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The first point (analogizing the hard problem to the reaction to Darwinism) is a very common rhetorical move: an analogy and history of ideas, which is convinci

The first point (analogizing the hard problem to the reaction to Darwinism) is a very common rhetorical move: an analogy and history of ideas, which is convincing to many people, but what does it prove? > A philosophical zombie would claim to know what subjective experience is; otherwise, it would be empirically distinguishable from a human. Chalmers’s point is that the existence of the hypothetical, irreducible consciousness of which he speaks is something we can be convinced of only by introspection. During introspection, physical processes in my brain convince me of my consciousness. The same would theoretically happen in the zombie brain, convincing it of having consciousness as well. And this is why illusionism is not a satisfactory explanation. "Convincing it". Who is being convinced? Who is experiencing this? Imagine the easy problem of consciousness is solved: we understand the brain at every scale, from ion channels up. We can draw up a complete account, at every level of abstraction, of what goes on in the brain when you see and "apple" and say apple, and trace the signals across the optic nerve, map those signals to high-level mental representations, explain how those symbols become trees in a production rule which become words which the motor cortex coordinates into speech, etc. We can map every "pixel" of the visual field at any time t. Now imagine you take this description and rewrite the labels consistently, and show it to an alien. And they see this very complex diagram of an information-processing machine and they're not sure what it's for. And they'd think it's as conscious as a calculator, or a water integrator, or a telephone network, or the futures market of the European Union. Either all the computation happens "in the dark", as in a calculator or an Excel spreadsheet or a slide rule or Factorio, in which case we are p-zombies and consciousness is an illusion, which contradicts every waking moment of our experience (since consciousness and experience is all that we have); or, everything is conscious, from brains to slide rules and spreadsheets, and that is incredibly, and also has a number of problems (e.g.: why aren't my neurons individually conscious? Why does consciousness stop at my skull, that is, why is the causality of signal-trains in neurons more "conscious" than phonons in the hydroxyapatite crystals in my skull?). That's the hard problem.

