I was about to submit a discussion post called "Can consciousness be simulated" but I saw that a post with the same exact name and pretty much the same content was made 2 years ago.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6539/can-consciousness-be-simulated/p4 — Flaw
So after a bit more reflection on questions like why does consciousness, this universe, or even existence "exists", I began to think that maybe it's our understanding of consciousness that makes the problem seem "hard". — Flaw
after a bit more reflection on questions like why does consciousness, this universe, or even existence "exists", I began to think that maybe it's our understanding of consciousness that makes the problem seem "hard". — Flaw
The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel ('What it is like to be a Bat') has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience. — David Chalmers
The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36
Yes Chalmers pointed to a hard problem, but we should not forget that gravity, electromagnetism, free will, causality and indeed a great portion of philosophy are hard problems too. Perhaps by contextualizing this issue, it will seem less specifically puzzling. — Manuel
The point of David Chalmer's essay, Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness, is that first-person experience is not within the scope of objective, third-person descriptive analysis. — Wayfarer
But sometimes I wonder if we can ever step outside consciousness so as to explain it. — frank
There is no solution to be found in the materialistic approach. — GraveItty
Sometimes I also wonder if we can ever step outside of explanation so as to explain the world. Meaning, there is an inherent idealism to our making sense of the world, whatever the world is. — Marchesk
But a connection between the two is obviously there. If I experience whatever conscious quality, then there is a material counterpart in the brain. — GraveItty
Schopenhauer said the Law of Explanation (our perception that everything has to have a cause) is part of a process of pulling a united world apart. Is that what you mean? — frank
A lot of philosophical analysis comprises questioning what seems obvious to you — Wayfarer
Consider the nature of meaning. — Wayfarer
. That's what you think. It can be pretty the contrary to all of these three! Let me tell you.Human consciousness, which is linguistic, abstract and ration — Wayfarer
Consciousness attempting to self-comprehend has troublesome self-reference...
Analogous to a map being part of its own territory.
Does that mean there's an information horizon somewhere? — jorndoe
If it is "immaterial" "nonphysical" or "super-natural", then, not only is it inexplicable, it's also non-evident in a scientific sense too. — 180 Proof
All solutions to problems are material solutions. — Janus
The subject of the categories cannot by thinking the categories [i.e. applying them to objects] acquire a concept of itself as an object of the categories. For in order to think them, its pure self-consciousness, which is what was to be explained, must itself be presupposed. [B422] ….
In attaching ‘I’ to our thoughts, we designate the subject only transcendentally … without noting in it any quality whatsoever—in fact, without knowing anything of it either directly or by inference….
…When one is conscious of oneself as subject, one’s bare consciousness of self yields no knowledge of self.
To return to the physiologist observing another man’s brain: what the physiologist sees is by no means identical with what happens in the brain he is observing, but is a somewhat remote effect. From what he sees, therefore, he cannot judge whether what is happening in the brain he is observing is, or is not, the sort of event that he would call "mental". When he says that certain physical events in the brain are accompanied by mental events, he is thinking of physical events as if they were what he sees. He does not see a mental event in the brain he is observing, and therefore supposes there is in that brain a physical process which he can observe and a mental process which he cannot. This is a complete mistake. In the strict sense, he cannot observe anything in the other brain, but only the percepts which he himself has when he is suitably related to that brain (eye to microscope, etc.). We first identify physical processes with our percepts, and then, since our percepts are not other people’s thoughts, we argue that the physical processes in their brains are something quite different from their thoughts. In fact, everything that we can directly observe of the physical world happens inside our heads, and consists of "mental" events in at least one sense of the word "mental". It also consists of events which form part of the physical world. The development of this point of view will lead us to the conclusion that the distinction between mind and matter is illusory. The study of the world may be called physical or mental or both or neither, as we please; in fact, the words serve no purpose. There is only one definition of the words that is unobjectionable: "physical" is what is dealt with by physics, and "mental" is what is dealt with by psychology. When, accordingly, I speak of "physical" space, I mean the space that occurs in physics. — Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Philosophy (1937)
mean that we come up with mental models of the world, and then tend to treat those models as the world itself, — Marchesk
In fact, everything that we can directly observe of the physical world happens inside our heads,
-- Russell 1937 — SophistiCat
Consciousness simply can't be explained. — GraveItty
It's obvious to everyone, but it's an object for no-one. — Wayfarer
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