I think I found the solution to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness

Is the mind the same as the body? What is consciousness? Can machines have it?

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Angelo Cannata
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I think I found the solution to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness

Post by Angelo Cannata »

David Chalmers’ “hard problem of consciousness” is called “hard” because we don’t know how to approach it; the easy one is so because it is all about the amount of work we need to do; it is easy because, even if it implies a huge and hard work, we know what it consists of, we know what we need to do. About the hard one, we don’t even have an idea of what to do, how to effectively conceive it, how to “attack” the problem with clarity.
The solution is based on being aware of a limit, we might even say a flaw, in the scientific way of dealing with problems and concepts. The scientific way is based on abstraction, which consists in getting what is common to several elements. For example, we can talk about the red color because it, or components we are able to identify in it, is shared by several objects. In other words, science is able to talk about repeatable phenomenons only: shared means repeated. If something is 100% unique, science is totally unable to talk about it; it can talk about it only by making use of other known references, which means, already shared concepts. This means that science, in the case of a unique event, tries to determine in it components that can be described by using known reference concepts.
This happens not only in science, but in everything; we can say it happens just in language. The problem is that this way language and science make us forget, or ignore, that actually, from a different perspective, nothing is totally repeatable: it’s us who take the repeatable, the shared part, in order to deal with descriptions and ideas, and this makes us forget that every experience is actually unique. This seems to be the basic structure how our brain works to get knowledge of things: it works on shared elements and elaborates them.
Now, the hard problem of consciousness arises because when each of us considers consciousness, we most probably will give special consideration to our own single specific experience of consciousness. Instead, other people are distracted by our instinct to organize knowledge by making abstractions, the way I described before. These are those who can’t even see the existence of a hard problem of consciousness. They objectify the concept of consciousness, forgetting, ignoring, not paying attention to the fact the their single specific own experience of consciousness cannot be reduced to a general idea of consciousness. Now let’s consider why it cannot be reduced.
My own specific experience of consciousness is like being inside my car: I can realize how being in my car gives me my experience of the world, my perspective, my tastes, the way colors are experienced by me. By considering this, I can realize that I can figure other people’s experience of being inside their car by assuming that it must be somewhat the same, at least very similar. But I can realize as well that me is me and nobody else will ever be able to be me, to experience my experience of being inside my car. This perception is connected to an instinctive experience of feeling free: I can feel that I can move my arm, if I want, so I assume that other people must feel something similar. But my arm is my arm only, it exists only in me and nobody in the world will ever be able to experience what exactly I feel in moving my arm. It’s not about fine details that may differ between bodies. About this, it is important to realize that the difference of experience that I can figure between two friends of mine is totally different from the difference I can feel by comparing them to me. The two friends of mine are different from each other, but I perceive both of them external to me, so, in this they are very similar. They are both external to me, while instead I am internal to me: this is the real huge difference. So, the essence of my own experience of being me is that I cannot escape from feeling it absolutely unique, impossible to repeat, also because I feel that, when I die, it is equivalent to the whole world stopping to exist, while when other people die I can see that the world continues to exist. This experience of uniqueness of myself is also quite disturbed by the tendency of our brain to organize knowledge through abstraction. This means that there is in me like a force that tries continuously to make me forget the uniqueness of my experience. I need to concentrate, to leave aside for a moment a lot of thoughts to remember again my experience of myself, to re-enter in myself and re-realize that the “me” is here, I am inside my car, I am experiencing my unique experience of mastery on my body, my thoughts, my perspectives.
Here is the core, the solution, of what makes the hard problem of consciousness hard: what makes it hard is the fact that science is not at all organized to deal with anything unique. It’s not its job, it is outside its being. So, we might even say that the unique experience that each of us can feel when we concentrate on the existence of our mastery over our body and thoughts is something completely outside the domain of science. This can’t avoid to appear to us quite weird because each of us can perceive hiw own perspective from the inside in a way so evident, so clear, so undeniable, that we can’t avoid to wonder how it is possible that science can’t deal with it. Now we have the reason: it is because science is based on repeatability, while instead my own exclusive experience of my conscience has to me a side, from the inside of my, that is impossible to repeat. We get confused also because we see that science is able to deal with a lot of aspects of the experience of conscience; we get even more confused because this ability of science can even make us forget the uniqueness of our experience from the inside of us.
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Re: I think I found the solution to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness

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It's not "hard" because it is difficult. It is hard because consciousness is soft, whereas the brain is hard like software and hardware.
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Re: I think I found the solution to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness

Post by mickthinks »

I agree with you, Angelo, about the problem of incommensurability of science and consciousness. But I don't think identifying the root of a problem counts as solving it as your headline claims.
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Re: I think I found the solution to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness

Post by Angelo Cannata »

Sculptor wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 10:35 am It's not "hard" because it is difficult. It is hard because consciousness is soft, whereas the brain is hard like software and hardware.
I think this answer still falls in the problem of treating the experience of self like an object, doesn't matter if soft or hard. I'd rather like to listen about your own personal experience of feeling I: do you feel that you are unique and special, since you are the only person in the world who experiences your own being "I"?
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Re: I think I found the solution to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness

