 'Hard Problem' is even a thing. Which IMHO it isn't. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousnes...
    - tomhoward 10y ago
      We're getting off topic, but it is at least worth considering just why it's described as a "hard problem", which is that science involves the observation (via human consciousness) of things in relation to other things. But because consciousness is the medium of observation, it can't be independently observed relative to other things, thus the ultimate nature of consciousness can only ever be postulated, not objectively proven.
      - faktorialas 10y ago
        Objectivity doesn't have anything to do with observation, it is orthogonal.
    - TaupeRanger 10y ago
      It is a thing. We know how to study correlations between brain activity and conscious experience. The hard problem involves figuring out how brain activity causes conscious experience. Once we explain it (or, as in physics, have a convincing theory) it won't be a problem at all anymore. Saying that something that everyone experiences all the time "doesn't exist" is not a convincing theory.
      - rspeer 10y ago
        You are the first one in this thread to say "doesn't exist", yet you put it in quotes. No one is trying to tell you that consciousness doesn't exist. The question is whether the "hard problem of consciousness" is a thing: that is, a well-formed topic of scientific inquiry.
        TaupeRanger 10y ago
        "Isn't a thing" is synonymous with "doesn't exist". Pedantry aside, the existence of the hard problem and the existence of consciousness entail the same questions. The general question is simply this: how can we explain our subjective conscious experiences in terms of physical processes?
      - simonh 10y ago
        You are implicitly drawing a distinction between brain activity and conciousness. But if the brain activity is the conciousness, then there is no distinction. I'm not saying that our experience of things isn't a thing. I'm saying that it's not a distinct thing that's separable from the brain activity.
        TaupeRanger 10y ago
        You said that you don't think the hard problem is a thing. The "hard problem" is simply a general question: how can we explain our subjective conscious experiences in terms of physical processes? That's a question which is well formed, interesting, and probably has an answer which we simply haven't been clever enough to find yet.
  - saynsedit 10y ago
    Consciousness exists as much as the color blue or the soft hum of a clean sine wave — it's qualia. Our interpretation of the physical world doesn't necessarily exist anywhere but in our minds.
  - kanzure 10y ago
    > Consciousness exists. Science either can explain it, or it cannot. More specifically, people claim the existence of consciousness. It can't be held as an absolute irrefutable by investigation. To do otherwise would be violating several basic concepts of epistemology, science and thinking.
    - duaneb 10y ago
      Bingo.
    - faktorialas 10y ago
      I mean, this sort of scepticism is applicable if you don't have consciousness yourself. Do you not see, hear, smell, think or otherwise perceive? Surely experiencing that yourself adds more weight to others' claims?
      - naasking 10y ago
        > I mean, this sort of scepticism is applicable if you don't have consciousness yourself. Do you not see, hear, smell, think or otherwise perceive? The OP is suggesting that experience isn't first-hand knowledge the way it appears to be. Certainly he agrees that we appear to have first-hand knowledge, but this appearance is only a cosmetic illusion, a trick that lends some adaptive advantage. Something like: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00500/full http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00...
- TaupeRanger 10y ago
  That's a convenient way of dismissing the problem, but since you didn't make any coherent arguments, we can safely ignore you. The hard problem simply asks how, for example, our subjective experience of color comes about, and why we should have that experience at all rather than nothing. If that's disconnected from reality and nonscientific, then you don't understand the meaning of those words.
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  - faktorialas 10y ago
    Well it is nonscientific, it's outside the bounds of science. Doesn't mean it's irrational.
    - TaupeRanger 10y ago
      What do you mean it's outside the bounds of science? Surely there can be a physical explanation that we simply haven't been clever enough to discover yet? That's all I'm saying.
      - faktorialas 10y ago
        I mean that there is no known empirical method for receiving a datapoint about the mind. We can know things about the brain, we can ask people to talk about their experiences, but we can't receive the actual contents of the experiences. Maybe we'll figure it out someday. That is probably a long way away though, and for now, the problem is for philosophy of mind, only to be informed, but not solved by relevant sciences.
        lgas 10y ago
        Someday may be closer than you think -- https://www.nextnature.net/2008/12/scientists-extract-images-directly-from-brain/ https://www.nextnature.net/2008/12/scientists-extract-images...
