7 ms·

> Is that not sufficient? It's Descartes' "I think therefore I am". Qualia are just experiences, so if you experience something then they exist. If you experie

by bnralt 4y ago

> Is that not sufficient? It's Descartes' "I think therefore I am". Qualia are just experiences, so if you experience something then they exist. If you experience something, some experience exists. It does not mean that qualia exists. I've had people use the same personal experiential evidence for the soul, god, reiki, and a whole host of other metaphysical phenomenon. Hopefully we can agree that someone relating their experience of the metaphysical is not sufficient evidence that the metaphysical exists (if it is, we need to believe in a whole host of things). I've followed a lot of neuroscience research. I've never seen any that says "hey, we've run into this problem, but it can't be solved by our current understanding of physics." The "hard problem" seems to reside entirely in the realm of philosophy. There might be a few neuroscientists who engage it in an informal way from time to time, but by and large the people who actually study the mind don't seem to have this problem. That's not to say that there's not a lot left to learn. There is. But there's no evidence that anything like the "hard problem" or "qualia" exists or is a barrier to our understanding of the brain.

nicoburns 4y ago
> I've followed a lot of neuroscience research. I've never seen any that says "hey, we've run into this problem, but it can't be solved by our current understanding of physics." That's because neuroscience explicitly avoids the philosophical problems of the mind as a premise of the entire discipline. The "hard problem" is that we can reach a point where neuroscience has completely explained human behaviour, and we still won't have explained the existence of experience or how it relates to the physical world. Neuroscience doesn't worry about the "hard problem" because it isn't even close to solving the "easy problem" yet. > If you experience something, some experience exists. It does not mean that qualia exists. I believe that "qualia" as used in the context of the "hard problem" is just "experience". It doesn't imply anything more specific than that. To quote Chalmers who coined the term "hard problem": "...even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience—perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report—there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousnes...) What he is talking about is just experience. Not a more specific meaning of qualia (i.e. definition 1, not 2, 3, or 4 on this list https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/#Uses https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/#Uses)

by bnralt 4y ago

nicoburns 4y ago

> I've followed a lot of neuroscience research. I've never seen any that says "hey, we've run into this problem, but it can't be solved by our current understanding of physics." That's because neuroscience explicitly avoids the philosophical problems of the mind as a premise of the entire discipline. The "hard problem" is that we can reach a point where neuroscience has completely explained human behaviour, and we still won't have explained the existence of experience or how it relates to the physical world. Neuroscience doesn't worry about the "hard problem" because it isn't even close to solving the "easy problem" yet. > If you experience something, some experience exists. It does not mean that qualia exists. I believe that "qualia" as used in the context of the "hard problem" is just "experience". It doesn't imply anything more specific than that. To quote Chalmers who coined the term "hard problem": "...even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience—perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report—there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousnes...) What he is talking about is just experience. Not a more specific meaning of qualia (i.e. definition 1, not 2, 3, or 4 on this list https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/#Uses https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/#Uses)