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> There is a fundamental epistemological limit to our ability to know how to combine the two. It doesn't mean the world itself has such a division. We just can'

> There is a fundamental epistemological limit to our ability to know how to combine the two. It doesn't mean the world itself has such a division. We just can't cognate how to reconcile the two. I’m not convinced there’s any indication of a fundamental limit to our cognitive abilities. What if we just don’t know how subjective experience works in the same normal way that we’ve not known how other stuff works until we figured it out?

goatlover 4y ago
I don't know either, it's just that the problem seems to be hard in a fundamental way. We would have to show how something like brain processing results in subjective experience in a way that isn't just correlation. The explanation would somehow have to show how the subjective emerges. How it's determined by the physical processes. Then we could go make computers conscious.
HEmanZ 4y ago
You’ll end up in a category of your own if you “figure out” subjective experience. You’d be the greatest philosopher that ever lived. It’s not the same problem as figuring out how the brain works physically or how subjective experiences compare in peoples brains or observable states, but whether say our experience of seeing red is the same. Or what it’s like to be a bat. You can’t break that barrier, there is not observation into another subjective. It’s like Heisenberg Uncertainty, at a certain point we reach the unobservable and by the nature of our existence can’t know what’s beyond.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  I hope I didn’t make it sound like I think it would be some iterative invention like a better mouse trap, or some isolated Eureka! moment from someone who just thought hard for a bit. Perhaps that’s possible, but it feels unlikely. On the contrary, it would likely be a fundamental shift in our mode of thought and mode of explanation, less like huge discoveries like general relativity or quantum mechanics, and more like the Scientific Revolution or the Enlightenment.
- temphypercube 4y ago
  You're just assuming that, though. All evidence is correlational. We observe phenomena, and build causal models. The particles move this way when near this bit of metal. Given this, what's "really" there? The magnetic field, or the magnetic potential field? I don't think there's great cause to say that this is a seperate magisterium. We just have a paucity of data compared to what future beings will have. When everyone can spin up a hundred simulated copies of their brain and trace thought-patterns in realtime, it'll seem much less mysterious.

goatlover 4y ago

I don't know either, it's just that the problem seems to be hard in a fundamental way. We would have to show how something like brain processing results in subjective experience in a way that isn't just correlation. The explanation would somehow have to show how the subjective emerges. How it's determined by the physical processes. Then we could go make computers conscious.

HEmanZ 4y ago

You’ll end up in a category of your own if you “figure out” subjective experience. You’d be the greatest philosopher that ever lived. It’s not the same problem as figuring out how the brain works physically or how subjective experiences compare in peoples brains or observable states, but whether say our experience of seeing red is the same. Or what it’s like to be a bat. You can’t break that barrier, there is not observation into another subjective. It’s like Heisenberg Uncertainty, at a certain point we reach the unobservable and by the nature of our existence can’t know what’s beyond.

tshaddox 4y ago
I hope I didn’t make it sound like I think it would be some iterative invention like a better mouse trap, or some isolated Eureka! moment from someone who just thought hard for a bit. Perhaps that’s possible, but it feels unlikely. On the contrary, it would likely be a fundamental shift in our mode of thought and mode of explanation, less like huge discoveries like general relativity or quantum mechanics, and more like the Scientific Revolution or the Enlightenment.
temphypercube 4y ago
You're just assuming that, though. All evidence is correlational. We observe phenomena, and build causal models. The particles move this way when near this bit of metal. Given this, what's "really" there? The magnetic field, or the magnetic potential field? I don't think there's great cause to say that this is a seperate magisterium. We just have a paucity of data compared to what future beings will have. When everyone can spin up a hundred simulated copies of their brain and trace thought-patterns in realtime, it'll seem much less mysterious.