The Hard Problem of Gravity

Yeah, but Chalmers coined the term "hard problem consciousness". If we're talking about something else, we should really give it a different name.
 
PixyMisa said:
Yeah, but Chalmers coined the term "hard problem consciousness". If we're talking about something else, we should really give it a different name.
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It's a fair point but terms are like that. You otta see what Australians call erasers and the English call girl's underwear.
 
Apathia said:
Yup. There never was a hard problem of flight.
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Or maybe it's never been solved? Ballistics, self propulsion via thrust, messing around with the Bernoulli effect, or something like that all doesn't count as 'proper' flight. Too mundane. A jet fighter may behave as if it had flight, but in the end its just some kind of zombie - an F-zombie (hence F-15, F-16, ...) - not fundamentally different from a tossed clay or metal disc.

No flight has never been a problem in principle. There might have been practical problem builing big enough things to carry humans and possess some kind of self propulsion. But that is it, a practical problem. And if I understand correctly, then the HPC is often argued as a principle problem.
 
Nick227 said:
The HPC is concerned primarily with how it arises. Chalmers states that even when all the easy problems have been answered actual phenomenality may still be a mystery. It may still be a mystery why it's so light in here. I think really he should have called it the MHPC - the maybe hard problem of consciousness.

Nick
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Well, no, Chalmers uses the "why" word quite a lot.

It all underlines what I have been saying all along, we will never know the answer to the HPC until the problem itself has been defined.
 
Lord Emsworth said:
Or maybe it's never been solved? Ballistics, self propulsion via thrust, messing around with the Bernoulli effect, or something like that all doesn't count as 'proper' flight. Too mundane. A jet fighter may behave as if it had flight, but in the end its just some kind of zombie - an F-zombie (hence F-15, F-16, ...) - not fundamentally different from a tossed clay or metal disc.

No flight has never been a problem in principle. There might have been practical problem builing big enough things to carry humans and possess some kind of self propulsion. But that is it, a practical problem. And if I understand correctly, then the HPC is often argued as a principle problem.
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In principle it's difficult to understand how a pig could fly.
In practice:
porcorosso5.jpg
 
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PixyMisa said:
That is not HPC. That's the point. That is not what Chalmers is getting at.

Chalmers is claiming that even when we can explain and understand the mind in neurological terms, we will not have explained subjective experience.


Chalmers is saying that this description - mind is what brain does - is necessarily incomplete. He's saying that materialism itself is false.


Yep.

And Chalmers says that this is impossible. Quite literally impossible.
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Actually, from what I've read, Chalmers doesn't always take such a position. He frequently says "may be something left to be explained." From a debating point of view of course this is boring and fence-sitting but just to be fair.

Nick
 
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rocketdodger said:
When we can map out every neuron's firing pattern, and supercomputers can simulate entire brains, either there will or there won't be some twits wandering around demanding "but where is the experience in all these computations!?!?"

I say there will be.

You seem to think there won't.

I guess we will know who is right in a few decades.
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Yes. I believe people will accept that consciousness is purely material when they consider it proven that phenomenality can be created in a machine. Of course just how one proves subjectivity, other than subjectively like this, is still a question.

Nick
 
PixyMisa said:
It's a trap!
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I don't use the term "experience" because it's clear for me how to create experience from phenomenality. Experience is not what it seems. Phenomenality is for me the core of what the HPC is about - why is it so light in here?

Now, guys like Ned Block create a whole barrier with the term "phenomenality." He considers there is phenomenal consciousness which develops from access consciousness, to use the GWT terminology. He considers that these are two separate things. But there's no need to do this. To use the term "phenomenality" is for me simply to distinguish between conscious and unconscious brain processes, a difference which is accepted in GWT.

Nick
 
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Nick227 said:
If this is so then why is phenomenality itself not inherently self-referencing? For me it's clear that self only comes in with ancilliary processing - inner dialogue and identification.

Nick
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In what way isn't it? Are phenomena not experienced from a vantage point? The processing -- especially within that model -- involves linkage to the body within space, which is the form of self-reference that Pixy is talking about.

Dennett discusses this type of self. You have mentioned it. You are fighting with Pixy because you are referring to a higher-order type of self-reference and he is discussing this lower-order form.

None of this is even possible -- what we call consciousness -- without self-reference of that lower order variety. All of consciousness occurs from an intentional stance, and intentionality requires grounding in a body as reference point in addition to the body's relation to the external world.

That there are higher orders of self-reference is simply a complication of this picture.
 
Belz... said:
Indeed, and as we know, "why" isn't a relevant question when physics are involved.

"Why" presupposes intent. But science only answers "how" questions.
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It just occured to me that under materialism <physicalism> there is no "why."

All "why" questions reduce to "how" questions. Fascinating!
 
Ichneumonwasp said:
In what way isn't it? Are phenomena not experienced from a vantage point? The processing -- especially within that model -- involves linkage to the body within space, which is the form of self-reference that Pixy is talking about.
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So...you're saying that what separates one neuronal process from another, and makes it conscious and its neighbour not, is that it self-references whereas its neighbour does not? It seems to me that this is unlikely to be true. Remember that we are discussing specifically GWT here.

Nick
 
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rocketdodger said:
It just occured to me that under materialism <physicalism> there is no "why."

All "why" questions reduce to "how" questions. Fascinating!
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"Why" isn't that the case for other metaphysics, too? How would they answer why questions?

~~ Paul
 
Nick227 said:
I don't use the term "experience" because it's clear for me how to create experience from phenomenality. Experience is not what it seems. Phenomenality is for me the core of what the HPC is about - why is it so light in here?
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As I said, it's a trap.

Now, guys like Ned Block create a whole barrier with the term "phenomenality." He considers there is phenomenal consciousness which develops from access consciousness, to use the GWT terminology. He considers that these are two separate things. But there's no need to do this. To use the term "phenomenality" is for me simply to distinguish between conscious and unconscious brain processes, a difference which is accepted in GWT.
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As you said, it's a trap.
 
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