Comment by selcuka
7 days ago
> 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".
> 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.
a) it is wrong to say definitively that it is untrue. there is no acid test for the existence of God nor of spirit.
b) religious and spiritual traditions have wrangled with this very question for at least 3000 years. it is not a 'scientific curiosity'. It is one of the most fundamental questions of human experience.
a) there's an infinite amount of things that can't be proven/disproven and this includes all sorts of human imagination. We should focus on things that we can actually prove or disprove. The source of a god is human imagination, so you can't even prove that any god exists because you just don't know what it is (iow what exactly you're trying to prove).
b) This being a fundamental question proves scientific curiosity. We wouldn't have achieved current technology if not for scientific curiosity.
My position is that the qalia are simulated by our brains as an evolutionary response to "this organism has to recognize it's continuity and unity across space and time", and the more the brain is developed, the strongest this impression has to be.
I'll admit my position was built not to explain the hard problem of consciousness, but to find a philosophical answers to animals and newborn reactions to the mirror test, but I found it satisfactory enough when I heard about the hard problem of consciousness. My main argument for it is not an attack, it's simply Hanlon's razor. If you find a simpler explanation that doesn't demand new understanding, I will listen to it, if you do not, you have to show me the simplest solution is wrong, and I'll go to the second simplest.
By saying it’s simulated you don’t make a simplification. What does it simulate? What are the mechanics of simulation and is it substrate specific or independent? Can a computer simulate these qualia? It’s easy to say something is simple but harder to prove it is any simpler than the alternatives.
Hanlon's razor? That one is "never assume malice where stupidity will do". You want Occam's razor, or the word "parsimonious".
How do we experience that though?
The neural connections get rewired.
That does not explain how it is possible for a simulation to experience itself
It doesn't. It has the illusion of experience.
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No the hard problem is impossible to solve using science even a billion years in the future.
If science can in theory explain consciousness ever then it’s an easy problem.
This is the kind of religious thinking the GP is talking about. What other frontier of science do people claim will never be solved, except the existence of a god? Why are you so sure it cannot be touched?
No I don't think the GP was talking about that, and that's the problem. The hard problem by definition is a frontier that science will never be able to solve. So I can be sure because that's how it's described in the Chalmers paper introducing the hard problem. The hard problem is Chalmers proof that physicalism could never be true.
Like I said if science can explain something then that by definition is an easy problem.
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