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I don't think that meditation is useful evidence for the hard problem. Personally, I don't need further convincing that the hard problem exists, and I'm sympath

by adrusi 10y ago

I don't think that meditation is useful evidence for the hard problem. Personally, I don't need further convincing that the hard problem exists, and I'm sympathetic to the usefulness of meditation as an exploratory tool, but it is a practice that requires you to basically accept consciousness as dogma and then spend a lot of time studying it. Its structure is just too cult-like to be useful for convincing others, and you should be worried about letting it reinforce your own beliefs as well. It's kind of bad PR. Supporting the existence of the hard problem appears awfully woo to begin with (undeservedly but understandably). When people appeal to meditation and psychedelics, which have even stronger woo connotations, it really doesn't help.

Florin_Andrei 10y ago
> accept consciousness as dogma I find statements such as this baffling. To me, consciousness is the one thing strictly self-evident, with everything else having a second-hand status. There really is a hard stop here. > meditation [...] Its structure is just too cult-like That is a real problem, but not an unavoidable one. Many people practice meditation without joining any cult. It's something you do, like going to the gym. Heck, even the gym requires membership, whereas meditation can be practiced entirely on your own.
- carapace 10y ago
  After ~30 years of thinking about it, I am beginning to suspect that some people (e.g. Dennett) don't know they are conscious. Gurdjieff talked about the effort "to remember oneself." Is is possible that some people have never had these moments naturally? Or don't remember them? It would explain why they abjure the "hard problem" if they literally don't know what it is, even as they talk about it like they do. (Human p-zombies, if I understand the term correctly.)
  - EGreg 10y ago
    Can you explain in more detail? I am finding that everything we say about consciousness is just an artifact of our language. If we are careful to always include the subject of the sentence as well as the unspoken assumptions then I have not come across any questions that don't have a straightforward answer. Same with morality.
    - carapace 10y ago
      Well, I can try. ;-) If you were to examine the contents of your awareness systematically you would have "subject" after "subject", and you could make sentences about them (there are thoughts and feelings which lack names but these would still be subject to your awareness.) But there is always this other "thing", the awareness, that can never quite be subject to language. (In other words, if you were not "aware" there is no way I could describe awareness to you. It has no qualities.) So this is the first aspect of the "Hard Problem of Consciousness": the foundational fact from which flows the veracity of all others is this indescribable "self" that is "aware", what is it? The second aspect is the puzzle of "why qualia?" What the heck is "red" anyway? The subjective experience of "red" (and all the others) is kind of impossible. Yet there it is. It's like a paradox. One the one hand, there is no doubting that our organs mediate the contents of awareness. But on the other hand subjective experience seems impossible. Anyway, all that to say, in order to make sense of people who flat out claim that the brain generates or creates consciousness, I have recently begun to entertain the idea that maybe, just maybe, they don't have the experience. What I mean is that self-awareness is not automatic. You have to notice it, then work at it. So maybe the reason they don't see the hard problem of consciousness is that they don't see the hard problem of consciousness.
      - c23gooey 10y ago
        > What I mean is that self-awareness is not automatic. Without regard to the question at hand - I think the lack of self-awareness is fairly evident in western society in general. To extrapolate, would mean that a large portion of western society is not aware of their own consciousness or the influence it has on their day-to-day lives
        carapace 10y ago
        "What do you think of Western Civilization, Mr. Gandhi?" "I think it would be a good idea." ;-)
  - drjesusphd 10y ago
    If you're willing to entertain the idea that some people don't know they're conscious, it's not that far of a leap to say they actually aren't. You might be interested in reading about Julian Jaymes. He put forward a hypothesis that consciousness is a very recent (3000 years or so) phenomenon. This is a rabbit hole I prefer not to go down, because it just seems so absurd and solipist. I agree that there's an almost eerie inability to grasp the idea of what some of us refer to as consciousness. This word has all kinds of linguistic baggage, so it often feels like thinkers talk past each other when talking about it. I hesitate (perhaps refuse?) to read any more into it than that.
    - carapace 10y ago
      My personal belief (to about 90%) is that there was some sort of Disaster (lit. "sundering from the stars") in the past and we are all, globally, suffering from shock in the aftermath. I don't think current conditions are normal.

by adrusi 10y ago

Florin_Andrei 10y ago

> accept consciousness as dogma I find statements such as this baffling. To me, consciousness is the one thing strictly self-evident, with everything else having a second-hand status. There really is a hard stop here. > meditation [...] Its structure is just too cult-like That is a real problem, but not an unavoidable one. Many people practice meditation without joining any cult. It's something you do, like going to the gym. Heck, even the gym requires membership, whereas meditation can be practiced entirely on your own.

carapace 10y ago
After ~30 years of thinking about it, I am beginning to suspect that some people (e.g. Dennett) don't know they are conscious. Gurdjieff talked about the effort "to remember oneself." Is is possible that some people have never had these moments naturally? Or don't remember them? It would explain why they abjure the "hard problem" if they literally don't know what it is, even as they talk about it like they do. (Human p-zombies, if I understand the term correctly.)
- EGreg 10y ago
  Can you explain in more detail? I am finding that everything we say about consciousness is just an artifact of our language. If we are careful to always include the subject of the sentence as well as the unspoken assumptions then I have not come across any questions that don't have a straightforward answer. Same with morality.
  - carapace 10y ago
    Well, I can try. ;-) If you were to examine the contents of your awareness systematically you would have "subject" after "subject", and you could make sentences about them (there are thoughts and feelings which lack names but these would still be subject to your awareness.) But there is always this other "thing", the awareness, that can never quite be subject to language. (In other words, if you were not "aware" there is no way I could describe awareness to you. It has no qualities.) So this is the first aspect of the "Hard Problem of Consciousness": the foundational fact from which flows the veracity of all others is this indescribable "self" that is "aware", what is it? The second aspect is the puzzle of "why qualia?" What the heck is "red" anyway? The subjective experience of "red" (and all the others) is kind of impossible. Yet there it is. It's like a paradox. One the one hand, there is no doubting that our organs mediate the contents of awareness. But on the other hand subjective experience seems impossible. Anyway, all that to say, in order to make sense of people who flat out claim that the brain generates or creates consciousness, I have recently begun to entertain the idea that maybe, just maybe, they don't have the experience. What I mean is that self-awareness is not automatic. You have to notice it, then work at it. So maybe the reason they don't see the hard problem of consciousness is that they don't see the hard problem of consciousness.
    - c23gooey 10y ago
      > What I mean is that self-awareness is not automatic. Without regard to the question at hand - I think the lack of self-awareness is fairly evident in western society in general. To extrapolate, would mean that a large portion of western society is not aware of their own consciousness or the influence it has on their day-to-day lives
      - carapace 10y ago
        "What do you think of Western Civilization, Mr. Gandhi?" "I think it would be a good idea." ;-)
- drjesusphd 10y ago
  If you're willing to entertain the idea that some people don't know they're conscious, it's not that far of a leap to say they actually aren't. You might be interested in reading about Julian Jaymes. He put forward a hypothesis that consciousness is a very recent (3000 years or so) phenomenon. This is a rabbit hole I prefer not to go down, because it just seems so absurd and solipist. I agree that there's an almost eerie inability to grasp the idea of what some of us refer to as consciousness. This word has all kinds of linguistic baggage, so it often feels like thinkers talk past each other when talking about it. I hesitate (perhaps refuse?) to read any more into it than that.
  - carapace 10y ago
    My personal belief (to about 90%) is that there was some sort of Disaster (lit. "sundering from the stars") in the past and we are all, globally, suffering from shock in the aftermath. I don't think current conditions are normal.