solveiga 5mo ago
I think this hard problem has a simple answer that people just don’t like: consciousness is a powerful (and fundamental to our "calculator brain") illusion. And yes, a spreadsheet simulating every neuron in your brain would also simulate it. The fact that it’s difficult to conceptualize doesn’t mean it’s not the answer. Similar to how we struggle to intuit general relativity, or to imagine the pre–Big Bang state of the universe (or its non-existence), or to picture what it’s like to be dead. Our intuition simply isn’t equipped for these cases, period, and it pushes back hard against them. Consciousness belongs in that same category IMO Also, the emergence of a consciousness like illusion kinda follows from an evolutionary perspective. To survive, a "calculator" brain needs a model of the external world in order to predict how it will evolve and to act in ways that improve survival odds. Once such a model exists, it becomes almost inevitable that it also includes a model of the system itself, since the brain is also part of the world it is modeling and an agent within it. This self-referential loop is likely what we experience as "consciousness" and it becomes central to how we understand and navigate reality. If we accept this framing, many traditional paradoxes dissolve on their own. The problem stops being "hard" in substance and becomes hard only in terms of imagination.
- thesmtsolver2 5mo ago
  The illusion framing/answer falls apart with some minor prodding. What makes the computation in the brain special from other physical processes to give rise to this illusion? The sewer system in NYC is complex. Does that also have the same illusion? Does the sewer in NYC have consciousness?
  - solveiga 5mo ago
    What makes brain computation special? Nothing. That's my whole point. Does the sewer system in NYC have consciousness? It's impossible to answer, because there's no single accepted definition of consciousness. If something isn't clearly defined, it becomes very hard to meaningfully assess whether it applies or not. But if we built a Turing complete, sewer-like system that simulated every neuron in a human brain, it will claim that it is real and conscious for sure. There's no paradox at physical level, intuitively conceptualizing it is the "hard" part.
- nofriend 5mo ago
  > I think this hard problem has a simple answer that people just don’t like: consciousness is a powerful (and fundamental to our "calculator brain") illusion. who is eluded? people absolutely love this answer and give it constantly, not realizing that it's begging the question. in order for their to be an illusion, there needs to be someone to perceive the illusion.
  - aoeusnth1 5mo ago
    The universe contains subsystems which can be described as eluded in the sense that we can take the intentional stance on these systems and describe their observable behavior as being in a state of illusion of separation.
- zetalyrae 5mo ago
  > And yes, a spreadsheet simulating every neuron in your brain would also simulate it. But why a spreadsheet simulating the brain, and not just a spreadsheet doing normal financial math? In other words: why are some types of information processing "privileged" to create phenomenal experiences, while others run "in the dark"? > Also, the emergence of a consciousness like illusion kinda follows from an evolutionary perspective. To survive, a "calculator" brain needs a model of the external world in order to predict how it will evolve and to act in ways that improve survival odds. Once such a model exists, it becomes almost inevitable that it also includes a model of the system itself, since the brain is also part of the world it is modeling and an agent within it. But this is A-consciousness, not P-consciousness. Which gets us back to square one: why does information processing give rise to experience at all?
dfabulich 5mo ago
Rovelli writes, "I fail to make sense of the claim that there is such an “explanatory gap.”" Carlos Rovelli has failed to understand the arguments for dualism, and is proudly sure that they must be nonsense. If there's ever to be a "solution" to the dualism/materialism argument, it cannot possibly end in a "slam dunk" where it turns out that one side or the other was simply nonsensical. IMO, the problem is actually one of epistemological framing. If I ask what "I" know, assuming that my internal experiences are the basis of my knowledge, then I can't accept materialism. But if we ask what "we" know, as a society of scientists and philosophers, together we find only natural material, and no evidence for dualism. (It's like the prisoner's dilemma. What's best for me is to defect. What's best for us is to cooperate.)
- skirmish 5mo ago
  > If there's ever to be a "solution" to the dualism/materialism argument, it cannot possibly end in a "slam dunk" where it turns out that one side or the other was simply nonsensical. Huh, evolution vs. creationism, many arguments happened over many years, yet one side was simply nonsensical. > if we ask what "we" know, as a society of scientists and philosophers That is how science is done; if you reject that approach a priori, no wonder your conclusions become unreliable.
  - simiones 5mo ago
    I don't think creationism is nonsensical, it's just wrong. But the concept overall is not nonsensical - in principle, if the universe were very different, a god could have molded humans out of clay and breathed life into them or whatever other fairy tale is preferred; it's not a logically inconsistent, so it's not nonsensical. Even something like Lamarckism is not nonsensical. If you want to see an obviously nonsensical world view, you need to look at something like the Time Cube "theory". Rovelli is essentially claiming that dualism is more in this area - which I agree with the GP is quite unlikely for such a long discussed and influential philosophical idea.
randallsquared 5mo ago
