The hard problem of consciousness

[JoeEllison]

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.

So where's the problem, other than a semantic one?

 

[JoeEllison]

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

Maybe it is sitting on the concept of a chair, sipping on the recipe of a mocha frapp?

 

[skiba]

So where's the problem, other than a semantic one?

Point being, language, concepts, and thoughts are very limited
in expressing this. only direct experience can do it.

 

[JoeEllison]

Point being, language, concepts, and thoughts are very limited
in expressing this. only direct experience can do it.

So what? You aren't actually saying anything yet... I'm looking forward to your point, since it obviously matters to you.

 

[Piscivore]

Maybe it is sitting on the concept of a chair, sipping on the recipe of a mocha frapp?

...Listening to the potentiality of a sonata not being played?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

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

Leon

His views are similar. From the thesis:

However, I also aim to show that Dennett is not as far off as many of his critics suppose.....

In my view, Dennett is wrong, but so are his critics. For what I intend to show that there is nothing about the subjective phenomena of consciousness that is even remotely hard-to-grasp, and that Dennett’s mistake is just that he (like many others) tries to explain hard-to-grasp phenomena. That is to say, I will hold that Dennett’s error is not that he fails to solve the hard problem; rather, it is that he takes the hard problem seriously when it doesn’t even really exist. Of course Dennett is bound to fail, I concede; the problem is nonsense in the first place.

I think he's just taking Dennett one step further. I can't say that my knowledge of the topic is any better than either of these two. So perhaps they are arguing the same thing. I fall on the side of natural explanations to such a degree that I find the idea of attributing all these special qualities to everything human rather backward. A brain evolved. In the process, simple reactions to external stimuli became complex reactions. That evolved to self awareness.

I don't see any reason to ponder any why in that fact. There is fascinating physiology in the brain and nervous system, those are worth pondering. So what that somewhere along that evolutionary path the 'subjective' experience of color began? The brain had to assign some means of categorizing color and it just happens to be what one calls a "subjective experience".

 

[skiba]

So what? You aren't actually saying anything yet... I'm looking forward to your point, since it obviously matters to you.

Do you just start typing without even reading my posts first?
So, you want me to explain to you my subjective experience of the HPO?
You want me to convey it in concepts and ideas? Well thats what I've being trying to do as clearly as I can. I can only point to it. I dont claim to have an explanation, but fortunately you do, since you dont even see it as a problem.

You can start by explaining something from my earlier posts.

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.

I eagerly await your response.
I'll get some soldering wire and transistors out of the closet, so I can start building my very own happines machine.

 

[Piscivore]

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.

Right after you are done with that, can you bake me an apple pie that doesn't include any flour, sugar, and most importantly, no apples?

 

[JoeEllison]

Do you just start typing without even reading my posts first?
So, you want me to explain to you my subjective experience of the HPO?
You want me to convey it in concepts and ideas? Well thats what I've being trying to do as clearly as I can. I can only point to it. I dont claim to have an explanation, but fortunately you do, since you dont even see it as a problem.

You can start by explaining something from my earlier posts.



I eagerly await your response.
I'll get some soldering wire and transistors out of the closet, so I can start building my very own happines machine.

No, I thought you had some sort of a point that you were building up to in your previous couple of posts. Apparently not. You seem to be confused about what an actual point would look like. As I noted before, arguments from incredulity are logical fallacies. So are arguments from ignorance. Between those two, we can ignore most of what you've posted so far.

I can't make a "happiness machine." Why do you think that means that "happiness" is anything more or less than a function of the physical processes of the brain? We can't make a black hole or neutron star either, but it doesn't mean that we should reject astrophysics.

 

[skiba]

Right after you are done with that, can you bake me an apple pie that doesn't include any flour, sugar, and most importantly, no apples?

So you think the ability to reason, think and have sense perseptions is a
necessity for being able to experience? Why is that?

I can't make a "happiness machine." Why do you think that means that "happiness" is anything more or less than a function of the physical processes of the brain?

I think it's more than that. If millions of neurons get exited in the brain it says nothing about how experience accours. It only says information is being transfered and processed. This is basically what my pc does.

what is the final destination of that information that makes that jump from computation to experience? What is the difference between computation and experience, if you think there is any difference?

off to bed now, getting late here.

 

[cyborg]

What is the difference between computation and experience?

A whole bunch of letters.

 

[Delvo]

...Listening to the potentiality of a sonata not being played?

It works for fans of John Cage.

(...if he has any...)

 

[JoeEllison]

So you think the ability to reason, think and have sense perceptions is a
necessity for being able to experience? Why is that?



I think it's more than that. If millions of neurons get exited in the brain it says nothing about how experience occurs. It only says information is being transferred and processed. This is basically what my PC does.

what is the final destination of that information that makes that jump from computation to experience? What is the difference between computation and experience?

This is what we've been saying about false assumption creating a problem that doesn't exist. "Experience" MEANS "reasoning, thinking, and having sense perceptions." They aren't two distinct things. There is no "final destination of that information that makes that jump from computation to experience," the combination of sensory input and how the brain processes that information is what makes up experience. That's it, there's no evidence or logic that points to anything else. Your response has consisted solely of asserting that it cannot be so, but that's not a reasonable argument.

 

[rocketdodger]

So you think the ability to reason, think and have sense perseptions is a
necessity for being able to experience? Why is that?

Probably because it is impossible to define "experience" (or even ponder it, for that matter) without relying on reasoning, thinking, or perception.

If you don't think so, then feel free to show otherwise.

 

[Piscivore]

So you think the ability to reason, think and have sense perseptions is a
necessity for being able to experience? Why is that?

Steady now- we were just talking about emotion. Don't overgeneralise.

Strictly speaking, one does not need to think or reason to have an emotion, but a reaction to a sense perception (a redundancy, you'll notice) is what emotion is. The apples in the pie, so to speak.

There is no such thing as abstract happiness. An entity capable of emotion is either happy in response to some stimuli, or by the absence of some stimuli.

 

[Hokulele]

Right after you are done with that, can you bake me an apple pie that doesn't include any flour, sugar, and most importantly, no apples?

http://www.backofthebox.com/recipes/pies-pastries/ritz-mock-apple-pie.html

 

[Piscivore]

http://www.backofthebox.com/recipes/pies-pastries/ritz-mock-apple-pie.html

Pastry for two-crust 9-inch pie
36 RITZ Crackers, coarsely broken (about 1 3/4 cups crumbs)
1 3/4 cups water
2 cups sugar

This recipe is rubbish, anyway. To make proper mock apple pie you've got to send to Wonderland for real mock apples, like Gran used to.

 

[Piscivore]

Probably because it is impossible to define "experience" (or even ponder it, for that matter) without relying on reasoning, thinking, or perception.

If you don't think so, then feel free to show otherwise.

Define experience, maybe, but not to have one. Anything that is is part of and interacts with the rest of the universe can (and cannot avoid) having an experience- many of them, in most cases.

 

[Hokulele]

Oh, we are talking about emotions. Well then, sugar is far more important than apples. Now if we were still on about qualia, then clearly apples are more important.

Bah, the only real pie is mango.

 

[Piscivore]

Bah, the only real pie is mango.

I'm partial to Key Lime, myself, but that sounds delightful.

Who am I kidding, I like almost any pie.