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The book doesn't really go that much into the hard problem of consciousness, as much of the ideas are orthogonal to that discussion. If Nagel asks, "What is lik
by mxkopy 4y ago
The book doesn't really go that much into the hard problem of consciousness, as much of the ideas are orthogonal to that discussion. If Nagel asks, "What is like to be a bat?", Hofstadter asks "If the mind of a bat were a program, what characteristics would it have?"
IMO the hard problem is not posed to be solved. I think of it like this. The world in which we are p-zombies is categorically indistinguishable from the one in which we are not, by an objective perspective. It is not a concept that we should use for an objective definition.
- geysersam 4y agoIn my opinion, it's unlikely that p-zombies are physically indistinguishable from conscious beings. It's like saying "a computer that works, but where the CPU is replaced by a piece of stone is physically indistinguishable from the real thing". We have not yet found a physical distinction. It seems likely that there is one.
- mxkopy 4y agoThe issue is, what else would we call the rock that does all the things a CPU does? If we can socket it into the motherboard and play games on it, what makes it so different?