The hard problem is not about consciousness in the abstract, it specifically asks how the biological reality of nervous systems relates to the first person reality of experiences.

If this were true there would be as many hard problems as there are nominalizations.

Right, and that is a far cry from saying "science needn't bother answering this".

There's no need for one to explain the other — Isaac

There is absolutely a need for one to explain the other, if there was no need there would be no hard problem.

I think you're broadly in agreement with Chalmers here. — frank

I don't see how. — Isaac

For once I agree with @Isaac. For Chalmers there is an explanatory gap, for Isaac there is no gap, since consciousness is somehow a purely human construct, requiring no explanation.

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

Understanding of the world, not word. Experiences are events, whether or not they are somehow illusory. As such they require an explanation.

The boundary between two words that designate regions of a continuous phenomenon is very clearly not a event or property of the world. But our capacity to use such words as 'orange' to conceptually discretize continuities is subject to scientific explanation.

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

Suppose you lost your ability to experience sight (assuming you have it), even though you can still clearly respond to visual events. In what "world" would you look for an explanation of your plight?

Much the same thing happens with an inverted spectrum; — Banno

But don't stop there, you've left us hanging.

Gibberish.

How so? — frank

Every event must have a cause. If consciousness isn't supernatural, and the physical state of the brain remains constant, then the inversion would be left without any possible cause.

One day you wake up and your spectrum is inverted, but no physical changes happened to your brain. Is that conceivable? Sure. — frank

Assuming you reject dualism then I don't see how that is conceivable.

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

Gods and pixie dust don't exist, so no account is necessary. But you agree that we have experiences, and therefore some scientific accounting for them is necessary, to have a complete understanding of the world. If a pixie were to materialize in front of you, you would have to account for it somehow, either as a supernatural manifestation, a hologram, etc. But you can't close your eyes and pretend it's not there, or just say "well, that happened.", and still fully understand the world.

Then it's unclear what 'aware of' could possibly mean here. We know nothing of their properties, but are 'aware of' them? — Isaac

Who said we know nothing of their properties? Their properties just do not match their physical counterparts. In fact, we know everything of their properties, since unlike physical objects their properties exactly match what is subjectively disclosed. They are yellow and blue, they are round, their shape and size do not hold steady in my case. That is all. You cannot peer behind an imaginary object to examine additional properties you were not aware of initially; this is confabulation, not examination.

Can we? — Isaac

Can't we?

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

Not according to the theory that awareness is a property of brains, a consequence of a certain kind of information processing that is definitely absent in a camera. Of course that is just a theory, panpsychism in principle might be true. Awareness is only "observed" directly by an aware subject of itself, all other observations of it are inferred. Since there is no observation that can conclusively disprove awareness, anything in principle might be aware. But, lacking any compelling evidence that they are aware, these claims can be discarded, just like I can discard the claim that there is a bearded giant living on a planet orbiting alpha centauri.

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

If you don't understand that qualia are private and ineffable, then you don't understand qualia.

Then in what sense are we 'aware' of a yellow disk and a blue disk? We clearly are not experiencing their actual properties. — Isaac

We are aware of an imaginary yellow and blue disks, which is just an awkward way of saying we are imagining them. Why should imaginary and real things share all their properties?

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

We can measure neural activity that correlates with reported states of awareness, and which are absent when the subject is not aware.

We don't definitely know that the camera is not aware, just as we don't know the camera is not inhabited by a malignant spirit. We just have no evidence pointing to either case.

I don't agree with this one, I always thought he was a high quality poster. I guess I missed the dickish stuff?

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

I don't doubt this at all, nor any of the neurodiversity you point out. I just don't think it is the norm. From what I have read of people who cannot visualize, they believe it is an all or nothing ability that they lack, they don't seem to conceive of in-between states.

So what exactly is it to be 'aware' of some data? — Isaac

To have a first-person experience of it.

How do we measure awareness? — Isaac

By report, or by measuring at the neural correlates.

