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> - But internal representation of phenomena by the brains of humans certainly seems like it can be explained by biology, physics and general common sense. Yes

> - But internal representation of phenomena by the brains of humans certainly seems like it can be explained by biology, physics and general common sense. Yes, it can. Computer programs have internal representation of phenomena, and so do brains/minds. This doesn't address the problem of consciousness, though. > That the brain produces internal processes when it receives external stimuli - how hard is that? Again, no mystery there - we make machines that produce internal processes when they receive external stimuli, and we understand pretty well how they work. But that's the problem, because that understanding doesn't imply anything that resembles consciousness, and no-one knows how to make that leap other than either claiming consciousness is just a property of all processes, or claiming that the problem doesn't exist. What stops you from writing a conscious computer program?

joe_the_user 9y ago
"But that's the problem, because that understanding doesn't imply anything that resembles consciousness.." - For any given information processing system, it is reasonable to expect that the thing could distinguish kinds of memory. A cpu can read main memory or it can read. Whether data originates internally is almost certainly going to be a "big deal" for any such system. Thus if an information system is self-representing, "reading from a port is different from reading from main memory" and reasonably other distinctions are possible. Humans are social beings, we use language socially but an equivalent statement "internal experience is different sensory input" also seems clearly true. Human share language, take inputs of language and process these internally apparently creating internal representations and possibly comparing these representation to their non-linguistic experiences. A fox in the world, a sensation of a fox, a memory of a fox, and someone's description of a fox or use of the word "fox" are different but we OK with combining them most of the time (seen a fox in the wild once in my life but I feel OK with the concept, expecting this would an instance of the category/species fox). Human language of course, allows ambiguity and violation of selectional restriction - you can ask for the color of ideas and so-forth. In this context, creating a thing that "resembles consciousness" is elided to "mean" creating an internal sensation that resembles the sensation distinguishing internal and external input. But it is easy to imagine any given system naturally reject creating such an sensation unless it was "real". So it's easy to imagine a person who takes in input and claims "none of this resembles consciousness".

joe_the_user 9y ago

"But that's the problem, because that understanding doesn't imply anything that resembles consciousness.." - For any given information processing system, it is reasonable to expect that the thing could distinguish kinds of memory. A cpu can read main memory or it can read. Whether data originates internally is almost certainly going to be a "big deal" for any such system. Thus if an information system is self-representing, "reading from a port is different from reading from main memory" and reasonably other distinctions are possible. Humans are social beings, we use language socially but an equivalent statement "internal experience is different sensory input" also seems clearly true. Human share language, take inputs of language and process these internally apparently creating internal representations and possibly comparing these representation to their non-linguistic experiences. A fox in the world, a sensation of a fox, a memory of a fox, and someone's description of a fox or use of the word "fox" are different but we OK with combining them most of the time (seen a fox in the wild once in my life but I feel OK with the concept, expecting this would an instance of the category/species fox). Human language of course, allows ambiguity and violation of selectional restriction - you can ask for the color of ideas and so-forth. In this context, creating a thing that "resembles consciousness" is elided to "mean" creating an internal sensation that resembles the sensation distinguishing internal and external input. But it is easy to imagine any given system naturally reject creating such an sensation unless it was "real". So it's easy to imagine a person who takes in input and claims "none of this resembles consciousness".