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Nothing in this essay addresses the single most prominent question of contemporary philosophy of mind, which is the hard problem of consciousness. It only addre

Nothing in this essay addresses the single most prominent question of contemporary philosophy of mind, which is the hard problem of consciousness. It only addresses the soft problems, which everyone agrees are solvable "merely" with enough time, funding, and initiative. Nothing about the "beast machine" addresses how qualitative experience arises from physical phenomena, or as Chalmers puts it, "Why are we not philosophical zombies?" Of course the hard problem, by its nature, is likely irreducible, so expecting it to be solved is unreasonable. The point is books and passages like this are only compelling if you've already accepted a hand-wavey answer to the hard problem. In this case the author's accepted answer seems to be the ever popular, "consciousness is an illusion," but that particular explanation to the hard problem is no more valid (or any less vague) than any other. Stating it with authority and not acknowledging it as a "faith-based" axiom undermines the work.

deleted 5y ago
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joeberon 5y ago
So far the only answer I've seen people give to the question is "what problem? There's no problem". Basically, there are many people who don't (or also have convinced themselves that they don't) perceive an incongruity between their personal subjective experience and the idea that consciousness is just an emergent phenomena of a physical system. I haven't found a good way to explain it, I just know that there's something wrong or missing. So basically it seems there's three camps: Those that feel the incongruity and don't know a solution. Those that feel the incongruity and have found their own solution (which is usually what people will call "religion"). Those that do not feel the incongruity. I don't personally see a way to justify it if someone doesn't feel the problem in their bones.
- nickelpro 5y ago
  I don't understand how someone can not understand the problem. You and I have conscious experience, we have a meaningful sensation of qualia. A billet of 4140 steel does not, or so we assume. Both are governed by physical laws of the universe, so there must be some distinction beyond these physical laws that differentiate them. In this framing, there are typically four camps, three of them line up with your camps: 1) I am not like a block of steel, but I don't know why. 2) I am not like a block of steel, but I know why ("religion") 3) I am like a block of steel, neither are conscious (no incongruity/consciousness is an illusion) 4) I am like a block of steel, both are conscious ("it from bit"/Chalmers's universal conciousness) Of course this implies the existence of a 5th and 6th camp that believes the block of steel is conscious, but we are not. I find these camps throw the best parties.
  - callesgg 5y ago
    7) I am a model of a primate created/executed by the actual brain of the primate that the model is modeling. Ie, the primate is not like a block of steel cause it is modeling its own existence, while the block of steel is not modeling it’s own existence.
  - joeberon 5y ago
    Well we do know emergent phenomena that occur as abstractions. Probably the most obvious example is a computer program. At a basic level, the computer really doesn't look like it's doing useful work, it just processes lists of rules and stuff, but actually the emergent behaviour is that I am browsing Hacker News. What is the difference between a computer and a rock? Well there isn't actually a fundamental difference, other than that the computer is physically arranged such that it is doing some complicated calculation resulting in this rich UI experience. I think it's the same with the brain. Why is there consciousness in this brain and not in a rock? Well because the brain is set up to perform a complicated "calculation" and the rock is not. Just like the program's behaviour only exists as an emergent property of the computer's physical state, so does consciousness arise as an emergent property from the brain's physical state. EDIT: to clarify this is why it is justified to say there is not a problem, but I do not personally find it satisfying
    - daseiner1 5y ago
      But the question is when and from where does “experiencing things” (qualia) arise. When does calculation become sensation?
      - joeberon 5y ago
        Those same people might say that it is just the experience of "being the computer" rather than seeing it from afar. But I don't know, because personally it isn't an argument I find convincing. As an aside, I think you have to be a bit arrogant or closed minded to assert that they actually can see the problem. I really don't think my wife is lying or being nefarious when she says she doesn't see a problem. I trust her and others when they say they don't see a problem.