Because you're not really seeing a blue circle and a yellow circle, so their combined colour does not occur. I — Isaac

Who is claiming you "really" seeing in your mind? Brain activity will be similar whether you are seeing or imagining. But this doesn't mean the logic of color combination will be implemented faithfully by the brain.

I think the guy is mistaken in assuming that "nearly all of you have a [mental] canvas." — Olivier5

Yes, my experience is the same as yours. I read other posts from people with aphantasia and they make the same mistake. They think we are walking around with HD movies in our heads. some people do, but I guess they are at least as rare as people with aphantasia.

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

Your suspicion is understandable but wrong, though the subject has not received nearly the attention it deserves. Here is one blog post by a guy with aphantasia.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/2862324277332876/

There was a better post, that I also read from here, that I can't find right now. It is not just can/can't visualize. There are people who have no inner monologue at all, and think by entirely other means. They were astounded to learn people think like this, and found the idea kind of psychotic. I for one cannot "visualize" tastes and smells, others have no problem with this.

Computing what? If it's not aware of any data, then how can it process it? — Isaac

You are misusing the word "aware". A camera receives light, but it is not aware of it. A camera taking a picture is not an instance of "awareness".

How else would it classify them. — Isaac

Computationally.

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

This is an excellent point. Not only is it different, but everyone presumes that their own cognitive makeup is universal. Which leads to some incredibly frustrating discussions on consciousness.

We just 'classify' those particular states and momentums as 'audio' and 'video'. — Isaac

Your brain classifies all sorts of things. But you are only aware of a few. That is proof that awareness involves something more, or other, than just classification.

You can build a simple neural network that classifies images of glyphs into the symbols they represent. Is such a system aware of the symbols?

It seems you're saying that mechanisms cannot possibly bring about consciousness, — Isaac

I'm not saying that mechanisms can't bring about consciousness. I'm saying that the mere classification of signals is, obviously, not consciousness.

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

It's not just the question of meaning, nor just how it works. It's the question of how these two domains could ever be bridged. "How does it work, so that it gives rise to meaning?" But, I think this asks too much at once. You only need to answer, "How does it work, so that it gives rise to audio and video." And from there, you can answer "How does audio and video give rise to meaning?".

Similarly, "How does the brain give rise to qualia?" And "How do qualia give rise to the full features of the mind?"

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

This is revolutionary!

Machine consciousness has long been a holy grail of AI research. Nobody realized how simple it has been all along! All you have to do is arrange a bunch of signals, filter some of them, then have other modules categorize some of these signals as 'consciousness'. When this happens, we can even have a speaker box pronounce, "I AM CONSCIOUS!" Voila!

Are you seeing the problem here?

What's the answer to "how does a DVD contain audio and video?" — Isaac

My understanding:
The audio and video of a movie is encoded as a set of 0s and 1s, which is one enormous base-2 number. This binary number is encoded on the DVD platter as tiny unreflective pits on a thin mirror, in a spiral pattern, which most of the material of the DVD simply protects. The laser of the DVD player shines on the spinning mirror, and a sensor interprets interruptions of the laser's reflected light as 0s, and their absence as 1s (or the reverse). These 0s and 1s are then translated on the player into a format amenable to the display device, which produces audio and video.

This is a very rough and broad account, but there are no mysteries here, every one of these steps can be explained in arbitrary, excruciating detail. This is a story which unifies two seemingly irreconcilable domains: the gross matter of the dvd, and the ethereal images and sounds coming from the TV. The hard problem asks for a similar account, unifying the seemingly irreconcilable domains of third person neural activity and first person consciousness.

It is not about describing in detail how consciousness works - that is supposed to be the Easy problem (hah!) — SophistiCat

What trips people up is conflating an understanding of consciousness with understanding the NCCs (neural correlates of consciousness). You can imagine in the future that we might have a complete accounting of the NCCs, a complete description of all the relevant brain structures and how they interact with one another. But nonetheless, we still can't conceptually make the leap from this description to the first person features of consciousness: qualia, what-is-it-like, etc. On the one side, in the third person, is the objective description of neural structure and activity. On the other side, in the first person, is the consciousness stuff. Unifying this dualism is the task of the hard problem.

