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The Hard Problem of Consciousness(tm) can't be answered because it isn't a question at all; it's just a confusion. People who like to worship mystery are attrac

The Hard Problem of Consciousness(tm) can't be answered because it isn't a question at all; it's just a confusion. People who like to worship mystery are attracted to it, because it sucks to have your sacred mystery pulled out from under you by an explanation.

rosser 12y ago
Then explain how it is that meat can feel. There is absolutely nothing inherent in the nature of meat, as far as we can quantify, that entails feeling. So, please, yank my sacred mystery out from beneath me: what's the explanation?
- devindotcom 12y ago
  first, since you seem so eager, what is inherent? what is meat? what is feeling?
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  I wonder sometimes if we grant undue weight to "feeling" and "consciousness". A plant reacts to external stimuli in easy-to-understand ways. Sure, we are more complicated than that, but why are phototropisms just a curiosity while "feeling" is special? What if "feeling" and "consciousness" is nothing special at all, just extremely intricate and sophisticated clockwork that, like any sufficiently advanced technology, appears to be magic?
- tjradcliffe 12y ago
  > There is absolutely nothing inherent in the nature of meat... This is like declaring there is absolutely nothing inherent in the nature of matter to have temperature. Anyone making such a declaration would be looked at strangely if they wanted to enter a discussion on the nature of temperature. Declaring from the outset that there is anything particularly weird about biological systems being conscious, when one of the most basic, widely-accepted facts about biological systems is that they can be conscious, is not a good move. It sets up the problem as a Big Mystery, which is what the OP is pointing out. There are some "problems" that many people are never going to accept the solution to. Every few years someone publishes "the definitive answer" on the Mona Lisa's smile, and I still see people asking, "does nature or nurture cause behaviour?" as if it was a serious or interesting question. Likewise, there is a very significant chunk of the population dedicated to the proposition that "consciousness is fundamentally mysterious", and one day when we have it worked out pretty well why some complex systems have this emergent property, those people will still be ending articles on the subject with coy gibberish about how "...in the end, you can't reduce the magic of conscious experience to an equation." Sure you can. And we will, in the same way we came to understand temperature as an emergent property of systems of interacting particles in closed systems, without recourse of phlogiston or caloric or any other thermodynamic secret sauce.
  - rosser 12y ago
    "emergent property" That, right there, is why I reject this kind of argument. It's not parsimonious. Temperature isn't an "emergent property". It's a name we've given to a measurable phenomenon; in fact, it's the name of the measurement, itself. Another un-parsimonious notion: "one of the most basic, widely-accepted facts about biological systems is that they can be conscious". Okay, if they can be conscious, what makes one conscious and another not? Why am I blessed with the gift of consciousness, but my cat isn't? Or if she is, why her, but not the spider in my bathroom she loves to torment? Or if it is, why not the bacterium on my toilet seat? Drawing imaginary lines somewhere in the middle of reality and saying "things on this side of the line have squooblith, but things on that side don't" is going to require a bit of explanation as to why the line is there, and not somewhere else. For myself, the most parsimonious answer I can find to all this is that consciousness is an intrinsic property of matter, itself. So, sure, a rock (let alone a molecule of gypsum) is going to have a markedly different kind of experience than I do, what's to say that it doesn't have some kind of experience? It also nicely eliminates this "mystery" everyone seems to be down on: what could possibly be mysterious about something that is literally everywhere? But that's just me, and I readily admit that I'm rather anomalous, have studied this stuff for far too long, and taken a nontrivial amount of psychedelics. So, you know, grain of salt, &c.
    - zzalpha 12y ago
      But emergent properties are everywhere. Consider Conway's Game of Life. A few basic rules and you end up with remarkable, emergent complexity. The game of Go is another beautiful example. The same is true of any number of phenomenon. Break them down to their basic elements and it's not clear how the emergent properties arise, and yet they do. So is the brain just "meat"? Maybe. But that doesn't preclude incredible emergent complexity.
    - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
      >Okay, if they can be conscious, what makes one conscious and another not? Why am I blessed with the gift of consciousness, but my cat isn't? Why can't we just declare it an open question in neuroscience and cognitive science?
dkempner 12y ago
Can you please explain a little more what you mean?
nemo 12y ago
Hand-waving and dismissing something as a confused non-question isn't an explanation. People who can't handle the state of uncertainty are attracted to it, because its uncomfortable to find your premises aren't grounded in certainty.
rybosome 12y ago
I don't agree with your conclusion - and I say this as someone who has fully accepted the ideas that human existence is a random occurrence due to the recursive emergence of complexity, that life has no intrinsic purpose and that we are on our own, so to speak. Even imagining consciousness as an emergent property of simple brain functions doesn't fully explain it; the particular experience of various qualia, the sensation of being...these are hard to quantify.
RivieraKid 12y ago
Or perhaps you're an unconscious robot, so you'll never be able to understand. For me, it's absolutely clear and obvious that the hard problem of consciousness is real (and FTR I'm a very rational and scientifically-minded person).

