5 ms·

Everybody is utterly confused by the hard problem of consciousness. That's just how it is.

• uh_uh 8mo ago
  I'd say we are confused about both the lowest (quantum) and highest level (consciousness) phenomena of the known Universe. Quite humbling.
  • Nevermark 8mo ago
    We have a theory whose plain reading matches experiment at all scales. Consciousness is something else. It is tempting for humans to pair mysteries up, pyramids and aliens, or whatever. But there isn't any factual basis for linking the experience of self-awareness with quantum mechanics. Is there a factual reason we know digital minds couldn't be conscious? Where quantum effects have been isolated from the operations of mental activity. That seems like a premature constraint to assume.
    • uh_uh 8mo ago
      I wasn't trying to link the two. Just pointed out that there seems to be a lot of unknowns on the map.
• A_D_E_P_T 8mo ago
  "Hard problem" makes it out to be much more difficult than it actually is. To simplify things a little bit, if you combine a spatiotemporal sense (a sense of bounded being in space and time) with a general predictive ability (the ability to freely extrapolate in time and space from one's surroundings,) "consciousness" arises necessarily. It's what having such senses feels like from the inside; the first-person view. It's a matter of degree, of course. The writing of Chalmers and its consequences have been a catastrophe for philosophy.
  • uh_uh 8mo ago
    > It's what having such senses feels like from the inside; the first-person view. The hard problem is that there is such a feeling at all.
    • A_D_E_P_T 8mo ago
      It's not hard at all when you acknowledge that such senses exist in the world, and that you (like others) possess them. As an aside it tends to foster a certain tendency towards empathy. In essence, you're asking why there's an inside to being a self-modeling system. But "inside" isn't something extraneous, something additional -- rather, it's what "self-modeling" means. Really the "hard problem" has a very easy answer, but it's a physical/functional answer, and dualists and obscurantists simply don't like it.
      • Sharlin 8mo ago
        So you say that the hard problem of consciousness is explained by the fact that we appear to be conscious?
        • A_D_E_P_T 8mo ago
          The kneejerk response would be: Are you not conscious at this present moment? If we were to modulate your spatiotemporal senses with drugs or a lobotomy, do you doubt that you would be very differently conscious, or perhaps entirely unconscious? I mean, there is a credible first-person answer to that question of yours, which each man can answer for himself. But considered more seriously, the "hard problem" is an artifact of treating experience as a separate thing that needs to be generated. If you accept that self-modeling systems bounded in space and time exist, you've already accepted that experience exists -- because experience is what such a system is, from the inside. There's no second step where experience gets added. The question "why is there experience?" is exactly akin to "Why is there an interior to four walls and a roof?" The interior isn't a separate thing; it's necessarily constitutive.