- faktorialas 10y ago
  The pythagoras theorem is also unscientific. Your point betrays ignorance of what science even is.
  - Houshalter 10y ago
    The pythagorean theorem could easily be tested empirically. In fact it was probably discovered through empirical observation as many ancient mathematical facts were.
    - faktorialas 10y ago
      Where do you put that test, though? The theory itself is not empirical, nor is the proof, nor is anything used in the theorem. Even if the idea came through empirical means, the theory itself isn't empirical.
      - Houshalter 10y ago
        The pythagorean theorem predicts how long the hypotenuse of a right triangle will be, based on it's sides. That's quite easy to test empirically. You take a ruler out and draw a right triangle. It's nice that we have a solid mathematical proof for it. But if the axioms of geometry were somehow thrown into question, no one would question pythagoreans theorem because we know it works and have tested it countless times. It has more evidence than entirely scientific matters like the law of gravity.
        faktorialas 10y ago
        And all that empirical stuff doesn't matter when it comes to the actual theorem. The proof does. As is the case with tons of math that don't have empirical evidence. That's why it's math and not science. My original point was that calling a philosophical problem unscientific is like saying this ice cream is nonelectronic. It wasn't meant to be, it doesn't mean it's not good. Or in the case of mathematical theorems or philosophical problems, insightful.
- RivieraKid 10y ago
  Yeah, it's nonscientific, out of the scope of science. I'm an extremely sceptical and scientific-minded person but I'm also fairly sure about this.
faktorialas 10y ago
I think he means consciousness as a factor in QM, not generally. I don't know for sure tho.

Nothing can ever explain the "hard problem" of consciousness. It's nonscientific nonsense that's totally disconnected from reality.

monochromatic 10y ago
Consciousness exists. Science either can explain it, or it cannot.
- simonh 10y ago
  Presumably you're not familiar with the term the 'Hard Problem' of conciousness [0]. It's a specific supposition that there's something special about 'qualia' of experience that can't be explained by a physical model (or scientific explanation as you term it) of conciousness. There is considerable dispute as to whether the idea makes any sense or not and therefore if the 'Hard Problem' is even a thing. Which IMHO it isn't. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousnes...
  - tomhoward 10y ago
    We're getting off topic, but it is at least worth considering just why it's described as a "hard problem", which is that science involves the observation (via human consciousness) of things in relation to other things. But because consciousness is the medium of observation, it can't be independently observed relative to other things, thus the ultimate nature of consciousness can only ever be postulated, not objectively proven.
    - faktorialas 10y ago
      Objectivity doesn't have anything to do with observation, it is orthogonal.
  - TaupeRanger 10y ago
    It is a thing. We know how to study correlations between brain activity and conscious experience. The hard problem involves figuring out how brain activity causes conscious experience. Once we explain it (or, as in physics, have a convincing theory) it won't be a problem at all anymore. Saying that something that everyone experiences all the time "doesn't exist" is not a convincing theory.
    - rspeer 10y ago
      You are the first one in this thread to say "doesn't exist", yet you put it in quotes. No one is trying to tell you that consciousness doesn't exist. The question is whether the "hard problem of consciousness" is a thing: that is, a well-formed topic of scientific inquiry.
      - TaupeRanger 10y ago
        "Isn't a thing" is synonymous with "doesn't exist". Pedantry aside, the existence of the hard problem and the existence of consciousness entail the same questions. The general question is simply this: how can we explain our subjective conscious experiences in terms of physical processes?
    - simonh 10y ago
      You are implicitly drawing a distinction between brain activity and conciousness. But if the brain activity is the conciousness, then there is no distinction. I'm not saying that our experience of things isn't a thing. I'm saying that it's not a distinct thing that's separable from the brain activity.
