The hard problem of consciousness

[Darat]

Have to agree rocketdodger... claiming there is a problem you can't even describe would seem to hint that the problem may not be where you think it is!

 

[JoeEllison]

One of the reasons that it's a hard problem is that it's impossible to state it rigorously. We can't even define what we mean by consciousness in an objective fashion. The reason it's a hard problem is that we are dealing with an entirely subjective phenomenon.

How can you even know if you have a problem if you can't figure out a way to say what the problem is?

I suspect that the real problem is that some people want to cling to a non-materialist worldview, and this is one of the ways they can do it while pretending that there's a rational reason to do so. The reality from where I'm sitting is that the whole HPC comes down to people declaring "there has to be something more to consciousness and subjective experience... there just HAS TO BE!"

 

[rocketdodger]

I think that touches on the cognitive function, higher reasoning, abstract thought etc, but not with consciousness/experience itself. All these cognitive functions are part of the "easy problem". All these qualities of the brain come in to consciousness after they have gone through a proces of some sort.

Is not self-consciousness nothing more than higher reasoning and abstract thought about the self?

So if you can get all the required cognitive functions using a reasoning system, and you can use the system to reason about whatever you want (including "self"), then ... where is the problem?

All of the "problems" in the HPC can be reduced to reasoning about something. A "subjective" experience is nothing more than reasoning about an experience. Qualia don't even exist until you reason about them. Etc. Thus a robust reasoning system is all that consciousness requires.

The only problem here is that proponents of the HPC categorically refuse to even attempt to define these terms they throw around. Why? I suspect because deep down they (you?) know that if the terms can be defined, then the problem can be solved, and their consciousness will no longer be some magical entity that makes them somehow implicitly different from the rest of the matter in the universe.

Well, guess what? I know, as sure as I know the sun comes up, that I am nothing more than a biological reasoning system, and I still think I am somehow implicitly different from the rest of the matter in the universe. Even if I am only matter -- the same matter that everything and everyone else is -- I am still ME, and that makes me different.

 

[rocketdodger]

I suspect that the real problem is that some people want to cling to a non-materialist worldview, and this is one of the ways they can do it while pretending that there's a rational reason to do so. The reality from where I'm sitting is that the whole HPC comes down to people declaring "there has to be something more to consciousness and subjective experience... there just HAS TO BE!"

Darn... Joe beat me to it!

 

[skiba]

So I counter, where has that which we label as consciousness occured without a biological framework?

Theres no objective evidence for such a thing, only subjective.

Well that depends by that even vaguer word that you are using of 'experience', which aspect are you interested in? Sensation, perception, cognition, memory?

I like the word experience, because I think it describes the problem of consciousness accurately. I'm not sure if you understood what I meant by it.

The aspects you listed above Sensation, perception, cognition, memory are things you experience, and wouldn't call that part of consciousness(inlight of this discussion). These aspects happen in the brain and then you experience
them. The function(cognition) itself is not an experience, but rather a computation. The function is experienced or the end result of that function rises into awareness and is experienced.

Heres one more example that might narrow it down. Lets say we want to build a machine that does nothing but experience emotion. No reasoning no thoughts, and most inportantly no sense perception of any kind. only the emotions. Lets say the emotion is intense happiness. We all know what happiness feels like, we just strip all acompaning thoughts and sense perception away. How would you build that, so it replicates exactly your experience of intense happiness??
Is it microchips experiencing microchips, is it electricity experiencing electricity or a combination of those? If it is, is it only an assumption, because that is the only "rational" or scientifically consistent explanation.

Ah, but do we actually experience anything ?

Well, dont you have experiences?

Do you experience a questioning of your experience

 

[Nick227]

I make no such assumptions. I'm simply saying that we don't know what phenomena like emotion is at the moment. That we don't know how it emerges from brain processes. We only know that it does (or we are very confident that it does and that there is zero evidence and no reason to suppose that it doesn't).

It seems to me personally that there should exist a basic level of feeling in the body, whether one is conscious of it or not, and that alterations to mood or physiology produce a shift in this basic level of feeling. It's a feedback system, derived from "body maintenance" programmes in animals, which has developed to more allow more rarified and subtle changes known as emotions. This makes sense to me anyway. Of course, how you get this basic level of feeling into a machine I have little idea, but I think it's kind of like "noise." You can tune into it if you want, but you don't normally notice it otherwise.

I think the issue with emotions is not helped by the lack of neurological research into this area. Neurology has shunned this field for a long while. Perhaps neurologists are manifesting their own form of denial!

Nick

 

[Darat]

...snip...

I think the issue with emotions is not helped by the lack of neurological research into this area. Neurology has shunned this field for a long while. Perhaps neurologists are manifesting their own form of denial!

Nick

There's a lot research into this area, just throw "neurological research emotion" into Google and you'll find a ton of references.

 

[Nick227]

There's a lot research into this area, just throw "neurological research emotion" into Google and you'll find a ton of references.

