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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 evolu

by 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.
  - danShumway 8y ago
    > Saying it is a quantum of subjective experience explains nothing because then you have to properly define experience in general. Qualia is experience. Rocks don't experience things, they perform chemical reactions according to physics. In a world without qualia, there is no such thing as experience. The hard question is how chemical reactions result in something like experience. There's no logical, causal relationship we can find as to why a chemical reaction should result in one. And even though we don't know much about what experience is or how it works, we seem to be universally aware of it. In fact we seem to have a mechanism to directly observe it. This is another thing that's weird to us and that makes "experience" special and interesting, because it's atypical - usually we can only observe things through external means; sight, touch, etc... With "experience", this is reversed - almost as if by gaining the ability to directly observe a thing, we lose the ability to externally observe it. There is significant debate over this is an inherent property of the thing or whether advances in our measurement tools will allow us to either inderectly observe the thing, or at least observe its effects. You're coming into this with the assumption that the ability to communicate about a thing is a prerequisite to that thing existing. It's not. The map describes the territory, not the other way around. We don't have good definitions of what consciousness is, which is why it's hard and why physicists and philosophers want to study it. It's a thing that we can see and we are trying to learn its properties. As we learn those properties we continue to attempt to map it into another medium - language.
- narag 8y ago
  ...we don't have good mechanisms or tools yet to explain how that jump is possible Then why say that it's a hard problem, even that it's a problem at all? We will cross that bridge when we will reach it. And why do you say there's a jump? Or more precisely, which jump are you talking about? I hope you don't mean the jump between subjetive experience and the physical framework that supports it... Wittgenstein showed how that's a fool errand long ago.
  - danShumway 8y ago
    I mean the existence of subjective experience in the first place. The jump is not just as Wittgenstein suggested that we might not be able to communicate a subjective experience, it's also that we don't understand how a subjective experience exists to communicate in the first place. From a purely physical perspective, there shouldn't be such a thing as subjective experience. We don't, strictly speaking, need to solve that problem right now. We could wait and cross that bridge later. We could just leave it at "it's an emergent property, and it works somehow." In the same way we could also say, "well, big objects attract each other, and we're gonna leave gravity at that." But for various reasons, philosophers and scientists find that kind of answer unsatisfying.
    - narag 8y ago
      From a purely physical perspective, there shouldn't be such a thing as subjective experience. Why? But for various reasons, philosophers and scientists find that kind of answer unsatisfying. https://www.sciencealert.com/watch-richard-feynman-on-why-he-can-t-tell-you-how-magnets-work https://www.sciencealert.com/watch-richard-feynman-on-why-he...
      - danShumway 8y ago
        Because we don't see any reason for it, and we don't have any precedent for something similar happening in other situations. We also observe that many properties of subjective experience are counterintuitive and seem to contradict what we would expect from an emergent system. This makes us curious and we want to learn more about it. Feynman's response in the video you link is not that it's unreasonable to ask about the mechanics of a thing. Quite the opposite - it's that simple questions are often very deep and very complicated and can't be described in a quick one or two sentences. What he's not saying is: "Why is the sky blue? Well, why shouldn't it be?"

by narag 8y ago

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.
- danShumway 8y ago
  > Saying it is a quantum of subjective experience explains nothing because then you have to properly define experience in general. Qualia is experience. Rocks don't experience things, they perform chemical reactions according to physics. In a world without qualia, there is no such thing as experience. The hard question is how chemical reactions result in something like experience. There's no logical, causal relationship we can find as to why a chemical reaction should result in one. And even though we don't know much about what experience is or how it works, we seem to be universally aware of it. In fact we seem to have a mechanism to directly observe it. This is another thing that's weird to us and that makes "experience" special and interesting, because it's atypical - usually we can only observe things through external means; sight, touch, etc... With "experience", this is reversed - almost as if by gaining the ability to directly observe a thing, we lose the ability to externally observe it. There is significant debate over this is an inherent property of the thing or whether advances in our measurement tools will allow us to either inderectly observe the thing, or at least observe its effects. You're coming into this with the assumption that the ability to communicate about a thing is a prerequisite to that thing existing. It's not. The map describes the territory, not the other way around. We don't have good definitions of what consciousness is, which is why it's hard and why physicists and philosophers want to study it. It's a thing that we can see and we are trying to learn its properties. As we learn those properties we continue to attempt to map it into another medium - language.
narag 8y ago
...we don't have good mechanisms or tools yet to explain how that jump is possible Then why say that it's a hard problem, even that it's a problem at all? We will cross that bridge when we will reach it. And why do you say there's a jump? Or more precisely, which jump are you talking about? I hope you don't mean the jump between subjetive experience and the physical framework that supports it... Wittgenstein showed how that's a fool errand long ago.
- danShumway 8y ago
  I mean the existence of subjective experience in the first place. The jump is not just as Wittgenstein suggested that we might not be able to communicate a subjective experience, it's also that we don't understand how a subjective experience exists to communicate in the first place. From a purely physical perspective, there shouldn't be such a thing as subjective experience. We don't, strictly speaking, need to solve that problem right now. We could wait and cross that bridge later. We could just leave it at "it's an emergent property, and it works somehow." In the same way we could also say, "well, big objects attract each other, and we're gonna leave gravity at that." But for various reasons, philosophers and scientists find that kind of answer unsatisfying.
  - narag 8y ago
    From a purely physical perspective, there shouldn't be such a thing as subjective experience. Why? But for various reasons, philosophers and scientists find that kind of answer unsatisfying. https://www.sciencealert.com/watch-richard-feynman-on-why-he-can-t-tell-you-how-magnets-work https://www.sciencealert.com/watch-richard-feynman-on-why-he...
    - danShumway 8y ago
      Because we don't see any reason for it, and we don't have any precedent for something similar happening in other situations. We also observe that many properties of subjective experience are counterintuitive and seem to contradict what we would expect from an emergent system. This makes us curious and we want to learn more about it. Feynman's response in the video you link is not that it's unreasonable to ask about the mechanics of a thing. Quite the opposite - it's that simple questions are often very deep and very complicated and can't be described in a quick one or two sentences. What he's not saying is: "Why is the sky blue? Well, why shouldn't it be?"