- 53r3PB9769ba 5y ago
  I’m quite firmly in the “do not feel the incongruity” camp. What I'm about to say might make no sense at all, but I seem to remember (or at least think I do, it might be a false memory arising from thinking too much about it) slowly gaining consciousness in early childhood. I have a birthmark on the back of my hand and some of my earliest memories are triggered by noticing it and realizing I’m a separate being from other people and can influence my actions, stop being a mere observer of my body running on “autopilot”. I have only passing knowledge of lucid dreaming, but from what I’ve read I’d say becoming a lucid dreamer is not at all dissimilar to developing consciousness in childhood. So maybe that’s a potential avenue for consciousness research.
  - joeberon 5y ago
    Yeah that's a pretty common experience actually. There are a lot of memes on tiktok and twitter joking about "gaining consciousness" as a child. I think a lot of people remember moments as young children where they first truly felt like real separate beings.
  - mtberatwork 5y ago
    I think a lot discussion around consciousness focuses too much on the binary (e.g. either you have it or you don't), but I like to think of consciousness as a spectrum, with organisms falling into various points along that spectrum. Your take fits nicely into that picture I think.
    - jdmichal 5y ago
      This is precisely one of the reasons I prefer attention schema theory as an explanation of consciousness. It actually has a progressive build up, with each individual stage conferring an advantage while also leading to the next stage. Evolution does not like big-bang progression. And it's also very hard to explain big-bang progression in multiple, drastically-unrelated species -- such as humans and octopuses. Attention schema instead builds gradually. It starts with selective signal processing, advancing to body schema, then to attention schema, then to social schema (modeling other's bodies and attention). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_schema_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_schema_theory https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/how-consciousness-evolved/485558/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/how-cons...
- robotresearcher 5y ago
  > I just know that there's something wrong or missing. We know with certainty - since you tell us - that you have that feeling. People have strong feelings about lot of things. People disagree about things of the most intense importance to them, such as the existence of god. I won't list any more examples to avoid arguing about them. But since people have mutually exclusive very strong intuitions/knowledge/feelings, it seems very clear to me that the presence of the feeling entails absolutely nothing about the further reality of the thing being believed. A simple and complete explanation is that you have this feeling, and the feeling is all there is to it. Maybe the feeling has some functionality in a social ape. The feeling entails nothing. Susan Greenfield has a nice expression of a similar idea: the only known functionality of consciousness is that when you ask yourself 'am I conscious?' the answer seems to come back 'yes'. [edit: typos]
  - joeberon 5y ago
    It may not reflect reality in any way but I still have this fundamental "worry" or feeling regardless. This machine is still worrying about it.
- trevyn 5y ago
  >I just know that there's something wrong or missing. I'm starting to think that the thing that feels "wrong" is just that it directly contradicts foundational elements of your current belief system. And it's perfectly natural to avoid updating a belief system that has and continues to serve you reasonably well, even if you know deep down that it's inaccurate. Because you also know that updating it will have a significant cost as the implications unfold. I don't think it's a coincidence that the "religion solution" contains a lot of brute-force belief-writing and evidence-avoidance techniques. Coming from someone who no longer feels the incongruity, and has paid for that update.
bondarchuk 5y ago
If you are going to demand a precise, non-handwavey answer to the hard problem, then you must first give the hard problem in a precise, non-handwavey way, or at the very least prove in a precise, non-handwavey way that there even is such a thing as the hard problem. As far as I've seen nobody has really done this, it's always just "what breathes fire into the equations?" "what is it like to be a bat?" "I just feel it in my bones that there's something missing"... P-zombies are an attempt, except that "p-zombies are conceivable" is to be taken as axiomatic without any further explanation.
- joeberon 5y ago