I think we are in basic agreement here?

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

Just because you aren't a dualist about consciousness doesn't mean the question just disappears.

Consider a DVD. Is the movie "on" the DVD something in addition to the physical layout of the DVD platter? No, the movie is that layout. Nonetheless, one has to ask, how is it that, when some DVDs are inserted into the proper device, video plays. Whereas if other DVDs, blanks say, are inserted, there is no video.

Imagine a technologically naive culture, cut off from the rest of the world, or maybe part of a multi-generational dystopian experiment, where DVDs and DVD players are a given. There would eventually arise a hard problem of DVDs. You can't answer that problem by saying "movies are just a name we give to certain DVD microstructures". You have to explain how it is that the material DVD "contains" audio and video.

We are in a culture where consciousness are a given, and the hard problem of consciousness has arisen. We have to explain how it is that neural activity "contains", "instantiates", "embodies", "is", whatever you prefer, the features of consciousness.

:100: :clap:

because we can say that something is good because it is instrumentally good, not just because it is intrinsically good — Herg

But this then becomes "good for".

The point of "intrinsic" was that the pro-Sally sentiment expressed by "Sally is good" is about Sally, as opposed to my personal preference. Even if Sally is just "good for" something, that usefulness of Sally in this situation arises from her, not from my opinion of her.

You're asking for the cause of a description, not an event or state. — Isaac

Of course consciousness is a state. At any time you may be either conscious or unconscious. The point of general anesthesia is to change your state of consciousness to off. An anesthetic works if it changes your conscious state, and doesn't work if it does not. If consciousness is somehow merely a description, how does an anesthetic have causal efficacy?

The hard problem is just more masturbation.
— neonspectraltoast

That's one way to get rid of a "hard" problem. — Janus

:rofl:

They just do. — Isaac

It baffles me that you think any of these questions are unaskable, that they "just are". What a strange, pre-scientific mindset, like answering a question with "because god willed it". A few simple google searches will disabuse you. Sure, the physical constants may well be beyond our ken, but that doesn't stop us from asking.

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

It is not satisfactory, because it answers the wrong question. The question is not, "why did consciousness arise in evolutionary history?" Rather, "by what mechanism does specific neurological activity give rise to consciousness?". Similar to how you can ask "By what mechanism does an engine, carburetor, wheels, etc, assembled as a car, drive?" "It just does", "God wills it", does not answer either.

That is, one can consistently conceive of someone approved off what is not good. — Banno

Good is not mere approval, as I point out:

Moreover, they are asserting that this approval springs from something intrinsic to x itself. — hypericin

Can a speaker assert they approve of x, due to an innate quality of x , while at the same time assert that x is not good? I say no.

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

Can you link a paper or article?

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

Are you really suggesting that "why not? What's stopping them?" is an adequate answer to any of these?

Consciousness is not information. But consciousness is informational. It is a phenomenon arising from flows of information. That is why the hard problem is so seemingly intractable. It tries to leap directly from matter to consciousness. But the matter of the brain supports flows of information, from which emerges consciousness. How is unclear. But it is far more conceivable that consciousness arises from information than from matter.

Going beyond that is outside the bounds of this discussion. — T Clark

Going beyond your judgement is out of bounds? I see. You argued that values are arational, and so the question does not apply. I say that values can indeed be irrational.

Well, then, how do you know "Sally is good"? By what criterion are you making that judgment? — 180 Proof

Any number of factors, depending on context. Maybe she is moral and kind. Maybe she is a competent guitarist. Whatever it is, it is something innate about her that is laudable.

The question simply makes no sense. What could an answer possibly be? "It feels like...?" What words could possibly fill the blank? — Isaac

You were the one arguing that perceptions were effable. So you would eff whatever their perceptions are like to them.

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

Cite one you think is satisfactory.

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

"Why wouldn't they?" possesses exactly zero explanatory power. The question is rather "why would they?". Why would some neurological processes engender consciousness, and not others? What are the relevant mechanisms?

The latter. Otherwise, "prefer" or "like" would be used, not "good".