> Imagine the easy problem of consciousness is solved The hope for resolving this, I think, is that once we understand all processes in the brain, there will be some process that clearly is the self-referential "person" that is produced by the brain in normal operation. Anesthesia is strong evidence that there is some physical process that is the person. The hard problem only really needs consideration if we get to a point as you describe, where we fully understand everything happening in the brain and cannot assign consciousness to any part of it, even though we can turn it off and on again (e.g., with anesthesia).
- zetalyrae 5mo ago
  > The hope for resolving this, I think, is that once we understand all processes in the brain, there will be some process that clearly is the self-referential "person" that is produced by the brain in normal operation. Yes. I think it's possible with sufficient understanding, the hard problem will dissolve. But, the question we can ask today is: what kind of explanation would explain away the hard problem of consciousness? What is the signature the model must satisfy? I don't think there's a good answer to that.
  - robwwilliams 5mo ago
    It would have to explain how we construct “Now” from atemporal cells that are without a clock.
    - XorNot 5mo ago
      Why? You can build a clock with any basic oscillator and we're chock full of them.
    - simiones 5mo ago
      This problem, while interesting in its own right, is entirely irrelevant to consciousness. Especially because, regardless of how it's achieved, it's actually very clearly known that we do have temporal processes in our body - our tell-tale hearts being quite an iconic example.
thepasch 5mo ago
> Either all the computation happens "in the dark", as in a calculator or an Excel spreadsheet or a slide rule or Factorio, in which case we are p-zombies and consciousness is an illusion, which contradicts every waking moment of our experience You are still presupposing the premise here, in multiple ways: 1) "My experience is that I'm conscious, and math cannot result in consciousness, therefore consciousness is a separate thing." Question: who says math cannot result in consciousness? Do you have empirical proof of that? 2) "We have solved the easy problem of consciousness, we know exactly how the brain works" implicitly assumes that the formation of consciousness is NOT among the things we've learned while mapping out all features of the brain. This, again, is not an assumption that's supported by anything than wishful thinking. And, further: > or, everything is conscious, from brains to slide rules and spreadsheets, and that is incredibly, and also has a number of problems (e.g.: why aren't my neurons individually conscious? Why does consciousness stop at my skull, that is, why is the causality of signal-trains in neurons more "conscious" than phonons in the hydroxyapatite crystals in my skull?). "Some math can produce consciousness" does not mean "ALL math HAS to produce consciousness" does not mean "EVERY PART of all math has to BE conscious." Of course it's hard to define consciousness if the implicit definition is "certainly not anything that I don't like." The hard problem of consciousness is only hard because the default human move is to _make_ it hard.
- zetalyrae 5mo ago
  > Question: who says math cannot result in consciousness? Which math? Why some kinds of information processing and not others? If all information processing leads to consciousness: why does consciousness stop at the boundary of the brain? Why isn't every neuron individually and separately conscious? Why not the two hemispheres of the brain? Why isn't every causally-linked volume of the universe a single mind? > Implicitly assumes that the formation of consciousness is NOT among the things we've learned while mapping out all features of the brain. The point is that it's not clear at all what empirical knowledge we could acquire that would explain consciousness. Is in: what is the shape of the answer, and can a collection of material facts about the world have that shape? > Of course it's hard to define consciousness if the implicit definition is "certainly not anything that I don't like." The hard problem of consciousness is only hard because the default human move is to _make_ it hard. This is just a tiresome ad hominem. I want to be a materialist and an eliminativist. I would like this to be simple!
didibus 5mo ago
I suspect more things are conscious than we tend to assume. I would assume some level of intelligence requires a review/assessment process, something to evaluate what happened, what is good or bad, what should we have done instead, how can we do it better next time. This self-assessment becomes our experience of consciousness. Of course it feels incredible, unreal, like those feelings overwhelm us, because we are this function, and optimizing for those feelings is our function.
hackinthebochs 5mo ago
>Either all the computation happens "in the dark" [...] or, everything is conscious, from brains to slide rules and spreadsheets Why exclude the option that only specific kinds of computations are conscious, e.g. recursive control systems?
- zetalyrae 5mo ago
  For two reasons: 1. This requires explaining why only some kinds of information processing are privileged to be conscious, which seems rather arbitrary. 2. There's the question of levels of abstraction. Which information processor is conscious? The physical CPU, the zeroth VM, the first VM, the second VM, etc. 3. And there's the question of interpretation. What is computation? A CPU is "just" electrons moving about. Who says the motion of these 10^12 electrons represents arithmetic, or string concatenation, or anything else? The idea of abstract information processing above the bare causality of particles and fields is in itself a kind of dualism (or n-alism, because Turing completeness lets you emulate machines inside machines).
  - hackinthebochs 5mo ago
