There Is No 'Hard Problem of Consciousness'

The first point (analogizing the hard problem to the reaction to Darwinism) is a very common rhetorical move: an analogy and history of ideas, which is convincing to many people, but what does it prove?

> A philosophical zombie would claim to know what subjective experience is; otherwise, it would be empirically distinguishable from a human. Chalmers’s point is that the existence of the hypothetical, irreducible consciousness of which he speaks is something we can be convinced of only by introspection. During introspection, physical processes in my brain convince me of my consciousness. The same would theoretically happen in the zombie brain, convincing it of having consciousness as well.

And this is why illusionism is not a satisfactory explanation. "Convincing it". Who is being convinced? Who is experiencing this?

Imagine the easy problem of consciousness is solved: we understand the brain at every scale, from ion channels up. We can draw up a complete account, at every level of abstraction, of what goes on in the brain when you see and "apple" and say apple, and trace the signals across the optic nerve, map those signals to high-level mental representations, explain how those symbols become trees in a production rule which become words which the motor cortex coordinates into speech, etc. We can map every "pixel" of the visual field at any time t.

Now imagine you take this description and rewrite the labels consistently, and show it to an alien. And they see this very complex diagram of an information-processing machine and they're not sure what it's for. And they'd think it's as conscious as a calculator, or a water integrator, or a telephone network, or the futures market of the European Union.

Either all the computation happens "in the dark", as in a calculator or an Excel spreadsheet or a slide rule or Factorio, in which case we are p-zombies and consciousness is an illusion, which contradicts every waking moment of our experience (since consciousness and experience is all that we have); or, everything is conscious, from brains to slide rules and spreadsheets, and that is incredibly, and also has a number of problems (e.g.: why aren't my neurons individually conscious? Why does consciousness stop at my skull, that is, why is the causality of signal-trains in neurons more "conscious" than phonons in the hydroxyapatite crystals in my skull?).

That's the hard problem.

> This contradicts everything we have learned about nature.

It doesn't contradict anything. It simply means that there is a gap in our current understanding, which may (or may not [1]) be scientifically explained in the future.

The default reflex of the opponents of "the hard question" (i.e. those who deny the existence of such a question) is to attach a religious or spiritualist meaning to it, which is far from the truth. It's a question that arises from scientific curiosity that we hope to answer one day.

[1] The "may not" part does not imply that there is something magical or metaphysical about it. There are things that we may not ever answer, like "do parallel universes exist" or "was there another universe before the big bang".

How exciting to see new writing from Carlos Rovelli! He's one of the few physicists and philosophers of science (ancient or modern) who steadfastly rejects a priori assumptions that rely on things other than our observations.

He also echos the modern belief that observer and actor are two sides of the same quantum event.

I highly recommend any and all of his books.

OK, dualism. Heard that before.

The new hard problem: how do biological brains get so much done on such slow hardware? That's a real physics question. We're missing something.

Any argument that a "soul" exists or that consciousness does not arise from the physical world (eg our neurons) is literally unfalsifiable. It cannot be disproven in the same way you can't disprove the existence of God, and so arguing with people that believe in it is largely pointless.

This is hard to take seriously, the argument this article makes against the hard problem is… that it’s not hard? There is very little in the way of argument here at all, actually; it’s simply a refutation that there is any division between biological function and subjective experience, with no evidence or novel perspective to provide it any weight.

Ironically, I think this article serves as quite a strong defense of the hard problem, because it shows how hard it is to articulate or construct an argument against it at all.

I stopped reading when the author said science is not great as they claim to to be because when my cycle breaks down, I call a mechanic not a particle accelerator.

Philosophers being philosophers and not advancing the discussion at all.

I don’t think consciousness exists, at least not in the way people talk about it. First, there’s no clear definition that everyone agrees on. Second, there’s no way to test whether something has it. Does a cow have it? A dog? A spider? If you can't test for it and even define it, how can you claim its real?

Where we are, it is still a matter of belief.

I do believe what the author claîms, but it’s not something that’s proven so far, so it can’t be imposed as fact.

The main consequence to the “soul” being physical is that free will is an illusion. And many people can’t stand this idea. People want to believe they are more than a deterministic physical process. They want to believe the future is not already written.

They’ll look for free will in what still stands : god or quantum uncertainty.

God can’t be disproved, and quantum uncertainty leaves room for a kind of mystery, that’s appealing.

But LLMs definitely do a convincing job at “faking consciousness”.

Utterly asinine article that doesn't understand its own subject matter.

Comically wrong.

Quantum holography will someday demonstrate an analog information capacity of the quantum domain far exceeding the spin disposition.

Our minds use this domain by mass entanglement within our very own neurons.

You don’t want to hear it, though our minds may entangle and an entire culture exists among us who can traverse and manipulate the consciousness of others. They are responsible for the “voices in our heads”, and these are related to a great deal of very unscientific activity in our world.

All of that occult demonology you smarties scoff at yet plagues everyone embroiled in “power” is based upon this phenomena. We are not alone in our own minds, and more than a few of you will be forced to confront this at some point in your lives.

Falsifiable? Theories, not existential reality are concerned with what minds may falsify. Science lags behind reality, not the other way around.