Why is it unacceptable? It doesn't beg the answer desired?How does one actually get the point across why this is not an acceptable answer as far as the hard problem is concerned? — schopenhauer1
I've actually never grasped the problem others have tried to convey since I cannot identify anything unexplainable by natural means. So explain the problem to me, since I apparently don't see one. — noAxioms
Evolutionary theory can be a step in the direction of dissolving the hard problem , but only if we go beyond classical darwinism and conceive of organic processes not in terms of causal concatenations and re-arrangements of elements under external pressure but in terms of a more radical notion of reciprocal differences of forces.
How does one actually get the point across why this is not an acceptable answer as far as the hard problem is concerned? Can this be seen as answering it, or is it just inadvertently answering an easier problem? If so, how to explain how it isn't quite getting at the hard problem? — schopenhauer1
Can there be a completely 'objective' model that explains the experience of consciousness? The experience is presented as a phenomena, one of the things that needs to be explained.
From that perspective, evolution is not an explanation. — Paine
but only if we go beyond classical darwinism and conceive of organic processes not in terms of causal concatenations and re-arrangements of elements under external pressure but in terms of a more radical notion of reciprocal differences of forces. — Joshs
So when presenting someone not familiar with the hard problem, or even has really grasped it (and is not of a mystical bent), they will quickly answer: "Because evolution has created it!" when asked, "Why is it we have sensations, thoughts, feelings associated with physical processes?".
How does one actually get the point across why this is not an acceptable answer as far as the hard problem is concerned? — schopenhauer1
The thing of the inner sensations of "what it's like" is the thing to be explained. Evolution giving rise to "what it's like" doesn't explain why there is a "giving rise to what it's like", only the advantages to an organism for having it. — schopenhauer1
To me all knowledge seems to be part of the same "hard problem": how to explain things outside human congnitive faculties, using the very same faculties. That's nothing but magical to me. So explaining these faculties is not really any different. It's all magic.I've actually never grasped the problem others have tried to convey since I cannot identify anything unexplainable by natural means. So explain the problem to me, since I apparently don't see one. — noAxioms
You must explain these neologisms but without using other neologisms. — schopenhauer1
All of these phenomena are associated with the notion of consciousness. For example, one sometimes says that a mental state is conscious when it is verbally reportable, or when it is internally accessible. Sometimes a system is said to be conscious of some information when it has the ability to react on the basis of that information, or, more strongly, when it attends to that information, or when it can integrate that information and exploit it in the sophisticated control of behavior. We sometimes say that an action is conscious precisely when it is deliberate. Often, we say that an organism is conscious as another way of saying that it is awake.
There is no real issue about whether these phenomena can be explained scientifically. All of them are straightforwardly vulnerable to explanation in terms of computational or neural mechanisms.
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 is it Like to be a Bat, 1974) 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.
"Because evolution has created it!" when asked, "Why is it we have sensations, thoughts, feelings associated with physical processes?".
How does one actually get the point across why this is not an acceptable answer as far as the hard problem is concerned? Can this be seen as answering it, or is it just inadvertently answering an easier problem? If so, how to explain how it isn't quite getting at the hard problem? — schopenhauer1
We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe [i.e. the one so successfully described by science], composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.
However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.
So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory. — Thomas Nagel
But, all that said, many will basically shrug it off. At which point, one smiles and walks away — Wayfarer
Living doesn't mean not dying, dad. — Eep
But then you’d understand it.
— Joshs
So can you explain? — schopenhauer1
"Why is it we have sensations, thoughts, feelings associated with physical processes?" — schopenhauer1
Maybe we could rephrase the question this way: "Why are there non-structured stuffs associated with structures of (causal) relations?" And then the answer might be: "Because the relations are between those stuffs." So, stuffs and relations between them are inseparable. Evolution creates causal structures of high organized complexity and these structures contain stuffs such as the qualia of our consciousness, for example (the feeling of) redness or sweet chocolate taste. — litewave
The distinction between stuffs and relations is the root of the problem — Joshs
The electron contains charge (mind) and couples ti the virtual photon field, to reach out for other electrons or other charged particles. The interaction with other particles is an expression of charge, mind. The nature of charge isn't explained though. — Hillary
The distinction between stuffs and relations is the root of the problem , and is what is driving the Hard Problem. — Joshs
Temet nosce (know thyself). — Orcale of Delphi
The unexamined life is not worth living. — Socrates
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.