  That's the problem and exactly why I say I don't think it can't be explained via a vague feeling. I've never seen someone who says there is a hard problem of consciousness adequately explain to someone why there isn't. The poster is now making what seem more like appeals to emotion throughout the thread now: "are you saying that sufficiently complicated blocks of matter are conscious?" and the like. This is what always happens. While I personally believe there is a problem, I cannot explain why, and for a long time I didn't think there was a problem
  - mach1ne 5y ago
    The so-called "hard problem of consciousness" may be a problem through which one may find a suitable definition for their own humanity, but it absolutely is not a scientific problem. If one wishes to gain concrete data, one needs to define the problem before defining the answer. Any current "problems" relating to consciousness are explainable without needing a consciousness component. I have not encountered a single problem which couldn't be explained by pure cognitive computation. Consciousness becomes a problem suitable for scientific endeavor the moment someone can actually define the problem.
    - nickelpro 5y ago
      Yes, just like the various interpretations of quantum mechanics, it's not a scientific question because it doesn't allow for any testable hypothesis. Science is bound by the scientific method, questions of philosophy exist outside these bounds. Is math invented or discovered? Does the wave function collapse upon observation, or do observers exist in superposition? Is my "red" the same as your "red"? Even if we could have exact answers to these questions, they wouldn't allow use to make predictions, and so they are not science. I think it's reasonable to say that means they aren't "useful", we can't go to space or build skyscrapers with these answers, but I think it equally makes them the more interesting questions. Our usual tools at rational inquiry fail to penetrate these sorts of questions.
pitspotter2 5y ago
Check out Chapter 11 of The Hidden Spring by Mark Solms. In it he identifies subjective experience, for example perceiving the colour red, as an observational perspective. He reminds us that we can also experience vision objectively, with the right lab equipment, e.g. by listening to spike trains travelling from the retina down the optic nerve. Say we do the latter. We can then legitimately ask what the same process looks like from the point of view of the system/subject/patient. Answer, vivid red. So spike trains and redness are differing valid perspectives on the same underlying physical process, namely vision. One doesn't arise from the other; they are both products of vision.
- ganzuul 5y ago
  Generally it is understood that qualia are not quantifiable.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    Isn’t that begging the question?
    - ganzuul 5y ago
      I don't think so... I thought GP was explaining how they would be quantifying qualia, and pointed out that this is kind of against the definition of the word. Maybe I missed something.
deleted 5y ago
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dougmwne 5y ago
To turn this on it's head, maybe the problem is assuming that everything else in the universe is without consciousness aside from certain classes of matter organized in a particular configuration of a brain. If we instead assume that consciousness is an intrinsic property of all matter and space, then the problem goes away. Or to state it another way, either everything is conscious or nothing is.
- jerf 5y ago
  It doesn't do a darned thing to the problem. It just moves it around; the question becomes "If the entire universe is 'conscious', for whatever your definition is, why are some configurations of matter more able to express it and others less?" How can we build an identifier that says what will be more expressive and less by inputting the configuration? How can we engineer configurations of matter that are more expressive rather than less? It is clearly obviously that configurations of matter are not just additive, that is, every 3 pounds of matter is the exact same type of conscious as any other 3 pounds of matter, so what's the difference, exactly? Which happens to be the exact same problem. This problem doesn't go away with any amount of changing definitions. Shifting the mystery under the rug where you can't see it doesn't mean the mystery has gone away, nor that everyone else is going to be fooled. Some of still see the lump under the rug you just created.
  - dougmwne 5y ago
    To me, all those questions are much closer to creating a testable hypothesis than trying to ask how to go from 0 to 1, from the inert to the conscious. "Consciousness expression" sounds like something you could develop a measurement of based on an observable behavior. I'm not sweeping the problem under the rug, rather presenting a scenario in which trying to discover the origin of consciousness is like trying to discover the origin of energy.
chmsky00 5y ago
