:cool: :up:I won't try and summarise the already succinct Aeon article (which describes itself as being "only in bare outline"). However, what I found most fascinating is the idea that qualia constitute the self, rather than being something perceived by the self. — Luke
In this way, sentition evolves to be a virtual form of bodily expression – yet still an activity that can be read to provide a mental representation of the stimulation that elicits it.
But, as luck would have it, the privatisation has a remarkable result. It leads to the creation of feedback loops between motor and sensory regions of the brain. These loops have the potential to sustain recursive activity, going round and round, catching its own tail. And, I suggest, this development is game-changing. Crucially, it means the activity can be drawn out in time, so as to create the ‘thick moment’ of sensation (see Figure 2c above). But, more than that, the activity can be channelled and stabilised, so as to create a mathematically complex attractor state – a dynamic pattern of activity that recreates itself.
- Nicholas Humphrey
But any theory that requires positing a "mental representation" which implies an internal observer (visible in the diagrams of the brain after the paragraph beginning "The key to acquiring phenomenal properties..."} is postponing the hard problem and for that reason seems implausible to me. — Ludwig V
Easy problems can be quite elaborate and even proven accurate, but still don’t actually touch upon the hard problem itself.Homunculus fallacy — Wiki
Easy problems can be quite elaborate and even proven accurate, but still don’t actually touch upon the hard problem itself. — schopenhauer1
I haven't worked out my approach to the problem. It's on my list of chestnuts that I would like to get my head around one day. But I would start by making sure that the problem isn't in the way it is formulated. My suspicion is that it is not capable of solution and merely demonstrates that Wittgenstein was right about subjective experiences (which is what, I think, "qualia" are supposed to be). I will concede, however, that his response to the expostulation that there is a difference between you experiencing a pain and me experiencing the same pain. He asks what greater difference there could be. I don't think that's enough.
I apologize if I seem dismissive. I don't mean to be. People who deserve respect take the hard problem very seriously. — Ludwig V
Not to be dismissive of the article myself either. Roughly I agree with you -- the "proposed solution" that the article offers is not the problem (the inquiry) that the ongoing philosophical movement of consciousness is facing.I haven't worked out my approach to the problem. It's on my list of chestnuts that I would like to get my head around one day. But I would start by making sure that the problem isn't in the way it is formulated. My suspicion is that it is not capable of solution — Ludwig V
I find the underlined cringe-worthy as an analysis of a philosopher. We've always had awareness of the plurality of existence and our own existence. In fact, to refer to "us" presupposes already that I am counting "myself", and vice versa. When philosophers say that the "self" came later after the awareness of others like ourselves, it doesn't mean that we were not aware of our private sensations and perceptions apart from others' private sensations and perceptions. It means that philosophically, or metaphysically, we did not first deliberate on what a "self" is. It was Descartes who first formalized (you can correct me on this) the duality of mind and body. But as common observers of our environment, the early humans and modern humans had it. They got it.Whenever it happened, it’s bound to have been a psychological and social watershed. With this marvellous new phenomenon at the core of your being, you’ll start to matter to yourself in a new and deeper way. You’ll come to believe, as never before, in your own singular significance. What’s more, it will not just be you. For you’ll soon realise that other members of your species possess conscious selves like yours. You’ll be led to respect their individual worth as well.
Again, semantic invention. Except that it didn't happen this way.To cap this, you’ll soon discover that when, by a leap of imagination you put yourself in your fellow creature’s place, you can model, in your self, what they are feeling. In short, phenomenal consciousness will become your ticket to living in what I’ve called ‘the society of selves’.
I noted the similarity between the "thick moment" and Douglas Hofstadter's I am a strange loop. Prophetic stuff. — Banno
I call it the "thick moment" of consciousness. What matters is that I feel myself alive now, living in the present moment. What matters is at this moment I'm aware of sounds arriving at my ears, sight at my eyes, sensations at my skin. They're defining what it's like to be me. The sensations they arouse have quality. And it's this quality that is the central fact of consciousness. — https://www.edge.org/conversation/nicholas_humphrey-chapter-11-the-thick-moment
We have to accept it as fact, as Locke recognized long before Chalmers. — Manuel
Now I have to say I'm a complete atheist. I have no religious views myself and no spiritual views, except very watered down humanistic spiritual views. And consciousness is just a fact of life. It's a natural fact of life.
