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I don't think there is any mystery to what we call "consciousness". Our senses and brain have evolved so we can "sense" the external world, so we can live in i

I don't think there is any mystery to what we call "consciousness". Our senses and brain have evolved so we can "sense" the external world, so we can live in it and react to it. So why couldn''t we also sense what is happening inside our brains? Our brain needs to sense our "inner talk" so we can let it guide our decision-making and actions. If we couldn't remember sentences, we couldn't remember "facts" and would be much worse for that. And talking with our "inner voice" and hearing it, isn't that what most people would call consciousness?

tehjoker 8mo ago
another one that thinks they solved the hard problem of consciousness by addressing the easy problem. how on earth does a feedback system cause matter to "wake up"? we are making lots of progress on the easy problem though
- dgfl 8mo ago
  This is not as good a refusal as you think it is. To me (and I imagine, the parent poster) there is no extra logical step needed. The problem IS solved in this sense. If it’s completely impossible to even imagine what the answer to a question is, as is the case here, it’s probably the wrong question to pose. Is there any answer you’d be satisfied by? To me the hard problem is more or less akin to looking for the true boundaries of a cloud: a seemingly valid quest, but one that can’t really be answered in a satisfactory sense, because it’s not the right one to pose to make sense of clouds.
  - Paracompact 8mo ago
    > If it’s completely impossible to even imagine what the answer to a question is, as is the case here, it’s probably the wrong question to pose. Is there any answer you’d be satisfied by? I would be very satisfied to have an answer, or even just convincing heuristic arguments, for the following: (1) What systems experience consciousness? For example, is a computer as conscious as a rock, as conscious as a human, or somewhere in between? (2) What are the fundamental symmetries and invariants of consciousness? Does it impact consciousness whether a system is flipped in spacetime, skewed in spacetime, isomorphically recast in different physical media, etc.? (3) What aspects of a system's organization give rise to different qualia? What does the possible parameter space (or set of possible dynamical traces, or what have you) of qualia look like? (4) Is a consciousness a distinct entity, like some phase transition with a sharp boundary, or is there no fundamentally rigorous sense in which we can distinguish each and every consciousness in the universe? (5) What explains the nature of phenomena like blindsight or split brain patients, where seemingly high-level recognition, coordination, and/or intent occurs in the absence of any conscious awareness? Generally, what behavior-affecting processes in our brains do and do not affect our conscious experience? And so on. I imagine you'll take issue with all of these questions, perhaps saying that "consciousness" isn't well defined, or that an "explanation" can only refer to functional descriptions of physical matter, but I figured I would at least answer your question honestly.
    - dgfl 8mo ago
      I think most of them are valid questions! (1) is perhaps more of a question requiring a strict definition of consciousness in the first place, making it mostly circular. (2) and especially (3) are the most interesting, but they seem part of the easy problem instead. And I’d say we already have indications that the latter option of (4) is true, given your examples from (5) and things like sleep (the most common reason for humans to be unconscious) being in distinct phases with different wake up speed (pun partially intended). And if you assume animals to be conscious, then some sleep with only one hemisphere at a time. Are they equally as conscious during that? My imaginary timeline of the future has scientific advancements would lead to us noticing what’s different between a person’s brain in their conscious and unconscious states, then somehow generalize it to a more abstract model of cognition decoupled from our biological implementation, and then eventually tackle all your questions from there. But I suspect the person I originally replied to would dismiss them as part of the easy problem instead, i.e. completely useless for tackling the hard problem! As far as I’m concerned, it’s the hard problem that I take issue with, and the one that I claim isn’t real.
      - galaxyLogic 8mo ago
        I much agree, especially on the importance of defining what we mean by the word "conscicousness", before we say we cannot explain it. Is a rock conscious? Sure according to some deifinition of the word. Probably everybody would agree that there are different levels of consciousness, and maybe we'd need different names for them. Animals are clearly conscious in that they observe the world and react to it and even try to proactively manipulate it. The next level of consciousness, and what most people probably mean when they use the word is human ability to "think in language". That opens up a whole new level, of consciousness, because now we can be conscious of our inner voice. We are conscious of ourselves, apart from the world. Our inner voice can say things about the thing which seems to be the thing uttering the words in our mind. Me. Is there anything more to consciousness than us being aware that we are conscious? It is truly a wondrous experience which may seem like a hard problem to explain, hence the "Hard Problem of Consciousness", right? But it's not so mysterious if we think of it in terms of being able to use and hear and understand language. Without language our consciousness would be on the level of most animals I assume. Of course it seems that many animals use some kind of language. But, do they hear their "inner voice"? Hard to say. I would guess not. And so again, in simple terms, what is the question?
jacquesm 8mo ago
This is not nearly as profound as you make it out to be: a computer program also doesn't sense the hardware that it runs on, from its point of view it is invisible until it is made explicit: peripherals.
- dgfl 8mo ago
  You also don’t consciously use your senses until you actively think about them. Same as “you are now aware of your breathing”. Sudden changes in a sensation may trigger them to be conscious without “you” taking action, but that’s not so different. You’re still directing your attention to something that’s always been there. I agree with the poster (and Daniel Dennet and others) that there isn’t anything that needs explaining. It’s just a question framing problem, much like the measurement problem in quantum mechanics.