The hard problem will be solved in time. My reasoning is that the people that defined it did so in a time when our science was less developed, so of course the problem seemed much harder. Information theory makes even the hard problem a matter of understanding interaction fields of physics, with the chemistry of biology. Relativity and sensory network effects explain relative experience elegantly enough. A lot of theories from back in the day are built on outdated understanding. Unfortunately their authors did not get to see our achievements in engineering unravel a lot of their over baked theories due to a need to fill in gaps without hard evidence. Same as we won’t see technology in the future have no need of all this software we wrote. It won’t literally be handed on. Luminiferous Aether was once a thing to many even though it’s not one discrete thing. One might consider it was a poetic initial take on field theory, which we now rely on sets of glyphs of shares meaning. Which artistically could also be imagined as flowing sets of matrix code that glow like a luminous field. If there’s a hard problem to consciousness it’s an unwillingness to consider there is no Valhalla. Is there a hard problem? Or do we hope for an answer that suggests we’re not just meatbags?
- nickelpro 5y ago
  The hard problem has technological progress built into its definition. It defines problems of consciousness that can be solved by progress as the "soft" problems, and the problem that cannot be solved by progress as the "hard" problem. The hard problem doesn't say that a mechanism _hasn't_ been found, it says a mechanism _cannot_ be found. Like Gödel's incompleteness theorems or Heisenberg's uncertainty principle it places a limit on what can be known about the system, "[the hard problem will] persist even when the performance of all the relevant functions is explained." The validity of that is up to you, but if you accept the hard problem as a valid question it will not be solved by technological progress.
  - chmsky00 5y ago
    Yep it’s not an interesting idea, the hard problem. We can never see outside our universe. We can’t know all states of matter ever. We can’t peek beyond the speed of light. We can solve a lot of problems we actually have without an answer (42, but what…) Humans have a willingness to see truth in metaphor and analogy, and invent them to avoid accepting we’re just meat bags. That’s what the hard problem of consciousness is to me; biological ideation run amok. It has useful political effects, it can be used to disabuse the self righteous because it’s a purposeful thought ending monolith, nothing more. We’ll keep iterating on our theories of the interaction of fields and matter and stop caring about the hard problem like we quit discussing luminiferous aether. We’ll stop seeing the literal edge of reality as a boundary on experience in the first place.
lostmsu 5y ago
I think you are the one doing hand-waving to pretty trivial resolutions of p-zombie problem. Specifically, that the way I'd define sentience, "qualia", and experience as certain replies to certain stimulae. Namely, sentience as ability (skill level) to play any game like Starcraft, experience as ability to reproduce previously received inputs, and qualia as the set of answers to all possible questions to describe a particular input. Given these definitions, the construct of Chinese room (which is supposed to be a p-zombie) has all 3. So unless you can either provide better definitions (without violating Occam's Razor and Popper's criteria) of the 3 concepts, which Chinese room would not satisfy, or give another way to construct a p-zombie, which would not have one of them, but still feel otherwise indistinguishable from "a person", the problem's solution is staring at you right there.
robotresearcher 5y ago
I firmly believe this problem will melt away in time. 'Consciousness' will gradually cease to be something that empirical science is concerned with, any more than the 'soul' is now, though it was highly salient to science 200 years ago and still is to non-science communities. The signs of this are: there's no broad agreement on what it means, there are no falsifiable predictions outstanding, and the only reason to not accept that we are philosophical zombies is what people say when you ask them about it. People believe all kinds of things that are obviously not true. Why do we give such special credence to this one? I think we will move on from this idea over time.
Layke1123 5y ago
Why is it so hard to grasp the idea that "consciousness" isn't any more complicated than our brains following natural laws of the universe and that you in fact don't have free will? Look, if you jump, you will fall back down to the earth, and there is nothing you can do about it. Just the same as if you remove the eyes' nerves, you can no longer see, or if you have someone tap your knee is a certain spot, it will jerk. We are nothing more than input, output machines, whether made from "meat", or other parts as in people with machines for pacemakers. Get over it.

