What reason do "hard problem" believers have for thinking A happens instead of B in pic related? And not just for cases where you speak about something you see, but with any case where you report on what you "see," "hear," "taste," etc... if you just suppose in each of those cases all that's happening is something like B in pic related where you're just being compelled to act *like* you saw, heard, tasted, etc., how would you ever know that wasn't the case? And since you have no way of telling the difference given that B in pic related will always make you act exactly like if you would if you really did have magic thought bubble "experiences", what would be the point of anything like A ever happening to anyone when B explains it just as well with nothing but straightforward classical physics style cause and effect chemistry? I mean, consider the same pair of options but instead of a person substitute in a computer and instead of vision substitute in a hand pressing a key. Would it make sense for that computer to have a magic thought bubble "experience" of a key being pressed? Or would it be sufficient for the computer to merely have a series of cause and effect relationships which make it behave *like* it "experienced" receiving a key press by showing the key's letter on its screen?
What reason do "hard problem" believers have for thinking A happens instead of B in pic related...
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There's nothing paranormal about this topic. Behaviorism is the opposite of paranormal.
You see something but it's not categorized until you processes it in your brain. You're getting confused because you see an apple and your brain processes it in milliseconds. Since you recognize it so quickly, you assume that you just know it's an apple without consciously thinking. But your eyes see the object, the brain pairs it with memories of other apples and then retrieves the word associated with the image.
> Since you recognize it so quickly, you assume that you just know it's an apple without consciously thinking. But your eyes see the object, the brain pairs it with memories of other apples and then retrieves the word associated with the image.
None of those steps need to involve a magic thought bubble "experience" though. What we have from your description are:
A) Stimuli to the eyes (definitely a phenomenon that can be well explained in terms of pure physical cause and effect)
B) Encoding of stimuli so it can be checked against stored memory encodings (nothing beyond the physical needed here either; computers can and do perform this same sort of task e.g. Google Images)
C) Classification of this encoding based on similarity to other sorts of stored memory encoding (classifiers definitely aren't beyond plain physical computation either, this is used constantly by companies today in the form of generating recommended new content based on the classification of content you've already viewed / purchased)
D) And finally, association of words with encodings of images and/or association of words with classifications of encodings of images, which again isn't anything that requires more than mundane physical cause and effect relationships
Can you elaborate what this all means to a brainlet? are you pretty much trying to say consciousness is mechanical?
hard problem is not the chain of events that make you "hear", "see", "taste", but rather the fact that one can experience them in first person.
It doesn't clash with mechanicism or physics imo, you don't have to put free will into the equation at all, but still, while possibly executing a purely mechanical reaction, you still get to experience it in a first person subjectivity that pops out in a way there's apparently no physical/mathematical tool that explains it
Yes
>the fact that one can experience them in first person.
>you still get to experience it
This is exactly what I'm arguing against. There is a 'B' pic explanation for every example you can come up with where you believe you're having an 'A' pic 'experience'. You don't need to assume there really is an 'experience' just because that's what it seemed like to you. All you need to accept is that you were compelled to behave as though there was an 'experience'. You would have no way of knowing the difference, so the explanation where your brain merely makes you behave *like* you had an 'experience' is a lot more sensible than the explanation where there actually was some magical 1st person thought bubble 'experience' you went through.
>B-But I know it's real, I can see and hear things right now!
That's exactly what someone without 'experiences' compelled purely to behave *like* they have 'experiences' would say.
>Maybe we don't know whether others have experiences, but I know for a fact I have them!
No, you don't know that. There is no reason to believe you could ever tell the difference between having 'them' vs. merely being compelled to act *like* you have them, and the latter is an explanation that requires nothing more than mundane cause and effect physics to account for while the former is mysterious and constitutes a 'hard problem' precicely because it's based around a thing that doesn't really exist.
you're mixing dualism with consciousness. come back when you get your understanding straight.
No, the 'hard problem' claim is dualism, you just don't realize it. Most people who slip up and accidentally engage in dualist thinking don't realize that's what they're doing.
>This is exactly what I'm arguing against. There is a 'B' pic explanation for every example you can come up with where you believe you're having an 'A' pic 'experience'. You don't need to assume there really is an 'experience' just because that's what it seemed like to you. All you need to accept is that you were compelled to behave as though there was an 'experience'. You would have no way of knowing the difference, so the explanation where your brain merely makes you behave *like* you had an 'experience' is a lot more sensible than the explanation where there actually was some magical 1st person thought bubble 'experience' you went through.
you know you can turn that shit around, right? You can argue everything is consciousness and there is no outside physical world. you just believe there's a physical world. consciousness just creates an experience which makes you believe there's a physical word. You cannot prove it though.
However, you HAVE consciousness. If you see a red apple, you actually see the color red, as an experience, not as a wavelength. Without consciousness, you would not see red.
Because they actually can visualize an apple in their mind. Maybe if you try really, really hard you can do it too.
>No, the 'hard problem' claim is dualism
No, it is not. You're mixing facts here.
>you know you can turn that shit around, right? You can argue everything is consciousness and there is no outside physical world. you just believe there's a physical world.
Unlike with the belief we've 'experienced' something, the belief in a physical world is supported by third party reports, mechanical diagnostics, and maybe most importantly, mathematical consistency. Also, which would you be more persuaded by in a criminal trial, the report of one person's alleged 'experience' or video camera footage everyone in the room has access to?
You merely behave like you're visualizing an apple, no visualization phenomenon occurs in actuality.
Yes it is. Feel free to elaborate with examples if you want to claim it isn't though. Or stick figure picture.