    Saying everything is conscious is also dualism. it's saying that every kind of computation (or perhaps every physical substrate) has another dimension of properties that aren't physical/structural and don't interact with the physical/structural world. So it's not an explanatory boon but rather an extravagance. The 'where is the consciousness' question is interesting but not really a hard problem. The issue can be solved by being clear about what purpose does consciousness serve then locate where that need is realized. Consciousness is about information integration and broad access as a substrate of decision making. Recursive integration identifies the where. But thinking in terms of nested VMs is sort of missing the point. The point is to trace the flow of information and find the points of broad integration. This may involve multiple substrates. Identifying a single thing as being conscious is a mistake. The consciousness is the most narrowly specified causal dynamic that grounds the information integration.
    - robwwilliams 5mo ago
GoblinSlayer 5mo ago
>We can map every "pixel" of the visual field at any time t. Map the process by which you learn that you have experience. Then determine if this process works correctly. Alien needs to learn to code; they have difficulty, because they try to learn integrals without arithmetic and algebra. Before you can solve a complex problem, you should first train on easy problems.
unparagoned 5mo ago
I think you are misunderstanding illusionism and the hard problem. Illusionism does say that there is a conscious experience. So illusionism is convincing to many people who have conscious experiences. The alien would be able to look at the computation and describe the conscious experience it has. You could put human consciousness on an excel spreadsheet and it’ll still be conscious. Even Chalmers accepts a simulation would be conscious. So no that’s not a. Argument for p-zombies. Even people that use the pz argument don’t think that pz could actually exist. But your conclusion is right, the simulation example does suggest that the consciousness in the hard problem doesn’t exist. Which just leaves the consciousness you experience explainable by easy problems. Which is the illusionist position. Edit: and the hard problem isn’t just why there is consciousness. But why consciousness is impossible under physicalism. So in your post you are just actually referring to the easy problem of consciousness when suggesting it exists.
- gizajob 5mo ago
  Put human consciousness in an excel spreadsheet and get back to us.
  - dgfl 5mo ago
    Look up the “China brain” idea. It’s basically the same. Could you explain why that wouldn’t be conscious a priori?
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
tardedmeme 5mo ago
The really hard problem is that your gut, having a neural network as complex as your brain, is also probably conscious. And all it's ever known and will ever know is the feeling of pushing food through it and tasting different types of food. Now that's a horror story.
- gizajob 5mo ago
  It’s only your labels in language that are splitting this system into separate parts.
  - simiones 5mo ago
    Conversely, it may be that it's only labels in language that are unifying disparate parts into a single "neural system" concept. Ultimately the world is either individual particles and fields, or it is all Oneness, Brahman, and anything else is just arbitrary unification/division; but we can't know which is which.
- ben_w 5mo ago
  > Now that's a horror story. For us, sure; why would it be so for them? Crows don't seem to be particularly upset by strutting around naked and eating bugs from the dirt. The guts' idea of a horror story, if it has one, may be more like indigestion or norovirus.
rcxdude 5mo ago
>why aren't my neurons individually conscious? How do you know that they are not? Any subjective experience they have does not have to overlap with yours. (same with your skull, skeleton, or any other subset of your body). (for me, having slowly become more aware of the distributed nature of my brain, I'm not even really sure there's only one consciousness in my mind!)
justonceokay 5mo ago
I’ll bite, I think your individual neurons are “just as” conscious as your whole body/environment system. They can’t advocate for themselves in words, but they have their own goals and interactions and decisions and needs. Your aliens don’t know what it’s like to be you. But if these aliens decide to use your blueprints to print out a human, and the human says “ouch”, is it still the hard problem? This is what I don’t get. Of course the music is different than just reading the score. A description of a process is not the process itself. We cannot know what it is like “to be” a bat but we also don’t know what it is like “to be” a spleen cell. Or the European futures market. Or a colony of ants, or the United States. These processes are complicated and intelligent, though not generally thought of having qualia. But I think it is only our hubris that differentiates the experience of an individual organism from that of our subsystems or supersystems.
essentia0 5mo ago
'why aren't my neurons individually conscious?' why can you assume a slide rule is but a neuron isn't? your consciousness doesnt stop at your 'skull', it extends to your fingers and "interfaces" with the world in various ways, which is effectively a weaker, slower connection. neurons in your brain are also not equally distributed to how much they affect your immediate consciousness, but they all play a part in it
d0mine 5mo ago
“Either or” is too extreme. Both can be true at the same time even if at different levels of abstraction eg a table and atoms it consists of may exist at the same time. Depending on the task different levels of abstraction may be useful. It is ridiculous to claim that a table doesn’t exist just because we can prove it is made of atoms (or strings excitation—doesn’t matter here) On the other hand, "consciousness" concept might be as much useful for modeling thinking as “the four elements” for describing anatomy (not useful at all)—and we create better models eventually.
perfmode 5mo ago
[flagged]

