There's no need for one to explain the other — Isaac
Us being able to use a word in conversation is not an indicator that that word picks out some empirical object or event in need of a scientific explanation. — Isaac
you agree that we have experiences, and therefore some scientific accounting for them is necessary, to have a complete understanding of the world. — hypericin
The use of the word 'consciousness' as it's used here and the study of neurons are not 'in the same world' they don't overlap in their activities. There's no need for one to explain the other, it wouldn't even make sense it'd be like expecting physics to explain what a googly is in cricket. — Isaac
Much the same thing happens with an inverted spectrum; — Banno
How so? — frank
One day you wake up and your spectrum is inverted, but no physical changes happened to your brain. Is that conceivable? Sure. — frank
I wouldn't want to deny we have experiences, but this doesn't touch on the 'hard problem'. The hard problem has, as a foundational axiom, the notion that the things we talk about - experiences, awareness,... - ought to be causally connected to the objects of empirical sciences. That it's in some way odd that there's no direct connection. I reject that premise. It seems to me that we can talk of all sorts of things from consciousness, to god, to pixie dust... We all know what each other is talking about to some extent in each case (enough to get by) but it doesn't require any of those objects to correlate with something empirical science might reify. — Isaac
Then it's unclear what 'aware of' could possibly mean here. We know nothing of their properties, but are 'aware of' them? — Isaac
Can we? — Isaac
Then why did you say that the camera wasn't aware. We're trying to pin down the meaning of 'aware' here. So if a camera might be aware, is there anything which definitely isn't? Or is 'awareness' a property literally anything might have, or might not have? — Isaac
Qualia are fine, until folk say absurd things about them. Red and smooth and sour and so on - all good. But then folk will claim that they are private, ineffable, and it all loses coherence. — Banno
Then in what sense are we 'aware' of a yellow disk and a blue disk? We clearly are not experiencing their actual properties. — Isaac
What neural correlates? And how do we know they are the neural correlates? If "by report" then how do we know the camera's circuits aren't 'aware' of the light? — Isaac
Of course in all this I'm reminded of the certain scientific and philosophical skeptics who mistake their lack of visualization or lucid dreaming for those abilities not existing in other people. — Marchesk
Because you're not really seeing a blue circle and a yellow circle, so their combined colour does not occur. I — Isaac
I think the guy is mistaken in assuming that "nearly all of you have a [mental] canvas." — Olivier5
I suspect we are all pretty much the same soul, the same thing, the same mental structure, with better or worse abilities here or there. Like two diesel cars are essentially the same thing, even if one can drive faster than the other. — Olivier5
Computing what? If it's not aware of any data, then how can it process it? — Isaac
How else would it classify them. — Isaac
This is an obstacle to creating a theory of consciousness: we're not all the same. Cognition can vary radically from one human to the next.
I think it's a real possibility that people who favor Dennett's view really are different somehow. — frank
We just 'classify' those particular states and momentums as 'audio' and 'video'. — Isaac
It seems you're saying that mechanisms cannot possibly bring about consciousness, — Isaac
What any DVD means depends on the content, whereas how it works has nothing to do with the content, to press the analogy. The hard problem is not about ’how the brain works’, it’s about the question of meaning. — Wayfarer
Consciousness is encoded as a set of neural signals, which is one enormous dynamic network of continual signals. This flow of data is encoded on the brain as axon potentials and neurotransmitter concentrations, which most of the brain is not involved in most of the time. The working memory of the brain receives some of these signals, and the network of logic gates created by forward and backward acting signal propagation interprets signals as something to pass on. These signals are then translated by our language cortices and conceptual recognition neural clusters as suiting the term 'consciousness'. — Isaac
What's the answer to "how does a DVD contain audio and video?" — Isaac
It is not about describing in detail how consciousness works - that is supposed to be the Easy problem (hah!) — SophistiCat
If consciousness were something in addition to that activity then anaesthetics would not work since they only act on chemical activity, not 'the realm of consciousness'. — Isaac
because we can say that something is good because it is instrumentally good, not just because it is intrinsically good — Herg
You're asking for the cause of a description, not an event or state. — Isaac
The hard problem is just more masturbation.
— neonspectraltoast
That's one way to get rid of a "hard" problem. — Janus
They just do. — Isaac
We could give an evolutionary account, some natural advantage to consciousness. Random changes in neurological activity one time resulted in proto-consciousness which gave an evolutionary advantage to the creature and so it passed on that genetic mutation. There...is that satisfactory, and if not, why not? — Isaac
That is, one can consistently conceive of someone approved off what is not good. — Banno
Moreover, they are asserting that this approval springs from something intrinsic to x itself. — hypericin
You can look them all up, but without a basic understanding of the principles they're working from it's unlikely it'll make much sense. — Isaac
Is there a question as to why glutamate exists, why bones have the structure they do, why atoms are small, why stars are far away, why the sea is wet... — Isaac
Going beyond that is outside the bounds of this discussion. — T Clark
Well, then, how do you know "Sally is good"? By what criterion are you making that judgment? — 180 Proof
The question simply makes no sense. What could an answer possibly be? "It feels like...?" What words could possibly fill the blank? — Isaac
Dozens of researchers in consciousness think they know exactly what a good theory would look like and they've constructed their experiments closely around those models. The fact that you don't grasp them is not a flaw in the model. — Isaac
Why wouldn't they? What's in the way? What compelling physical law prevents biological processes from causing whatever symptoms they so happen to cause? — Isaac