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What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

nautil.us

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Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#221

Post by pandoro »

Consciousness cannot be understood or known in the epistemological sense of the term since it is, by definition, the ultimate subject. It also cannot be experienced as an object. It sounds very hand-wavy and esoteric but if you think hard about it, it is absolutely and undeniably the only tenable logical position.

Put in another way: if you somehow claim to be able to observe or measure consciousness as an object, then what is it that is doing the observing?

Similarly, consciousness is unchanging and without beginning or end, for noticing and knowing any change you need consciousness.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#222

Post by abletonlive »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #205
visarga wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it is not the same question as: how is it possible that we have any experience at all? Let me send this ball straight back to you. In the morning when you wake up what happens? You might take something to eat. How would you find the kitchen, how would you recognise the food, or even know you need it? Of course, you are conscious. That's how. It is possible to be conscious because otherwise your body wouldn't be…

You don't think it's possible to seek nutrients without having experiences?

I don't believe it is. This is the problem w/ the philosophical zombies, they are self defeating examples and can't exist in anything but a thought experiment. The fact that you're seeking nutrients at all means you can distinguish between sensory input, and therefore are experiencing something. If you can't distinguish between sensory input, then you are not experiencing anything. How can you be an effective seeker of nutrients if you don't experience anything and get feedback on whether you've found the nutrient or not?

This is why I think the hard problem of consciousness is silly and only exists because language is so imperfect that philosophers have invented a problem which they can't even decide is actually a problem or not. Can any of us even agree on what an "experience" is?

You can tell this is so because every conversation about the hard problem of consciousness starts off by trying to convince people there is a problem to talk about and use the same tired examples. We can "experience" red. There is an "experience" of being a bat.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#223

Post by rytill »

ncmncm wrote: post #198
psyc wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes more sense, thanks. But philosophers of mind, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and all could just as well pursue other lines of inquiry without protesting too much that there's no hard problem.

If you think there is a hard problem, it is on you to articulate one. Thus far I have not encountered one that does not depend on undefined words or circular arguments, i.e. knots.

Do you think there is such a thing as objective morality? Not just human ethics, or social norms or whatever, but that some things that occur are "better" than other things in some important sense. Or maybe, that certain actions are "good" and others are "bad"?

Like for instance, the experience a human would have when relaxing in a hot tub with their friends, is "better" in some important, real sense compared to the experience of dying in a trench in WWI?

If not, I probably can't convince you that there is a hard problem having to do with consciousness where we'd benefit from knowing all the answers. But if so, I could give it a try.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#224

Post by simonh »

visarga wrote: post #195
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #93

Like Dennett in "Consciousness Explained", both of these authors seem almost entirely focused on what we are conscious of rather than the fact that we are conscious of anything at all. Their descriptions of their work are all centered on the question of what it is that we actually experience. This is is a fascinating question, and entirely worthy of investigation. But it is not the same question as: how is it possibl…

> But it is not the same question as: how is it possible that we have any experience at all? Let me send this ball straight back to you. In the morning when you wake up what happens? You might take something to eat. How would you find the kitchen, how would you recognise the food, or even know you need it? Of course, you are conscious. That's how. It is possible to be conscious because otherwise your body wouldn't be…

This is an argument that an amobea must be concious, no?

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#225

Post by visarga »

krapp wrote: post #26
zubspace wrote: post #23

What I find fascinating about consciousness is that it seems to be bound to your location. But how and why? Why are you inside of your body and not in someone elses? The article poses this question, but leaves it unanswered. For me it begs the question: If conscousness is bound to a location, is it possible to transfer consciousness from one entity to another? Is there some kind of thing we did not yet detect? What h…

This is only fascinating if you refuse to accept a non-supernatural or non-metaphysical definition of consciousness. Otherwise, most of these questions become trivial when consciousness is considered as a physical, biological process bound to the brain. Why is consciousness bound to a person's location? Because their brain is bound inside their skull. Why are you inside your body and not someone else's? Because your…

> This is only fascinating if you refuse to accept a non supernatural or non metaphysical definition of consciousness.

That's a failure to appreciate the beauty, complexity and wonders of our brains, bodies and environment. No effort on appreciating, but still wanting to feel special. Thus, consciousness simply has to have a supernatural element. It wouldn't be fun otherwise.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#226

Post by GeorgeKangas »

naasking wrote: post #197
throwawayguy7 wrote: post #78

What this article and most others lack is an adult treatment of why serious neuroscientists and philosphers of the mind feel the problem is in fact, hard. To me, the fact that illusion and hallucination are being invoked is strong evidence of handwaving being engaged in to dismiss an otherwise difficult problem. This is not a scientifically rigorous explanation and it doesn't take the other side seriously. As a young…

> To me, the fact that illusion and hallucination are being invoked is strong evidence of handwaving being engaged in to dismiss an otherwise difficult problem. Dennett doesn't dismiss the difficulty of the problem, he just dismisses that the difficulty is where people think it is. For instance, he would fully agree that the brain is insanely complex and just elaborating how information processing works will be very,…

If one is a "phenomenological zombie", i.e. does not have subjective experience (SE), then Dennett's position is the only one that makes any sense. The only thing to explain, is why others are believing this SE illusion.