solveiga 5mo ago

I think this hard problem has a simple answer that people just don’t like: consciousness is a powerful (and fundamental to our "calculator brain") illusion. And yes, a spreadsheet simulating every neuron in your brain would also simulate it. The fact that it’s difficult to conceptualize doesn’t mean it’s not the answer. Similar to how we struggle to intuit general relativity, or to imagine the pre–Big Bang state of the universe (or its non-existence), or to picture what it’s like to be dead. Our intuition simply isn’t equipped for these cases, period, and it pushes back hard against them. Consciousness belongs in that same category IMO Also, the emergence of a consciousness like illusion kinda follows from an evolutionary perspective. To survive, a "calculator" brain needs a model of the external world in order to predict how it will evolve and to act in ways that improve survival odds. Once such a model exists, it becomes almost inevitable that it also includes a model of the system itself, since the brain is also part of the world it is modeling and an agent within it. This self-referential loop is likely what we experience as "consciousness" and it becomes central to how we understand and navigate reality. If we accept this framing, many traditional paradoxes dissolve on their own. The problem stops being "hard" in substance and becomes hard only in terms of imagination.

thesmtsolver2 5mo ago
The illusion framing/answer falls apart with some minor prodding. What makes the computation in the brain special from other physical processes to give rise to this illusion? The sewer system in NYC is complex. Does that also have the same illusion? Does the sewer in NYC have consciousness?
- solveiga 5mo ago
  What makes brain computation special? Nothing. That's my whole point. Does the sewer system in NYC have consciousness? It's impossible to answer, because there's no single accepted definition of consciousness. If something isn't clearly defined, it becomes very hard to meaningfully assess whether it applies or not. But if we built a Turing complete, sewer-like system that simulated every neuron in a human brain, it will claim that it is real and conscious for sure. There's no paradox at physical level, intuitively conceptualizing it is the "hard" part.
nofriend 5mo ago
> I think this hard problem has a simple answer that people just don’t like: consciousness is a powerful (and fundamental to our "calculator brain") illusion. who is eluded? people absolutely love this answer and give it constantly, not realizing that it's begging the question. in order for their to be an illusion, there needs to be someone to perceive the illusion.
- aoeusnth1 5mo ago
  The universe contains subsystems which can be described as eluded in the sense that we can take the intentional stance on these systems and describe their observable behavior as being in a state of illusion of separation.
zetalyrae 5mo ago
> And yes, a spreadsheet simulating every neuron in your brain would also simulate it. But why a spreadsheet simulating the brain, and not just a spreadsheet doing normal financial math? In other words: why are some types of information processing "privileged" to create phenomenal experiences, while others run "in the dark"? > Also, the emergence of a consciousness like illusion kinda follows from an evolutionary perspective. To survive, a "calculator" brain needs a model of the external world in order to predict how it will evolve and to act in ways that improve survival odds. Once such a model exists, it becomes almost inevitable that it also includes a model of the system itself, since the brain is also part of the world it is modeling and an agent within it. But this is A-consciousness, not P-consciousness. Which gets us back to square one: why does information processing give rise to experience at all?