I had a quick scan through and saw a lot of articles about the effects emotions have on learning and other phenomena. But I didn't notice anything on how emotions come about, how a lump of flesh and blood actually comes to experience feelings. We know mediating circuitry, we know how to induce and alter emotions, I think, but not how they are actually consciously experienced.

Happy to learn more.

Nick

 

[leon_heller]

Physiological psychologists and neurologists have been working on emotion for as long as I can remember. Quite a lot is known about the brain structures and neurotransmitters that are involved.

Leon

 

[Darat]

I had a quick scan through and saw a lot of articles about the effects emotions have on learning and other phenomena. But I didn't notice anything on how emotions come about, how a lump of flesh and blood actually comes to experience feelings. We know mediating circuitry, we know how to induce and alter emotions, I think, but not how they are actually consciously experienced.

Happy to learn more.

Nick

You're making the same assumption the people who consider there is a HPC do i.e. that there is the "lump of flesh and blood" and "something" else (although the something else is never actually defined).

 

[Nick227]

Physiological psychologists have been working on emotion for as long as I can remember. Quite a lot is know about the brain structures and neurotransmitters that are involved.

Do we know what the physiological source of feelings is, not merely how modifications take place? How does a lump of flesh and bone actually come to feel anything at all?

I appreciate that limbic pathways or the dopamine system or whatever can be involved in mediation, but what about the actual experiential side?

Nick

 

[Nick227]

You're making the same assumption the people who consider there is a HPC do i.e. that there is the "lump of flesh and blood" and "something" else (although the something else is never actually defined).

Sorry, I don't follow. Can you explain me more?

Nick

 

[skiba]

You're making the same assumption the people who consider there is a HPC do i.e. that there is the "lump of flesh and blood" and "something" else (although the something else is never actually defined).

Is it possible there are things that cannot be rationally defined but can only be experienced directly?

 

[Darat]

Sorry, I don't follow. Can you explain me more?

Nick

We know* there is "flesh and blood", we know that poking about with that flesh and blood causes** what we all seem to label as "experiences". We have no evidence that there is anything but the flesh and blood. To say that flesh and blood is not enough to explain the evidence we have is to assume there is something else that is not supported by the evidence.


(*know in its common usage, **of course you can state this is just a correlation)

Is it possible there are things that cannot be rationally defined but can only be experienced directly?

How could we ever know that?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

How can you even know if you have a problem if you can't figure out a way to say what the problem is?

I suspect that the real problem is that some people want to cling to a non-materialist worldview, and this is one of the ways they can do it while pretending that there's a rational reason to do so. The reality from where I'm sitting is that the whole HPC comes down to people declaring "there has to be something more to consciousness and subjective experience... there just HAS TO BE!"

While I wasn't with you on how you worded the "no problem" statement on page one, I am with you here. There are false premises, most often anyway, in the idea the question of consciousness is a "hard" question. The questions put forth in the OP are not "hard" to answer once you drop the premise there is something magical or mysterious about consciousness.

It seems to me that the idea this is a "hard" question is contrived. The following thesis presents the case nicely.

OUT WITH THE QUALIA AND IN WITH THE CONSCIOUSNESS: why the "Hard Problem" is a myth - An Honors Thesis; Marcus Arvan

The purpose of this paper, then, is to show that the hard problem of consciousness is nothing more than an alluring myth. As I will show in greater depth in Part 2 of this essay, the hard problem of consciousness essentially hinges on the notion of qualia. Qualia, of course, are the supposedly hard-to-grasp phenomena in question; they are supposed to be the ‘phenomenal qualities’ of our subjective experiences; they are the smell of grass, the taste of cauliflower, the feeling of pain, and so on--and they are supposed to be those properties of consciousness that transcend any behavioral or physical explanation in principle.

 

[rocketdodger]

Is it possible there are things that cannot be rationally defined but can only be experienced directly?

No.

 

[Darat]

I ran, I stopped, where has my ran gone?

 

[leon_heller]

Do we know what the physiological source of feelings is, not merely how modifications take place? How does a lump of flesh and bone actually come to feel anything at all?

I appreciate that limbic pathways or the dopamine system or whatever can be involved in mediation, but what about the actual experiential side?

Nick

That's consciousness, of course. And qualia, if you believe in them.

Leon

 

[leon_heller]

While I wasn't with you on how you worded the "no problem" statement on page one, I am with you here. There are false premises, most often anyway, in the idea the question of consciousness is a "hard" question. The questions put forth in the OP are not "hard" to answer once you drop the premise there is something magical or mysterious about consciousness.

It seems to me that the idea this is a "hard" question is contrived. The following thesis presents the case nicely.

OUT WITH THE QUALIA AND IN WITH THE CONSCIOUSNESS: why the "Hard Problem" is a myth - An Honors Thesis; Marcus Arvan

He says his views are different from Dennett's, but they look very similar to me.

Leon

 

[skiba]

How could we ever know that?

through subjective experience.

I'm not able to convey the experience of tasting chocolate ice cream, through concepts and ideas, I know any explanation falls short of the real thing.
I believe you can have the same experience, and realize how you can't explain it to other.