rosser 12y ago

Then explain how it is that meat can feel. There is absolutely nothing inherent in the nature of meat, as far as we can quantify, that entails feeling. So, please, yank my sacred mystery out from beneath me: what's the explanation?

devindotcom 12y ago
first, since you seem so eager, what is inherent? what is meat? what is feeling?
sliverstorm 12y ago
I wonder sometimes if we grant undue weight to "feeling" and "consciousness". A plant reacts to external stimuli in easy-to-understand ways. Sure, we are more complicated than that, but why are phototropisms just a curiosity while "feeling" is special? What if "feeling" and "consciousness" is nothing special at all, just extremely intricate and sophisticated clockwork that, like any sufficiently advanced technology, appears to be magic?
tjradcliffe 12y ago
> There is absolutely nothing inherent in the nature of meat... This is like declaring there is absolutely nothing inherent in the nature of matter to have temperature. Anyone making such a declaration would be looked at strangely if they wanted to enter a discussion on the nature of temperature. Declaring from the outset that there is anything particularly weird about biological systems being conscious, when one of the most basic, widely-accepted facts about biological systems is that they can be conscious, is not a good move. It sets up the problem as a Big Mystery, which is what the OP is pointing out. There are some "problems" that many people are never going to accept the solution to. Every few years someone publishes "the definitive answer" on the Mona Lisa's smile, and I still see people asking, "does nature or nurture cause behaviour?" as if it was a serious or interesting question. Likewise, there is a very significant chunk of the population dedicated to the proposition that "consciousness is fundamentally mysterious", and one day when we have it worked out pretty well why some complex systems have this emergent property, those people will still be ending articles on the subject with coy gibberish about how "...in the end, you can't reduce the magic of conscious experience to an equation." Sure you can. And we will, in the same way we came to understand temperature as an emergent property of systems of interacting particles in closed systems, without recourse of phlogiston or caloric or any other thermodynamic secret sauce.
- rosser 12y ago
  "emergent property" That, right there, is why I reject this kind of argument. It's not parsimonious. Temperature isn't an "emergent property". It's a name we've given to a measurable phenomenon; in fact, it's the name of the measurement, itself. Another un-parsimonious notion: "one of the most basic, widely-accepted facts about biological systems is that they can be conscious". Okay, if they can be conscious, what makes one conscious and another not? Why am I blessed with the gift of consciousness, but my cat isn't? Or if she is, why her, but not the spider in my bathroom she loves to torment? Or if it is, why not the bacterium on my toilet seat? Drawing imaginary lines somewhere in the middle of reality and saying "things on this side of the line have squooblith, but things on that side don't" is going to require a bit of explanation as to why the line is there, and not somewhere else. For myself, the most parsimonious answer I can find to all this is that consciousness is an intrinsic property of matter, itself. So, sure, a rock (let alone a molecule of gypsum) is going to have a markedly different kind of experience than I do, what's to say that it doesn't have some kind of experience? It also nicely eliminates this "mystery" everyone seems to be down on: what could possibly be mysterious about something that is literally everywhere? But that's just me, and I readily admit that I'm rather anomalous, have studied this stuff for far too long, and taken a nontrivial amount of psychedelics. So, you know, grain of salt, &c.
  - zzalpha 12y ago
    But emergent properties are everywhere. Consider Conway's Game of Life. A few basic rules and you end up with remarkable, emergent complexity. The game of Go is another beautiful example. The same is true of any number of phenomenon. Break them down to their basic elements and it's not clear how the emergent properties arise, and yet they do. So is the brain just "meat"? Maybe. But that doesn't preclude incredible emergent complexity.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    >Okay, if they can be conscious, what makes one conscious and another not? Why am I blessed with the gift of consciousness, but my cat isn't? Why can't we just declare it an open question in neuroscience and cognitive science?

dkempner 12y ago

Can you please explain a little more what you mean?

nemo 12y ago

Hand-waving and dismissing something as a confused non-question isn't an explanation. People who can't handle the state of uncertainty are attracted to it, because its uncomfortable to find your premises aren't grounded in certainty.

rybosome 12y ago

I don't agree with your conclusion - and I say this as someone who has fully accepted the ideas that human existence is a random occurrence due to the recursive emergence of complexity, that life has no intrinsic purpose and that we are on our own, so to speak. Even imagining consciousness as an emergent property of simple brain functions doesn't fully explain it; the particular experience of various qualia, the sensation of being...these are hard to quantify.

RivieraKid 12y ago

Or perhaps you're an unconscious robot, so you'll never be able to understand. For me, it's absolutely clear and obvious that the hard problem of consciousness is real (and FTR I'm a very rational and scientifically-minded person).