deleted 5y ago

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joeberon 5y ago

So far the only answer I've seen people give to the question is "what problem? There's no problem". Basically, there are many people who don't (or also have convinced themselves that they don't) perceive an incongruity between their personal subjective experience and the idea that consciousness is just an emergent phenomena of a physical system. I haven't found a good way to explain it, I just know that there's something wrong or missing. So basically it seems there's three camps: Those that feel the incongruity and don't know a solution. Those that feel the incongruity and have found their own solution (which is usually what people will call "religion"). Those that do not feel the incongruity. I don't personally see a way to justify it if someone doesn't feel the problem in their bones.

nickelpro 5y ago
I don't understand how someone can not understand the problem. You and I have conscious experience, we have a meaningful sensation of qualia. A billet of 4140 steel does not, or so we assume. Both are governed by physical laws of the universe, so there must be some distinction beyond these physical laws that differentiate them. In this framing, there are typically four camps, three of them line up with your camps: 1) I am not like a block of steel, but I don't know why. 2) I am not like a block of steel, but I know why ("religion") 3) I am like a block of steel, neither are conscious (no incongruity/consciousness is an illusion) 4) I am like a block of steel, both are conscious ("it from bit"/Chalmers's universal conciousness) Of course this implies the existence of a 5th and 6th camp that believes the block of steel is conscious, but we are not. I find these camps throw the best parties.
- callesgg 5y ago
  7) I am a model of a primate created/executed by the actual brain of the primate that the model is modeling. Ie, the primate is not like a block of steel cause it is modeling its own existence, while the block of steel is not modeling it’s own existence.
- joeberon 5y ago
  Well we do know emergent phenomena that occur as abstractions. Probably the most obvious example is a computer program. At a basic level, the computer really doesn't look like it's doing useful work, it just processes lists of rules and stuff, but actually the emergent behaviour is that I am browsing Hacker News. What is the difference between a computer and a rock? Well there isn't actually a fundamental difference, other than that the computer is physically arranged such that it is doing some complicated calculation resulting in this rich UI experience. I think it's the same with the brain. Why is there consciousness in this brain and not in a rock? Well because the brain is set up to perform a complicated "calculation" and the rock is not. Just like the program's behaviour only exists as an emergent property of the computer's physical state, so does consciousness arise as an emergent property from the brain's physical state. EDIT: to clarify this is why it is justified to say there is not a problem, but I do not personally find it satisfying
  - daseiner1 5y ago
    But the question is when and from where does “experiencing things” (qualia) arise. When does calculation become sensation?
    - joeberon 5y ago
      Those same people might say that it is just the experience of "being the computer" rather than seeing it from afar. But I don't know, because personally it isn't an argument I find convincing. As an aside, I think you have to be a bit arrogant or closed minded to assert that they actually can see the problem. I really don't think my wife is lying or being nefarious when she says she doesn't see a problem. I trust her and others when they say they don't see a problem.
53r3PB9769ba 5y ago
I’m quite firmly in the “do not feel the incongruity” camp. What I'm about to say might make no sense at all, but I seem to remember (or at least think I do, it might be a false memory arising from thinking too much about it) slowly gaining consciousness in early childhood. I have a birthmark on the back of my hand and some of my earliest memories are triggered by noticing it and realizing I’m a separate being from other people and can influence my actions, stop being a mere observer of my body running on “autopilot”. I have only passing knowledge of lucid dreaming, but from what I’ve read I’d say becoming a lucid dreamer is not at all dissimilar to developing consciousness in childhood. So maybe that’s a potential avenue for consciousness research.
- joeberon 5y ago
  Yeah that's a pretty common experience actually. There are a lot of memes on tiktok and twitter joking about "gaining consciousness" as a child. I think a lot of people remember moments as young children where they first truly felt like real separate beings.
- mtberatwork 5y ago
  I think a lot discussion around consciousness focuses too much on the binary (e.g. either you have it or you don't), but I like to think of consciousness as a spectrum, with organisms falling into various points along that spectrum. Your take fits nicely into that picture I think.
  - jdmichal 5y ago
    This is precisely one of the reasons I prefer attention schema theory as an explanation of consciousness. It actually has a progressive build up, with each individual stage conferring an advantage while also leading to the next stage. Evolution does not like big-bang progression. And it's also very hard to explain big-bang progression in multiple, drastically-unrelated species -- such as humans and octopuses. Attention schema instead builds gradually. It starts with selective signal processing, advancing to body schema, then to attention schema, then to social schema (modeling other's bodies and attention). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_schema_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_schema_theory https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/how-consciousness-evolved/485558/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/how-cons...
robotresearcher 5y ago
> I just know that there's something wrong or missing. We know with certainty - since you tell us - that you have that feeling. People have strong feelings about lot of things. People disagree about things of the most intense importance to them, such as the existence of god. I won't list any more examples to avoid arguing about them. But since people have mutually exclusive very strong intuitions/knowledge/feelings, it seems very clear to me that the presence of the feeling entails absolutely nothing about the further reality of the thing being believed. A simple and complete explanation is that you have this feeling, and the feeling is all there is to it. Maybe the feeling has some functionality in a social ape. The feeling entails nothing. Susan Greenfield has a nice expression of a similar idea: the only known functionality of consciousness is that when you ask yourself 'am I conscious?' the answer seems to come back 'yes'. [edit: typos]
- joeberon 5y ago
  It may not reflect reality in any way but I still have this fundamental "worry" or feeling regardless. This machine is still worrying about it.
trevyn 5y ago
>I just know that there's something wrong or missing. I'm starting to think that the thing that feels "wrong" is just that it directly contradicts foundational elements of your current belief system. And it's perfectly natural to avoid updating a belief system that has and continues to serve you reasonably well, even if you know deep down that it's inaccurate. Because you also know that updating it will have a significant cost as the implications unfold. I don't think it's a coincidence that the "religion solution" contains a lot of brute-force belief-writing and evidence-avoidance techniques. Coming from someone who no longer feels the incongruity, and has paid for that update.