tehjoker 8mo ago

another one that thinks they solved the hard problem of consciousness by addressing the easy problem. how on earth does a feedback system cause matter to "wake up"? we are making lots of progress on the easy problem though

dgfl 8mo ago
This is not as good a refusal as you think it is. To me (and I imagine, the parent poster) there is no extra logical step needed. The problem IS solved in this sense. If it’s completely impossible to even imagine what the answer to a question is, as is the case here, it’s probably the wrong question to pose. Is there any answer you’d be satisfied by? To me the hard problem is more or less akin to looking for the true boundaries of a cloud: a seemingly valid quest, but one that can’t really be answered in a satisfactory sense, because it’s not the right one to pose to make sense of clouds.
- Paracompact 8mo ago
  > If it’s completely impossible to even imagine what the answer to a question is, as is the case here, it’s probably the wrong question to pose. Is there any answer you’d be satisfied by? I would be very satisfied to have an answer, or even just convincing heuristic arguments, for the following: (1) What systems experience consciousness? For example, is a computer as conscious as a rock, as conscious as a human, or somewhere in between? (2) What are the fundamental symmetries and invariants of consciousness? Does it impact consciousness whether a system is flipped in spacetime, skewed in spacetime, isomorphically recast in different physical media, etc.? (3) What aspects of a system's organization give rise to different qualia? What does the possible parameter space (or set of possible dynamical traces, or what have you) of qualia look like? (4) Is a consciousness a distinct entity, like some phase transition with a sharp boundary, or is there no fundamentally rigorous sense in which we can distinguish each and every consciousness in the universe? (5) What explains the nature of phenomena like blindsight or split brain patients, where seemingly high-level recognition, coordination, and/or intent occurs in the absence of any conscious awareness? Generally, what behavior-affecting processes in our brains do and do not affect our conscious experience? And so on. I imagine you'll take issue with all of these questions, perhaps saying that "consciousness" isn't well defined, or that an "explanation" can only refer to functional descriptions of physical matter, but I figured I would at least answer your question honestly.
  - dgfl 8mo ago
    I think most of them are valid questions! (1) is perhaps more of a question requiring a strict definition of consciousness in the first place, making it mostly circular. (2) and especially (3) are the most interesting, but they seem part of the easy problem instead. And I’d say we already have indications that the latter option of (4) is true, given your examples from (5) and things like sleep (the most common reason for humans to be unconscious) being in distinct phases with different wake up speed (pun partially intended). And if you assume animals to be conscious, then some sleep with only one hemisphere at a time. Are they equally as conscious during that? My imaginary timeline of the future has scientific advancements would lead to us noticing what’s different between a person’s brain in their conscious and unconscious states, then somehow generalize it to a more abstract model of cognition decoupled from our biological implementation, and then eventually tackle all your questions from there. But I suspect the person I originally replied to would dismiss them as part of the easy problem instead, i.e. completely useless for tackling the hard problem! As far as I’m concerned, it’s the hard problem that I take issue with, and the one that I claim isn’t real.
    - galaxyLogic 8mo ago
      I much agree, especially on the importance of defining what we mean by the word "conscicousness", before we say we cannot explain it. Is a rock conscious? Sure according to some deifinition of the word. Probably everybody would agree that there are different levels of consciousness, and maybe we'd need different names for them. Animals are clearly conscious in that they observe the world and react to it and even try to proactively manipulate it. The next level of consciousness, and what most people probably mean when they use the word is human ability to "think in language". That opens up a whole new level, of consciousness, because now we can be conscious of our inner voice. We are conscious of ourselves, apart from the world. Our inner voice can say things about the thing which seems to be the thing uttering the words in our mind. Me. Is there anything more to consciousness than us being aware that we are conscious? It is truly a wondrous experience which may seem like a hard problem to explain, hence the "Hard Problem of Consciousness", right? But it's not so mysterious if we think of it in terms of being able to use and hear and understand language. Without language our consciousness would be on the level of most animals I assume. Of course it seems that many animals use some kind of language. But, do they hear their "inner voice"? Hard to say. I would guess not. And so again, in simple terms, what is the question?

jacquesm 8mo ago

This is not nearly as profound as you make it out to be: a computer program also doesn't sense the hardware that it runs on, from its point of view it is invisible until it is made explicit: peripherals.

dgfl 8mo ago
You also don’t consciously use your senses until you actively think about them. Same as “you are now aware of your breathing”. Sudden changes in a sensation may trigger them to be conscious without “you” taking action, but that’s not so different. You’re still directing your attention to something that’s always been there. I agree with the poster (and Daniel Dennet and others) that there isn’t anything that needs explaining. It’s just a question framing problem, much like the measurement problem in quantum mechanics.