Do you agree that there is such a thing as a hard problem of consciousness, Veeky Forums? Are the phenomenal properties of consciousness a mystery our current scientific frameworks cannot even begin to solve?
Hard problem of Consciousness
Chase Foster
Camden Rivera
I hate the way you (and others) phrase it because you make it sound like something mystical and/or magical. We just don't understand how it works, but there's no magic.
Ian Walker
The question isn't whether or not the problem exists, it's whether it has a satisfying answer.
Jordan Moore
I think it's reducible to physics. I don't know that we are we intelligent enough to solve it.
Also what is phenomenal consciousness vs. just consciousness?
Jacob Myers
>Also what is phenomenal consciousness vs. just consciousness?
I'll copy-paste something I've written in other threads:
Most commonly, consciousness simply refers to the function of the brain: How we react to environmental stimuli, control our behavior, categorize information, and use language. It seems like biology can in principle easily account for everything that goes on here. This leaves out the other side to consciousness, which is commonly referred to as "phenomenal consciosuness", which is what the hard problem is about. Here we are asking the question of why it feels like anything to be you from the inside, why all the functions of the brain emerging from every molecule interaction doesn't just happen without a phenomenological subject there to experience it. To pose it in a slightly different language: Why there is an "I" present? An "I" does not need to be present, hypothetically, for you to exhibit the exact same behavior.
Phenomenal consciousness is the only thing in the world where outlining the behavior doesn't seem to get you anywhere. For every other thing, no matter how complicated, it can in principle be reduced to the complex behavior of elementary particles (or quantum interactions); axioms like "things exist in the universe and behave a certain way" usually buys you a lot of explanatory power over any phenomena, but when it comes to phenomenal consciousness, this approach runs into a wall. No matter how something behaves, it seems it shouldn't be able to amount to anything but more behavior, yet we also get phenomenal experience. This highlights a big gap between explaining how something functions, and explaining phenomenal experience. From this gap between function and experience, we can infer that we're dealing with something radically different here; something where the behavior doesn't even begin to account for the core phenomena.
Matthew Parker
I see, in the past I've used the word "sentient" to describe that side of consciousness. You seem much more well read on the subject than myself but I still find it interesting.
It's difficult because I can tell you for sure that I am experiencing things right now but I can't prove it. I have no way of quantifying it. I used to think "I" is an illusion but who or what would that illusion be meant to fool?
Connor Gonzalez
Wrong, it's not at all universally accepted that there's a "hard problem" in the sense Chalmers defined it. If you mean figuring out brain functionality in general is "hard" that's something different, but not everyone buys that "qualia" exist in the first place beyond being abstract concepts we reference as though they were real.
Elijah Carter
We're fooling ourselves.
Many simultaneous processes (or algorithms) are running in our brains at all times. We can see some of them working and we can see what happens when selective regions malfunction.
How they all result in a single "sense of self" is THE problem.
There's no little homunculus looking out of our eyes. Nor is there a "team" in the driver's seat like Inside Out. And there's no need to assume consciousness requires something immaterial.
I think we will eventually build machinery which we'll have to concede is "conscious", by the same standards we apply to other people. They act the same way we do.
I offer no guesses as to when that'll happen.
We can only ever be SURE about ourselves, but denying consciousness to others is solipsism.
Chase Smith
>doesn't just happen without a phenomenological subject there to experience it.
Who says there is a subject there?
There is no more a unique "I" than there is a unique arm or leg.
Michael Nelson
Unique or not, there is an I. At least in my case.