dfabulich 5mo ago

Rovelli writes, "I fail to make sense of the claim that there is such an “explanatory gap.”" Carlos Rovelli has failed to understand the arguments for dualism, and is proudly sure that they must be nonsense. If there's ever to be a "solution" to the dualism/materialism argument, it cannot possibly end in a "slam dunk" where it turns out that one side or the other was simply nonsensical. IMO, the problem is actually one of epistemological framing. If I ask what "I" know, assuming that my internal experiences are the basis of my knowledge, then I can't accept materialism. But if we ask what "we" know, as a society of scientists and philosophers, together we find only natural material, and no evidence for dualism. (It's like the prisoner's dilemma. What's best for me is to defect. What's best for us is to cooperate.)

skirmish 5mo ago
> If there's ever to be a "solution" to the dualism/materialism argument, it cannot possibly end in a "slam dunk" where it turns out that one side or the other was simply nonsensical. Huh, evolution vs. creationism, many arguments happened over many years, yet one side was simply nonsensical. > if we ask what "we" know, as a society of scientists and philosophers That is how science is done; if you reject that approach a priori, no wonder your conclusions become unreliable.
- simiones 5mo ago
  I don't think creationism is nonsensical, it's just wrong. But the concept overall is not nonsensical - in principle, if the universe were very different, a god could have molded humans out of clay and breathed life into them or whatever other fairy tale is preferred; it's not a logically inconsistent, so it's not nonsensical. Even something like Lamarckism is not nonsensical. If you want to see an obviously nonsensical world view, you need to look at something like the Time Cube "theory". Rovelli is essentially claiming that dualism is more in this area - which I agree with the GP is quite unlikely for such a long discussed and influential philosophical idea.

randallsquared 5mo ago

> Imagine the easy problem of consciousness is solved The hope for resolving this, I think, is that once we understand all processes in the brain, there will be some process that clearly is the self-referential "person" that is produced by the brain in normal operation. Anesthesia is strong evidence that there is some physical process that is the person. The hard problem only really needs consideration if we get to a point as you describe, where we fully understand everything happening in the brain and cannot assign consciousness to any part of it, even though we can turn it off and on again (e.g., with anesthesia).

zetalyrae 5mo ago
> The hope for resolving this, I think, is that once we understand all processes in the brain, there will be some process that clearly is the self-referential "person" that is produced by the brain in normal operation. Yes. I think it's possible with sufficient understanding, the hard problem will dissolve. But, the question we can ask today is: what kind of explanation would explain away the hard problem of consciousness? What is the signature the model must satisfy? I don't think there's a good answer to that.
- robwwilliams 5mo ago
  It would have to explain how we construct “Now” from atemporal cells that are without a clock.
  - XorNot 5mo ago
    Why? You can build a clock with any basic oscillator and we're chock full of them.
  - simiones 5mo ago
    This problem, while interesting in its own right, is entirely irrelevant to consciousness. Especially because, regardless of how it's achieved, it's actually very clearly known that we do have temporal processes in our body - our tell-tale hearts being quite an iconic example.

