16 ms·

I've always felt that Dennett has side stepped the question here. The 'hard problem' here is to explain how a set of physical processes give rise to consciousne

I've always felt that Dennett has side stepped the question here. The 'hard problem' here is to explain how a set of physical processes give rise to consciousness or sensory experience at all. In other words, why the lights are on. As far as I can tell, consciousness is literally the one thing in the universe that can't be an illusion. Even if, in the extreme case, we're brains in a vat, etc.

joe_the_user 8y ago
The 'hard problem' here is to explain how a set of physical processes give rise to consciousness or sensory experience at all. In other words, why the lights are on. But subjective experience isn't the light being "on" or "off". Subjective experience is a messy, fuzzy collection of stuff. People do things without intending to, people believe things they've automatically were intentional and reverse. The zone between waking and sleeping isn't set, etc. etc. If one does the "blind spot" experiment, one realizes one's vision is constantly confabulating to make for vision's imperfections. And so-forth. So there's no reason no to expect that our experience and memory of consciousness isn't a incomplete reflection of what's actually happening. Lots of people strongly believe they have a soul. That's clearly anti-materialist and has no basis in reality but it seems like a quite natural illusion (one that the "hard problem" ideology resembles). The "subjective experience exists" statement, if it's taken to mean a single, uniform fabric of experience exists, seems unjustified given the overall messiness I mentioned and if the hard-problem claim isn't this, what is it?
- incadenza 8y ago
  I'd take your argument further even. We could be mistaken about every experience we've ever had. Let's take the brain in a vat example, in which none of our sensory experiences accurately model reality. This has no bearing on the hard problem of describing consciousness or how organic material (maybe silicon some day) gives rise to it. It also doesn't indicate how a physicalist picture of the mind could, in principle, capture the phenomena.
  - rosser 8y ago
    You can be mistaken about the content of your experience, but I can not conceive you you can be mistaken about the fact you're having one. Dream, delusion, reality, drugs, schizophrenia, completely fabricated sensory manifold, whatever; the content does not matter for purposes of this question. Is that brain in a jar experiencing something? Is it experiencing at all? That's consciousness.
    - incadenza 8y ago
      Yes! Much better said.
    - kovrik 8y ago
      But wouldn't it mean that literally all living beings have consciousness? That consciousness is not a binary thing, but there are many levels of consciousness. Humans always liked egocentric views -- "The Earth is the center of the Universe". Or another version: "Humans are superior because they have consciousness". If there are many levels of consciousness, one may imagine some extraterrestrial super intelligent beings that are many levels above humans, that would think of humans as non-consciousness beings -- like we think of many animals. Now, if we go down instead, we can say that all animals with brain are conscious (just as not as we are), can't we?
      - rosser 8y ago
        Yes, it does. In fact, I submit that it's the duty of anyone saying that the line separating "conscious" and "not-conscious" animals is here or there has to justify not just why that's where they drew the line, but that there is one in the first place.
    - szemet 8y ago
      can not conceive you you can be mistaken about the fact you're having one The experince of having an experince can be wrong. If the existinece of experience is the content of the experience - and you have written that the content can be wrong. If one mistaken about the very fact of experience, is that valid an experience too? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton–Babinski_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton–Babinski_syndrome
- NickM 8y ago
  "Subjective experience exists" doesn't imply there's a single, uniform fabric of experience, nor does it imply anything about how subjective experience relates to an accurate perception of the world. Even if I hallucinate something that doesn't exist, there's still a subjective experience that I have of that perception. I have no idea if anyone else subjectively experiences anything; everyone else might just be philosophical zombies. I still want to know why I have any subjective awareness of the world, though, and I don't see any way that that question can be answered via any sort of objective measurement or scientific process. You can study my eyes and my brain to explain why I can accurately perceive the color blue, but nobody can truly explain what it's like to see the color blue.
- catawbasam 8y ago
  "That's clearly anti-materialist and has no basis in reality" ...so a point, a line, and a plane have no basis in reality. Poor Euclid. Poor Geometry students, wasting their time all those many generations.
jbattle 8y ago
> As far as I can tell, consciousness is literally the one thing in the universe that can't be an illusion. Even if, in the extreme case, we're brains in a vat, etc. Cogito ergo sum! "I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Does it now follow that I too do not exist? No: if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed. But there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me; and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind."