Those of us who do have SE, and have recognized it, know something the zombies cannot know: that SE must exist.

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#227

Post by visarga »

foobarian wrote: post #167
zubspace wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can completely follow your logic. And I completely agree that going supernatural or decending into a soul-debate is not constructive. That was not my intent. Still, you and I can probably agree to some extent, that there is an inner eye inside of our heads looking outside. It also makes sense to me, that those processes could spawn from a feedback loop inside of a brain. Still. why did this inner eye spawn in this…

I have a lot of trouble with that exact question. It's no wonder the concept of a 'soul' is so pervasive over the ages - it explains things so neatly. It's like there is a cosmic Kubernetes cluster and at birth a process gets randomly assigned to a CPU.

Yeah, it's called evolution. You are one bet in a pool of bets for future survival. A single, uninterrupted, open-ended process that created all life on this planet. How many of our creations can lead to such diversity in one single run?

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#228

Post by naasking »

GeorgeKangas wrote: post #215
naasking wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it is not the same question as: how is it possible that we have any experience at all? You're right, it's not the same question. Dennett answers that question too though: you don't have conscious experience, you only think you do. Thus, the questions he and these authors address are the only ones worth investigating. In time, exploring these questions will reveal the illusion behind consciousness, just like the…

"you don't have conscious experience, you only think you do." That's what illusionism , the position of Keith Frankish, asserts. Dennett mostly seems to support it, as you note, but more equivocally than Frankish. For those of us who have subjective experience (SE), and are aware of it: SE is the thing, which we know must exist (as noted by Descartes). Anyone doubting the existence of SE, either is not having SE (i.e…

> Dennett mostly seems to support it, as you note, but more equivocally than Frankish.

I believe Dennett is an eliminative materialist, so he would consider qualia to be an illusion.

> For those of us who have subjective experience (SE), and are aware of it: SE is the thing, which we know must exist (as noted by Descsartes).

Descartes begged the question. Just deconstruct it: "I think therefore I am" presupposes the existence of "I" right at the very start. Except everybody knows there is no "I", you're just a bundle of atoms, and a bundle that's changing from moment to moment. Where are "you" exactly? The argument is fallacious and implies fallacious conclusions which led to mind/body dualism.

The non-fallacious version is "this is a thought, therefore thoughts exist". This is undeniably true, and yet it does not imply the existence of an "I" or any kind of dualism between mind and matter. A thought would then simply be a specific material structure (edit: or rather, it's a particular logical structure that can be embodied as a material structure).

> Anyone doubting the existence of SE, either is not having SE (i.e. is a "phenomenological zombie"), or (more likely, IMO) has not identified his own SE.

Anyone doubting subjective experience has simply recognized that every prior claim to human specialness has failed spectacularly, that science has repeatedly shown that our obvious and intuitive grasp of perception and truth is fatally flawed in numerous ways, and therefore that we should not in a million years trust anything that we immediately perceive as completely obvious when it can be demonstrated quite easily that these perceptions are vague and often false.

For christ's sake, your senses are telling you that water breaks pencils [1], and that you're burning up when you're dying of cold [2], and you're telling me that your internal perceptions of your subjective experience, arguably the most sophisticated part of your brain, is some kind factual oracle? Sorry, that's just nonsense. You should be immensely skeptical of your perceptions, looking both for justification that they are true or explanations for why you think they are true, you should not be treating them as simply a priori true.

[1] https://scienceathomekids.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/IMG...

[2] https://psichologyanswers.com/library/lecture/read/76624-do-...

Re: What’s so hard about understanding consciousness?

#229

Post by Dylan16807 »

abletonlive wrote: post #222
Dylan16807 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think it's possible to seek nutrients without having experiences?

I don't believe it is. This is the problem w/ the philosophical zombies, they are self defeating examples and can't exist in anything but a thought experiment. The fact that you're seeking nutrients at all means you can distinguish between sensory input, and therefore are experiencing something. If you can't distinguish between sensory input, then you are not experiencing anything. How can you be an effective seeker…

If I have a material that tightens or loosens based on temperature or chemical gradient, does that count as "sensory input"? I wouldn't say so, since nothing is receiving a signal from it to distinguish, and I also wouldn't say it's causing experiences, but it is enough to seek nutrients for a bacteria or a jellyfish-like creature.
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