bondarchuk 5y ago

If you are going to demand a precise, non-handwavey answer to the hard problem, then you must first give the hard problem in a precise, non-handwavey way, or at the very least prove in a precise, non-handwavey way that there even is such a thing as the hard problem. As far as I've seen nobody has really done this, it's always just "what breathes fire into the equations?" "what is it like to be a bat?" "I just feel it in my bones that there's something missing"... P-zombies are an attempt, except that "p-zombies are conceivable" is to be taken as axiomatic without any further explanation.

joeberon 5y ago
That's the problem and exactly why I say I don't think it can't be explained via a vague feeling. I've never seen someone who says there is a hard problem of consciousness adequately explain to someone why there isn't. The poster is now making what seem more like appeals to emotion throughout the thread now: "are you saying that sufficiently complicated blocks of matter are conscious?" and the like. This is what always happens. While I personally believe there is a problem, I cannot explain why, and for a long time I didn't think there was a problem
- mach1ne 5y ago
  The so-called "hard problem of consciousness" may be a problem through which one may find a suitable definition for their own humanity, but it absolutely is not a scientific problem. If one wishes to gain concrete data, one needs to define the problem before defining the answer. Any current "problems" relating to consciousness are explainable without needing a consciousness component. I have not encountered a single problem which couldn't be explained by pure cognitive computation. Consciousness becomes a problem suitable for scientific endeavor the moment someone can actually define the problem.
  - nickelpro 5y ago
    Yes, just like the various interpretations of quantum mechanics, it's not a scientific question because it doesn't allow for any testable hypothesis. Science is bound by the scientific method, questions of philosophy exist outside these bounds. Is math invented or discovered? Does the wave function collapse upon observation, or do observers exist in superposition? Is my "red" the same as your "red"? Even if we could have exact answers to these questions, they wouldn't allow use to make predictions, and so they are not science. I think it's reasonable to say that means they aren't "useful", we can't go to space or build skyscrapers with these answers, but I think it equally makes them the more interesting questions. Our usual tools at rational inquiry fail to penetrate these sorts of questions.

pitspotter2 5y ago

Check out Chapter 11 of The Hidden Spring by Mark Solms. In it he identifies subjective experience, for example perceiving the colour red, as an observational perspective. He reminds us that we can also experience vision objectively, with the right lab equipment, e.g. by listening to spike trains travelling from the retina down the optic nerve. Say we do the latter. We can then legitimately ask what the same process looks like from the point of view of the system/subject/patient. Answer, vivid red. So spike trains and redness are differing valid perspectives on the same underlying physical process, namely vision. One doesn't arise from the other; they are both products of vision.

ganzuul 5y ago
Generally it is understood that qualia are not quantifiable.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Isn’t that begging the question?
  - ganzuul 5y ago
    I don't think so... I thought GP was explaining how they would be quantifying qualia, and pointed out that this is kind of against the definition of the word. Maybe I missed something.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dougmwne 5y ago

To turn this on it's head, maybe the problem is assuming that everything else in the universe is without consciousness aside from certain classes of matter organized in a particular configuration of a brain. If we instead assume that consciousness is an intrinsic property of all matter and space, then the problem goes away. Or to state it another way, either everything is conscious or nothing is.

jerf 5y ago
It doesn't do a darned thing to the problem. It just moves it around; the question becomes "If the entire universe is 'conscious', for whatever your definition is, why are some configurations of matter more able to express it and others less?" How can we build an identifier that says what will be more expressive and less by inputting the configuration? How can we engineer configurations of matter that are more expressive rather than less? It is clearly obviously that configurations of matter are not just additive, that is, every 3 pounds of matter is the exact same type of conscious as any other 3 pounds of matter, so what's the difference, exactly? Which happens to be the exact same problem. This problem doesn't go away with any amount of changing definitions. Shifting the mystery under the rug where you can't see it doesn't mean the mystery has gone away, nor that everyone else is going to be fooled. Some of still see the lump under the rug you just created.
- dougmwne 5y ago
  To me, all those questions are much closer to creating a testable hypothesis than trying to ask how to go from 0 to 1, from the inert to the conscious. "Consciousness expression" sounds like something you could develop a measurement of based on an observable behavior. I'm not sweeping the problem under the rug, rather presenting a scenario in which trying to discover the origin of consciousness is like trying to discover the origin of energy.