lisper 8y ago
Like I said, trying to condense it down to an HN comment imposes some very severe restrictions. The word "illusion" is not really quite right. A better description might be (and these are my words, not Dennett's) that consciousness is in its own ontological category [1]. [1] http://blog.rongarret.info/2015/02/31-flavors-of-ontology.html http://blog.rongarret.info/2015/02/31-flavors-of-ontology.ht...
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  Ugh. Does discussing ontological repercussions of anything ever brought a practical result? Especially with such lack of logical rigor as shown when even otherwise decent scientists are talking about consciousness... Mathematics has much more consistent definitions of categories and similar concepts with real measurable results and applications.
  - lisper 8y ago
    You didn't actually read the linked essay, did you? Because that's pretty much what it says.
    - AstralStorm 8y ago
      Yes, albeit it indulges ontology with a few pages of text. Meandering until it gets to some of its points.
omginternets 8y ago
>The 'hard problem' here is to explain how a set of physical processes give rise to consciousness or sensory experience at all. In other words, why the lights are on. Dennett would reply: once I've explained every detail of the physiological system, and in so doing perfectly mapped inputs to outputs, what is there left to explain?
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  Obviously, internal states and the actual system. A memoryless and stateful system may produce similar or even same output given identical input. Since you cannot quantity infinite span of inputs, you cannot quite be sure which one you're dealing with. This is even harder if both systems are noisy. The mechanistic corollary is that you have to mess with whatever causes consciousness to actually understand it. Inject states, damage components and more. Even then you might make a mistake.
- incadenza 8y ago
  I'd argue that any such mapping of inputs and outputs, (fully mapping our mind) would equally describe to a system that is not conscious. In other words, the whole analysis could as well be describing a zombie that behaves like us but does not have experiences. Put another way, it would fail to capture why that system (our brains) produce any experiences at all. I know this is disputed, of course. But I basically think the hard problem is a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
- cscurmudgeon 8y ago
  Dennet's reasoning is essentially: "I can't see or don't know anything beyond this line, so therefore nothing can exist beyond this line." While attractive, it is not logically valid
  - naasking 8y ago
    I think it's more like, "there is no reason to suppose there is anything beyond this line because everything can be explained without crossing it", which is logically valid.
narag 8y ago
The 'hard problem' here is to explain how a set of physical processes give rise to consciousness or sensory experience at all. Why is it hard? It's as if evolution had not provided us with the framework to do that. Primitive beings have very simple inputs and minds. As the behaviour needed for survival gets more complex, minds also need to join data from different senses in an integrated image. Also we need pain and pleasure to direct the behaviour. Quantitative changes result in qualitative ones and that's it. Everybody acknowledges how the brain is such a complex machine and then got surprised that it's able to build perception. That's weird.
- danShumway 8y ago
  Imagine if I came to you and asked, "how is that bird flying?" It wouldn't be very useful for you to answer, "well, it figured out how so that it could escape predators." You're describing a reason why consciousness might exist, but you're no closer to describing how it exists. The reason it's a hard problem is that we don't understand the relationship between a purely physical process and awareness. It's not clear how at some point a complicated set of behaviors would equate to the personal experience we ourselves feel - we don't have good mechanisms or tools yet to explain how that jump is possible. So yeah, it's obvious that the jump happens. But outside of philosophers and scientists like Daniel Dennett, probably the majority of people are already convinced of that part. The hard problem isn't "why qualia", it's "how qualia".
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    Start with what it is. And do not mix it up with sentience or intelligence. Soon you will discover that consciousness is an empty word much worse than dark matter or energy in physics, as those describe observable things with clear definitions. What is a quale? Saying it is a quantum of subjective experience explains nothing because then you have to properly define experience in general. Trivial definitions end up at sensory levels which is probably not what was meant. Advanced definitions like say "symbolic representation of an experience" are more workable but anger philosophers. (it opens practical avenues of research such as: how humans assign symbols, what kinds of symbols they construct, how are symbols communicated, what are neutral correlates of experience that may relate to symbols, how are internal and external symbols discerned) Incidentally, AI may have such qualia in as much as it can self generate symbols. Or you have to first define what consciousness is, and not in terms of qualia. Or at least what is subjective without trying to say that is something that cannot be objectively quantified because this is a known lie.