thepasch 5mo ago

> Either all the computation happens "in the dark", as in a calculator or an Excel spreadsheet or a slide rule or Factorio, in which case we are p-zombies and consciousness is an illusion, which contradicts every waking moment of our experience You are still presupposing the premise here, in multiple ways: 1) "My experience is that I'm conscious, and math cannot result in consciousness, therefore consciousness is a separate thing." Question: who says math cannot result in consciousness? Do you have empirical proof of that? 2) "We have solved the easy problem of consciousness, we know exactly how the brain works" implicitly assumes that the formation of consciousness is NOT among the things we've learned while mapping out all features of the brain. This, again, is not an assumption that's supported by anything than wishful thinking. And, further: > or, everything is conscious, from brains to slide rules and spreadsheets, and that is incredibly, and also has a number of problems (e.g.: why aren't my neurons individually conscious? Why does consciousness stop at my skull, that is, why is the causality of signal-trains in neurons more "conscious" than phonons in the hydroxyapatite crystals in my skull?). "Some math can produce consciousness" does not mean "ALL math HAS to produce consciousness" does not mean "EVERY PART of all math has to BE conscious." Of course it's hard to define consciousness if the implicit definition is "certainly not anything that I don't like." The hard problem of consciousness is only hard because the default human move is to _make_ it hard.

zetalyrae 5mo ago
> Question: who says math cannot result in consciousness? Which math? Why some kinds of information processing and not others? If all information processing leads to consciousness: why does consciousness stop at the boundary of the brain? Why isn't every neuron individually and separately conscious? Why not the two hemispheres of the brain? Why isn't every causally-linked volume of the universe a single mind? > Implicitly assumes that the formation of consciousness is NOT among the things we've learned while mapping out all features of the brain. The point is that it's not clear at all what empirical knowledge we could acquire that would explain consciousness. Is in: what is the shape of the answer, and can a collection of material facts about the world have that shape? > Of course it's hard to define consciousness if the implicit definition is "certainly not anything that I don't like." The hard problem of consciousness is only hard because the default human move is to _make_ it hard. This is just a tiresome ad hominem. I want to be a materialist and an eliminativist. I would like this to be simple!

didibus 5mo ago

I suspect more things are conscious than we tend to assume. I would assume some level of intelligence requires a review/assessment process, something to evaluate what happened, what is good or bad, what should we have done instead, how can we do it better next time. This self-assessment becomes our experience of consciousness. Of course it feels incredible, unreal, like those feelings overwhelm us, because we are this function, and optimizing for those feelings is our function.

hackinthebochs 5mo ago

>Either all the computation happens "in the dark" [...] or, everything is conscious, from brains to slide rules and spreadsheets Why exclude the option that only specific kinds of computations are conscious, e.g. recursive control systems?

zetalyrae 5mo ago
For two reasons: 1. This requires explaining why only some kinds of information processing are privileged to be conscious, which seems rather arbitrary. 2. There's the question of levels of abstraction. Which information processor is conscious? The physical CPU, the zeroth VM, the first VM, the second VM, etc. 3. And there's the question of interpretation. What is computation? A CPU is "just" electrons moving about. Who says the motion of these 10^12 electrons represents arithmetic, or string concatenation, or anything else? The idea of abstract information processing above the bare causality of particles and fields is in itself a kind of dualism (or n-alism, because Turing completeness lets you emulate machines inside machines).
- hackinthebochs 5mo ago
  Saying everything is conscious is also dualism. it's saying that every kind of computation (or perhaps every physical substrate) has another dimension of properties that aren't physical/structural and don't interact with the physical/structural world. So it's not an explanatory boon but rather an extravagance. The 'where is the consciousness' question is interesting but not really a hard problem. The issue can be solved by being clear about what purpose does consciousness serve then locate where that need is realized. Consciousness is about information integration and broad access as a substrate of decision making. Recursive integration identifies the where. But thinking in terms of nested VMs is sort of missing the point. The point is to trace the flow of information and find the points of broad integration. This may involve multiple substrates. Identifying a single thing as being conscious is a mistake. The consciousness is the most narrowly specified causal dynamic that grounds the information integration.
  - robwwilliams 5mo ago

GoblinSlayer 5mo ago

>We can map every "pixel" of the visual field at any time t. Map the process by which you learn that you have experience. Then determine if this process works correctly. Alien needs to learn to code; they have difficulty, because they try to learn integrals without arithmetic and algebra. Before you can solve a complex problem, you should first train on easy problems.