      - TaupeRanger 10y ago
        You said that you don't think the hard problem is a thing. The "hard problem" is simply a general question: how can we explain our subjective conscious experiences in terms of physical processes? That's a question which is well formed, interesting, and probably has an answer which we simply haven't been clever enough to find yet.
- saynsedit 10y ago
  Consciousness exists as much as the color blue or the soft hum of a clean sine wave — it's qualia. Our interpretation of the physical world doesn't necessarily exist anywhere but in our minds.
- kanzure 10y ago
  > Consciousness exists. Science either can explain it, or it cannot. More specifically, people claim the existence of consciousness. It can't be held as an absolute irrefutable by investigation. To do otherwise would be violating several basic concepts of epistemology, science and thinking.
  - duaneb 10y ago
    Bingo.
  - faktorialas 10y ago
    I mean, this sort of scepticism is applicable if you don't have consciousness yourself. Do you not see, hear, smell, think or otherwise perceive? Surely experiencing that yourself adds more weight to others' claims?
    - naasking 10y ago
      > I mean, this sort of scepticism is applicable if you don't have consciousness yourself. Do you not see, hear, smell, think or otherwise perceive? The OP is suggesting that experience isn't first-hand knowledge the way it appears to be. Certainly he agrees that we appear to have first-hand knowledge, but this appearance is only a cosmetic illusion, a trick that lends some adaptive advantage. Something like: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00500/full http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00...
TaupeRanger 10y ago
That's a convenient way of dismissing the problem, but since you didn't make any coherent arguments, we can safely ignore you. The hard problem simply asks how, for example, our subjective experience of color comes about, and why we should have that experience at all rather than nothing. If that's disconnected from reality and nonscientific, then you don't understand the meaning of those words.
- deleted 10y ago
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- deleted 10y ago
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- faktorialas 10y ago
  Well it is nonscientific, it's outside the bounds of science. Doesn't mean it's irrational.
  - TaupeRanger 10y ago
    What do you mean it's outside the bounds of science? Surely there can be a physical explanation that we simply haven't been clever enough to discover yet? That's all I'm saying.
    - faktorialas 10y ago
      I mean that there is no known empirical method for receiving a datapoint about the mind. We can know things about the brain, we can ask people to talk about their experiences, but we can't receive the actual contents of the experiences. Maybe we'll figure it out someday. That is probably a long way away though, and for now, the problem is for philosophy of mind, only to be informed, but not solved by relevant sciences.
      - lgas 10y ago
        Someday may be closer than you think -- https://www.nextnature.net/2008/12/scientists-extract-images-directly-from-brain/ https://www.nextnature.net/2008/12/scientists-extract-images...
faktorialas 10y ago
The pythagoras theorem is also unscientific. Your point betrays ignorance of what science even is.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  The pythagorean theorem could easily be tested empirically. In fact it was probably discovered through empirical observation as many ancient mathematical facts were.
  - faktorialas 10y ago
    Where do you put that test, though? The theory itself is not empirical, nor is the proof, nor is anything used in the theorem. Even if the idea came through empirical means, the theory itself isn't empirical.
    - Houshalter 10y ago
      The pythagorean theorem predicts how long the hypotenuse of a right triangle will be, based on it's sides. That's quite easy to test empirically. You take a ruler out and draw a right triangle. It's nice that we have a solid mathematical proof for it. But if the axioms of geometry were somehow thrown into question, no one would question pythagoreans theorem because we know it works and have tested it countless times. It has more evidence than entirely scientific matters like the law of gravity.
      - faktorialas 10y ago
        And all that empirical stuff doesn't matter when it comes to the actual theorem. The proof does. As is the case with tons of math that don't have empirical evidence. That's why it's math and not science. My original point was that calling a philosophical problem unscientific is like saying this ice cream is nonelectronic. It wasn't meant to be, it doesn't mean it's not good. Or in the case of mathematical theorems or philosophical problems, insightful.
RivieraKid 10y ago
Yeah, it's nonscientific, out of the scope of science. I'm an extremely sceptical and scientific-minded person but I'm also fairly sure about this.

faktorialas 10y ago

I think he means consciousness as a factor in QM, not generally. I don't know for sure tho.