joe_the_user 8y ago

The 'hard problem' here is to explain how a set of physical processes give rise to consciousness or sensory experience at all. In other words, why the lights are on. But subjective experience isn't the light being "on" or "off". Subjective experience is a messy, fuzzy collection of stuff. People do things without intending to, people believe things they've automatically were intentional and reverse. The zone between waking and sleeping isn't set, etc. etc. If one does the "blind spot" experiment, one realizes one's vision is constantly confabulating to make for vision's imperfections. And so-forth. So there's no reason no to expect that our experience and memory of consciousness isn't a incomplete reflection of what's actually happening. Lots of people strongly believe they have a soul. That's clearly anti-materialist and has no basis in reality but it seems like a quite natural illusion (one that the "hard problem" ideology resembles). The "subjective experience exists" statement, if it's taken to mean a single, uniform fabric of experience exists, seems unjustified given the overall messiness I mentioned and if the hard-problem claim isn't this, what is it?

incadenza 8y ago
I'd take your argument further even. We could be mistaken about every experience we've ever had. Let's take the brain in a vat example, in which none of our sensory experiences accurately model reality. This has no bearing on the hard problem of describing consciousness or how organic material (maybe silicon some day) gives rise to it. It also doesn't indicate how a physicalist picture of the mind could, in principle, capture the phenomena.
- rosser 8y ago
  You can be mistaken about the content of your experience, but I can not conceive you you can be mistaken about the fact you're having one. Dream, delusion, reality, drugs, schizophrenia, completely fabricated sensory manifold, whatever; the content does not matter for purposes of this question. Is that brain in a jar experiencing something? Is it experiencing at all? That's consciousness.
  - incadenza 8y ago
    Yes! Much better said.
  - kovrik 8y ago
    But wouldn't it mean that literally all living beings have consciousness? That consciousness is not a binary thing, but there are many levels of consciousness. Humans always liked egocentric views -- "The Earth is the center of the Universe". Or another version: "Humans are superior because they have consciousness". If there are many levels of consciousness, one may imagine some extraterrestrial super intelligent beings that are many levels above humans, that would think of humans as non-consciousness beings -- like we think of many animals. Now, if we go down instead, we can say that all animals with brain are conscious (just as not as we are), can't we?
    - rosser 8y ago
      Yes, it does. In fact, I submit that it's the duty of anyone saying that the line separating "conscious" and "not-conscious" animals is here or there has to justify not just why that's where they drew the line, but that there is one in the first place.
  - szemet 8y ago
    can not conceive you you can be mistaken about the fact you're having one The experince of having an experince can be wrong. If the existinece of experience is the content of the experience - and you have written that the content can be wrong. If one mistaken about the very fact of experience, is that valid an experience too? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton–Babinski_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton–Babinski_syndrome
NickM 8y ago
"Subjective experience exists" doesn't imply there's a single, uniform fabric of experience, nor does it imply anything about how subjective experience relates to an accurate perception of the world. Even if I hallucinate something that doesn't exist, there's still a subjective experience that I have of that perception. I have no idea if anyone else subjectively experiences anything; everyone else might just be philosophical zombies. I still want to know why I have any subjective awareness of the world, though, and I don't see any way that that question can be answered via any sort of objective measurement or scientific process. You can study my eyes and my brain to explain why I can accurately perceive the color blue, but nobody can truly explain what it's like to see the color blue.
catawbasam 8y ago
"That's clearly anti-materialist and has no basis in reality" ...so a point, a line, and a plane have no basis in reality. Poor Euclid. Poor Geometry students, wasting their time all those many generations.

jbattle 8y ago

> As far as I can tell, consciousness is literally the one thing in the universe that can't be an illusion. Even if, in the extreme case, we're brains in a vat, etc. Cogito ergo sum! "I have convinced myself that there is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Does it now follow that I too do not exist? No: if I convinced myself of something then I certainly existed. But there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who is deliberately and constantly deceiving me. In that case I too undoubtedly exist, if he is deceiving me; and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing so long as I think that I am something. So after considering everything very thoroughly, I must finally conclude that this proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind."

lisper 8y ago

Like I said, trying to condense it down to an HN comment imposes some very severe restrictions. The word "illusion" is not really quite right. A better description might be (and these are my words, not Dennett's) that consciousness is in its own ontological category [1]. [1] http://blog.rongarret.info/2015/02/31-flavors-of-ontology.html http://blog.rongarret.info/2015/02/31-flavors-of-ontology.ht...