unparagoned 5mo ago

I think you are misunderstanding illusionism and the hard problem. Illusionism does say that there is a conscious experience. So illusionism is convincing to many people who have conscious experiences. The alien would be able to look at the computation and describe the conscious experience it has. You could put human consciousness on an excel spreadsheet and it’ll still be conscious. Even Chalmers accepts a simulation would be conscious. So no that’s not a. Argument for p-zombies. Even people that use the pz argument don’t think that pz could actually exist. But your conclusion is right, the simulation example does suggest that the consciousness in the hard problem doesn’t exist. Which just leaves the consciousness you experience explainable by easy problems. Which is the illusionist position. Edit: and the hard problem isn’t just why there is consciousness. But why consciousness is impossible under physicalism. So in your post you are just actually referring to the easy problem of consciousness when suggesting it exists.

gizajob 5mo ago
Put human consciousness in an excel spreadsheet and get back to us.
- dgfl 5mo ago
  Look up the “China brain” idea. It’s basically the same. Could you explain why that wouldn’t be conscious a priori?

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

tardedmeme 5mo ago

The really hard problem is that your gut, having a neural network as complex as your brain, is also probably conscious. And all it's ever known and will ever know is the feeling of pushing food through it and tasting different types of food. Now that's a horror story.

gizajob 5mo ago
It’s only your labels in language that are splitting this system into separate parts.
- simiones 5mo ago
  Conversely, it may be that it's only labels in language that are unifying disparate parts into a single "neural system" concept. Ultimately the world is either individual particles and fields, or it is all Oneness, Brahman, and anything else is just arbitrary unification/division; but we can't know which is which.
ben_w 5mo ago
> Now that's a horror story. For us, sure; why would it be so for them? Crows don't seem to be particularly upset by strutting around naked and eating bugs from the dirt. The guts' idea of a horror story, if it has one, may be more like indigestion or norovirus.

rcxdude 5mo ago

>why aren't my neurons individually conscious? How do you know that they are not? Any subjective experience they have does not have to overlap with yours. (same with your skull, skeleton, or any other subset of your body). (for me, having slowly become more aware of the distributed nature of my brain, I'm not even really sure there's only one consciousness in my mind!)

justonceokay 5mo ago

I’ll bite, I think your individual neurons are “just as” conscious as your whole body/environment system. They can’t advocate for themselves in words, but they have their own goals and interactions and decisions and needs. Your aliens don’t know what it’s like to be you. But if these aliens decide to use your blueprints to print out a human, and the human says “ouch”, is it still the hard problem? This is what I don’t get. Of course the music is different than just reading the score. A description of a process is not the process itself. We cannot know what it is like “to be” a bat but we also don’t know what it is like “to be” a spleen cell. Or the European futures market. Or a colony of ants, or the United States. These processes are complicated and intelligent, though not generally thought of having qualia. But I think it is only our hubris that differentiates the experience of an individual organism from that of our subsystems or supersystems.

essentia0 5mo ago

'why aren't my neurons individually conscious?' why can you assume a slide rule is but a neuron isn't? your consciousness doesnt stop at your 'skull', it extends to your fingers and "interfaces" with the world in various ways, which is effectively a weaker, slower connection. neurons in your brain are also not equally distributed to how much they affect your immediate consciousness, but they all play a part in it

d0mine 5mo ago

“Either or” is too extreme. Both can be true at the same time even if at different levels of abstraction eg a table and atoms it consists of may exist at the same time. Depending on the task different levels of abstraction may be useful. It is ridiculous to claim that a table doesn’t exist just because we can prove it is made of atoms (or strings excitation—doesn’t matter here) On the other hand, "consciousness" concept might be as much useful for modeling thinking as “the four elements” for describing anatomy (not useful at all)—and we create better models eventually.

perfmode 5mo ago

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