>the belief in a physical world is supported by third party reports, mechanical diagnostics, and maybe most importantly, mathematical consistency
all those things are experienced through consciousness.
when you touch something, you cannot be sure there's something physical there. you just have an experience of touching something.
For example, certain complex arrangements of matter or chemical /electrical processes could lead to consciousness as an emergent phenomenon. Or every particle could have a basic consciousness and when combined into a brain could lead to the rich experience we have.
I hope this shows you that consciousness does not require dualism.
>all those things are experienced
You don't know that there's an 'experience'. You just know you're compelled to behave like there is one.
>when you touch something, you cannot be sure there's something physical there.
That's why you check in more than just one way. There is more evidence against the illusion possibility for a given object the more you can corroborate its existence through different means. Its reality is falsifiable because you could prove it was an illusion after all e.g. we established the sun doesn't really rise and fall by collecting more data and discovering it's more a case of us revolving around it.
You can't falsify the 'experience' beleif in a similar way. It's a garbage idea.
>certain complex arrangements of matter or chemical /electrical processes could lead to consciousness as an emergent phenomenon.
Two possibilities with that:
1) What you're describing is just a 'qualia' free / 'no hard problem' description a la pic B
2) What you mean by 'consciousness' and 'emergent phenomenon' is something more than just stimuli and behavior, in which case it's dualism a la pic A
the only thing I'm sure of is that I have experience. my computer has behavior, too. But I do not experience its behavior.
elaborate further on why you think these are the only possibilities.
>the only thing I'm sure of is that I have experience.
You think you're sure of it, but it isn't really there. You shouldn't overrate what seems 'real' to you. That's the whole point of having a scientific method supported with controlled experiments rather than personal feels. Because we're extremely prone to illusion when we try to go with how things seem to us.
Possibility 1 is pretty straightforward. Bodies engage in behavior based on networks of association between stimuli and reactions. 'Consciousness' in this context is just a convenient shorthand we use to speak about these physical relationships without needing to get too deep into the details of how they work e.g. 'I saw a movie' instead of 'light stimuli to my eyes triggered associations with these routines which prompted me to behave as though... '.
Possibility two is anything other than that first possibility where everything is explained in terms of the actual physical organs and processes we have information about. If you propose possibility 1 isn't enough, then you need to explain what specifically is missing. If you say what's missing is a 1st person 'experience', well that's dualism. If you say what's missing is an emergent phenomenon of what it's like to be something, then that's dualism.
it doesn't matter if it is real or illusion, experience is experience. If I have an illusion, I have experience. I cannot have an illusion of experience because even this illusion would be an experience.
No, you can have illusion without 'experience' just fine. If you lean forward to pick up a pen that fell out of your pocket and the toilet you were sitting on autoflushes in response even though you weren't actually done defecating then that was an illusion for the toilet.
I don't understand. Does the toilet have the illusion or do I? What exactly is the illusion in this case? The toilet's response to the pen or the fact that I wasn't done yet?
The illusion is to the toilet, not to you. It's a simple machine that is meant to flush when someone is done shitting, but an illusion where someone shifts position without genuinely finishing can happen causing the toilet to behave like someone finished when no one did in reality.
the toilet does not have an illusion, since it would require a believe. only when the toilet believes someone has finished there can be a difference between its believe and reality, causing the illusion. if it just acts on input without interpretation of why it does as it does, there will be no illusion. for the toilet, you shifting position is just the input which makes it act. it does not think or believe anything on why it acts. if this is not the desired function, the error lies with the developer of the toilet, the toilet just acts like it was built to act, without interpreting that this may not be the desired way.
It depends on your definition of 'illusion'. First one I get in Google fits with my own use of the word:
>a thing that is or is likely to be wrongly perceived or interpreted by the senses.
The toilet sensor wrongly interpretted an act of picking up a pen as an act of getting up to leave.
>the error lies with the developer of the toilet, the toilet just acts like it was built to act
It's not an error on the developer's part. Nobody building those toilets is unaware of or surprised by the existence of false positives. It's part of the design that the toilet will be subject to a certain margin of error.
Anyway, whether or not you prefer to define illusion as something you need to 'experience' is just semantics. Even if you beleieve that should be how that word is limited you can still understand what it means for an object or system with no 'experience' to make reports that aren't true or to engage in activity consistent with a premise that isn't true i.e. mechanical false positives.
the toilet sensor only knows about its input and function. it does not know of an outside world where pens and people exist. thus it cannot be subject to illusion of such things.
Like I said, semantics. Drop the word 'illusion' if you really think that word requires 'experience'. I'm talking about objects and systems without 'experience' (like toilets and like ourselves) reporting things that aren't true or engaging in behavior that can be interpretted as premised on an untrue idea.
it's not semantics. the sensor works in deterministic fashion. it does not interpret wrong things. the human judging the sensor interprets the sensor to be working incorrectly.
for all the sensor knows is:
shift of a butt -> transmit signal
if doesn't care if it's a shift of a butt because you are finished or without you being finished. it doesn't even have any option to find out. thus it works correctly. it just doesn't work the way the developer wants it to work.
If I throw a stone into the air and don't want it to come back it's not the stone's fault. There is no illusion to the stone. The stone just works according to gravity, like the sensor just works according to its input and function.
>the sensor works in deterministic fashion
So do we.
what I meant is that the sensor does not perceive imaginary input as we do. If it senses pressure or light, it is really there.
Define 'imaginary'. I would argue any case you point to as 'imaginary' input for us will (or at least can) have an equivalent case for an artificial machine.