AstralStorm 8y ago
Ugh. Does discussing ontological repercussions of anything ever brought a practical result? Especially with such lack of logical rigor as shown when even otherwise decent scientists are talking about consciousness... Mathematics has much more consistent definitions of categories and similar concepts with real measurable results and applications.
- lisper 8y ago
  You didn't actually read the linked essay, did you? Because that's pretty much what it says.
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    Yes, albeit it indulges ontology with a few pages of text. Meandering until it gets to some of its points.

omginternets 8y ago

>The 'hard problem' here is to explain how a set of physical processes give rise to consciousness or sensory experience at all. In other words, why the lights are on. Dennett would reply: once I've explained every detail of the physiological system, and in so doing perfectly mapped inputs to outputs, what is there left to explain?

AstralStorm 8y ago
Obviously, internal states and the actual system. A memoryless and stateful system may produce similar or even same output given identical input. Since you cannot quantity infinite span of inputs, you cannot quite be sure which one you're dealing with. This is even harder if both systems are noisy. The mechanistic corollary is that you have to mess with whatever causes consciousness to actually understand it. Inject states, damage components and more. Even then you might make a mistake.
incadenza 8y ago
I'd argue that any such mapping of inputs and outputs, (fully mapping our mind) would equally describe to a system that is not conscious. In other words, the whole analysis could as well be describing a zombie that behaves like us but does not have experiences. Put another way, it would fail to capture why that system (our brains) produce any experiences at all. I know this is disputed, of course. But I basically think the hard problem is a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
cscurmudgeon 8y ago
Dennet's reasoning is essentially: "I can't see or don't know anything beyond this line, so therefore nothing can exist beyond this line." While attractive, it is not logically valid
- naasking 8y ago
  I think it's more like, "there is no reason to suppose there is anything beyond this line because everything can be explained without crossing it", which is logically valid.

narag 8y ago

The 'hard problem' here is to explain how a set of physical processes give rise to consciousness or sensory experience at all. Why is it hard? It's as if evolution had not provided us with the framework to do that. Primitive beings have very simple inputs and minds. As the behaviour needed for survival gets more complex, minds also need to join data from different senses in an integrated image. Also we need pain and pleasure to direct the behaviour. Quantitative changes result in qualitative ones and that's it. Everybody acknowledges how the brain is such a complex machine and then got surprised that it's able to build perception. That's weird.

danShumway 8y ago
Imagine if I came to you and asked, "how is that bird flying?" It wouldn't be very useful for you to answer, "well, it figured out how so that it could escape predators." You're describing a reason why consciousness might exist, but you're no closer to describing how it exists. The reason it's a hard problem is that we don't understand the relationship between a purely physical process and awareness. It's not clear how at some point a complicated set of behaviors would equate to the personal experience we ourselves feel - we don't have good mechanisms or tools yet to explain how that jump is possible. So yeah, it's obvious that the jump happens. But outside of philosophers and scientists like Daniel Dennett, probably the majority of people are already convinced of that part. The hard problem isn't "why qualia", it's "how qualia".
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  Start with what it is. And do not mix it up with sentience or intelligence. Soon you will discover that consciousness is an empty word much worse than dark matter or energy in physics, as those describe observable things with clear definitions. What is a quale? Saying it is a quantum of subjective experience explains nothing because then you have to properly define experience in general. Trivial definitions end up at sensory levels which is probably not what was meant. Advanced definitions like say "symbolic representation of an experience" are more workable but anger philosophers. (it opens practical avenues of research such as: how humans assign symbols, what kinds of symbols they construct, how are symbols communicated, what are neutral correlates of experience that may relate to symbols, how are internal and external symbols discerned) Incidentally, AI may have such qualia in as much as it can self generate symbols. Or you have to first define what consciousness is, and not in terms of qualia. Or at least what is subjective without trying to say that is something that cannot be objectively quantified because this is a known lie.