chmsky00 5y ago

The hard problem will be solved in time. My reasoning is that the people that defined it did so in a time when our science was less developed, so of course the problem seemed much harder. Information theory makes even the hard problem a matter of understanding interaction fields of physics, with the chemistry of biology. Relativity and sensory network effects explain relative experience elegantly enough. A lot of theories from back in the day are built on outdated understanding. Unfortunately their authors did not get to see our achievements in engineering unravel a lot of their over baked theories due to a need to fill in gaps without hard evidence. Same as we won’t see technology in the future have no need of all this software we wrote. It won’t literally be handed on. Luminiferous Aether was once a thing to many even though it’s not one discrete thing. One might consider it was a poetic initial take on field theory, which we now rely on sets of glyphs of shares meaning. Which artistically could also be imagined as flowing sets of matrix code that glow like a luminous field. If there’s a hard problem to consciousness it’s an unwillingness to consider there is no Valhalla. Is there a hard problem? Or do we hope for an answer that suggests we’re not just meatbags?

nickelpro 5y ago
The hard problem has technological progress built into its definition. It defines problems of consciousness that can be solved by progress as the "soft" problems, and the problem that cannot be solved by progress as the "hard" problem. The hard problem doesn't say that a mechanism _hasn't_ been found, it says a mechanism _cannot_ be found. Like Gödel's incompleteness theorems or Heisenberg's uncertainty principle it places a limit on what can be known about the system, "[the hard problem will] persist even when the performance of all the relevant functions is explained." The validity of that is up to you, but if you accept the hard problem as a valid question it will not be solved by technological progress.
- chmsky00 5y ago
  Yep it’s not an interesting idea, the hard problem. We can never see outside our universe. We can’t know all states of matter ever. We can’t peek beyond the speed of light. We can solve a lot of problems we actually have without an answer (42, but what…) Humans have a willingness to see truth in metaphor and analogy, and invent them to avoid accepting we’re just meat bags. That’s what the hard problem of consciousness is to me; biological ideation run amok. It has useful political effects, it can be used to disabuse the self righteous because it’s a purposeful thought ending monolith, nothing more. We’ll keep iterating on our theories of the interaction of fields and matter and stop caring about the hard problem like we quit discussing luminiferous aether. We’ll stop seeing the literal edge of reality as a boundary on experience in the first place.

lostmsu 5y ago

I think you are the one doing hand-waving to pretty trivial resolutions of p-zombie problem. Specifically, that the way I'd define sentience, "qualia", and experience as certain replies to certain stimulae. Namely, sentience as ability (skill level) to play any game like Starcraft, experience as ability to reproduce previously received inputs, and qualia as the set of answers to all possible questions to describe a particular input. Given these definitions, the construct of Chinese room (which is supposed to be a p-zombie) has all 3. So unless you can either provide better definitions (without violating Occam's Razor and Popper's criteria) of the 3 concepts, which Chinese room would not satisfy, or give another way to construct a p-zombie, which would not have one of them, but still feel otherwise indistinguishable from "a person", the problem's solution is staring at you right there.

robotresearcher 5y ago

I firmly believe this problem will melt away in time. 'Consciousness' will gradually cease to be something that empirical science is concerned with, any more than the 'soul' is now, though it was highly salient to science 200 years ago and still is to non-science communities. The signs of this are: there's no broad agreement on what it means, there are no falsifiable predictions outstanding, and the only reason to not accept that we are philosophical zombies is what people say when you ask them about it. People believe all kinds of things that are obviously not true. Why do we give such special credence to this one? I think we will move on from this idea over time.

Layke1123 5y ago

Why is it so hard to grasp the idea that "consciousness" isn't any more complicated than our brains following natural laws of the universe and that you in fact don't have free will? Look, if you jump, you will fall back down to the earth, and there is nothing you can do about it. Just the same as if you remove the eyes' nerves, you can no longer see, or if you have someone tap your knee is a certain spot, it will jerk. We are nothing more than input, output machines, whether made from "meat", or other parts as in people with machines for pacemakers. Get over it.