Apologies for the length, I got motivated. :cool: — Manuel
Oh sure, plenty of silly mysticism surrounding this topic. Which is strange, because, as I think you would agree, consciousness is what we are most acquainted with out of everything there is. — Manuel
Replace "God" with "nature", and you have the hard problem, stated over 300 years ago. — Manuel
If you haven't already read them, I recommend Peter Watt's first contact hard scifi novel Blindsight (2006) and R. Scott Bakker's hard scifi psychothriller Neuropath (2008) – both heavily influenced by neuroscientist-philosopher (& Buddhist) Thomas Metzinger's monumental work Being No One (2003). The Aeon article you've linked, Luke, summarizes many of the ideas Metzinger et al's had derived from their research. — 180 Proof
Back in the 17th century the "hard rock of philosophy" was the problem of motion, in which "motion has effects which we in no way can conceive".
What happened with that problem? It was accepted and science and philosophy continued - in fact, to this day, the hard problem of motion has not been solved, but we work with what we have. — Manuel
Why are we using science to attempt to back up our “feeling” of having a “personal” sense? — Antony Nickles
Why is the feeling “mysterious”? — Antony Nickles
Ah. It’s this “mattering” and “significance” that we wanted all along — Antony Nickles
He goes on to say that if it could be proved that we each have a given, undeniable “self”... — Antony Nickles
...that we would treat each other better, which implies we could wash our hands of having to see others as human — Antony Nickles
Why are we using science to attempt to back up our “feeling” of having a “personal” sense” — Antony Nickles
Are we? — Luke
Why is the feeling “mysterious”? — Antony Nickles
Because the hard problem of consciousness is a mystery in need of an explanation. — Luke
Ah. It’s this “mattering” and “significance” that we wanted all along
— Antony Nickles
No, it's an answer to the hard problem that we wanted all along. — Luke
He goes on to say that if it could be proved that we each have a given, undeniable “self”... — Antony Nickles
Where does he say this? — Luke
that we would treat each other better, which implies we could wash our hands of having to see others as human — Antony Nickles
If we treated each other better, then "we could wash our hands of having to see others as human"?? — Luke
"We have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any mere material being thinks or no; it being impossible for us… to discover, by the contemplation of our own ideas… a power to perceive and think. — Manuel, quoting Locke
I feel your reading intentions into the article that are not being insinuated. I would re-read it once more. This is proposing a mechanism to explain how the subjective experience occurs within the brain. That's the crux and really nothing more. — Philosophim
I am claiming that there is a reason he is imagining a “subjective experience”, the evidence being that he says it. That he wants it to be “explained” by a “mechanism” is not me “reading intentions”, it is the implications of his getting to his reason from those means. — Antony Nickles
He feels he’s solved the skepticism of the foundational self (rewording Descartes) by implying that there is something special about my sensations (which are a given). It’s the point of the whole article. — Antony Nickles
”I am claiming that there is a reason he is imagining a “subjective experience”, the evidence being that he says it. That he wants it to be “explained” by a “mechanism” is not me “reading intentions”, it is the implications of his getting to his reason from those means.
— Antony Nickles
…this is actually terrible writing. Writing should narrow in on a point so the reader has clarity. — Philosophim
He is right to use the terms and points he is so that even a reader not well versed in philosophy can understand his point. — Philosophim
His lack of exploring Locke is not an intention we can fairly make. — Philosophim
Critique his main conclusions, the idea of solving the hard problem. If he chooses to sprinkle meaning behind it, why is that relevant to his main point at all? It sounds like you're more upset with where you think this can go than with his immediate idea. — Philosophim
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