Post by Angelo Cannata »

mickthinks wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 10:37 am I agree with you, Angelo, about the problem of incommensurability of science and consciousness. But I don't think identifying the root of a problem counts as solving it as your headline claims.
I agree, but, once the problem is focused, I think the solution becomes an obvious consequence: we need a non-objectfying language and the only one I can imagine is that of art. Then we can deepen how to manage relashionships between the language of art and the language of science, but at this point we know what to do, where to work on.
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Re: I think I found the solution to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness

Post by Sculptor »

Angelo Cannata wrote: Tue Sep 14, 2021 10:10 am
Sculptor wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 10:35 am It's not "hard" because it is difficult. It is hard because consciousness is soft, whereas the brain is hard like software and hardware.
I think this answer still falls in the problem of treating the experience of self like an object, doesn't matter if soft or hard. I'd rather like to listen about your own personal experience of feeling I: do you feel that you are unique and special, since you are the only person in the world who experiences your own being "I"?
None of us are special; we are all just one of billions. Not just humans but all animals with neural matter.
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Re: I think I found the solution to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness

Post by RCSaunders »

Angelo Cannata wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:17 am If something is 100% unique, science is totally unable to talk about it ...
Not true. Only universal concepts identify existents as categories or classes because the referrents have common attributes. Both science and ontology recognize that every actual entity is unique because everything that exists must have at least one attribute that is different from the attributes of all other entities. No two things can be identical in every way or they are not two things. Something must differentiate them--there must be at least one different attribute, however slight.

It is not necessary for more than one of anything to ever be discovered to be scientifically identified. If only one organism of a unique specie were discovered, it could be scientifically identified and its nature described even if no other specimen of the same specie were ever discovered. You premise is based on the mistaken assumption that science is done by induction.
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Re: I think I found the solution to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness

Post by Angelo Cannata »

I think we should make a distinction between relative uniqueness and absolute uniqueness. I think that science is able to talk about some unique things because they are just a different combination of already known elements. For example, two apparently unique stones are treated as unique because each of them has a different combination of chemicals, physical properties, location in time and space. But, from this point of view, they actually have nothing unique because the concepts of chemicals, physical properties, location, time, space, are all elements well known to science.
When I refer to something 100% unique I mean something whose components cannot be reduced to already known components. Imagine something whose characteristics are beyond chemicals, physics, time, space: in this case science would be totally unable to talk about it. This is something I call 100% unique. Nonetheless, we feel able to perceive something we aren’t able to talk about: it is our perception of being “I”. When we try to reduce it to effects of mechanisms, we are extrapolating from our experience those elements that we are able to talk about, making the incorrect assuption that what we can’t talk about doesn’t exist.
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Re: I think I found the solution to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness

Post by Impenitent »

Angelo Cannata wrote: Tue Sep 14, 2021 3:09 pm I think we should make a distinction between relative uniqueness and absolute uniqueness. I think that science is able to talk about some unique things because they are just a different combination of already known elements. For example, two apparently unique stones are treated as unique because each of them has a different combination of chemicals, physical properties, location in time and space. But, from this point of view, they actually have nothing unique because the concepts of chemicals, physical properties, location, time, space, are all elements well known to science.
When I refer to something 100% unique I mean something whose components cannot be reduced to already known components. Imagine something whose characteristics are beyond chemicals, physics, time, space: in this case science would be totally unable to talk about it. This is something I call 100% unique. Nonetheless, we feel able to perceive something we aren’t able to talk about: it is our perception of being “I”. When we try to reduce it to effects of mechanisms, we are extrapolating from our experience those elements that we are able to talk about, making the incorrect assuption that what we can’t talk about doesn’t exist.
are the interiors of black holes ever unique?

-Imp
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Re: I think I found the solution to Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness

Post by bahman »

Angelo Cannata wrote: Mon Sep 13, 2021 8:17 am David Chalmers’ “hard problem of consciousness” is called “hard” because we don’t know how to approach it; the easy one is so because it is all about the amount of work we need to do; it is easy because, even if it implies a huge and hard work, we know what it consists of, we know what we need to do. About the hard one, we don’t even have an idea of what to do, how to effectively conceive it, how to “attack” the problem with clarity.
The solution is based on being aware of a limit, we might even say a flaw, in the scientific way of dealing with problems and concepts. The scientific way is based on abstraction, which consists in getting what is common to several elements. For example, we can talk about the red color because it, or components we are able to identify in it, is shared by several objects. In other words, science is able to talk about repeatable phenomenons only: shared means repeated. If something is 100% unique, science is totally unable to talk about it; it can talk about it only by making use of other known references, which means, already shared concepts. This means that science, in the case of a unique event, tries to determine in it components that can be described by using known reference concepts.
This happens not only in science, but in everything; we can say it happens just in language. The problem is that this way language and science make us forget, or ignore, that actually, from a different perspective, nothing is totally repeatable: it’s us who take the repeatable, the shared part, in order to deal with descriptions and ideas, and this makes us forget that every experience is actually unique. This seems to be the basic structure how our brain works to get knowledge of things: it works on shared elements and elaborates them.
Now, the hard problem of consciousness arises because when each of us considers consciousness, we most probably will give special consideration to our own single specific experience of consciousness. Instead, other people are distracted by our instinct to organize knowledge by making abstractions, the way I described before. These are those who can’t even see the existence of a hard problem of consciousness. They objectify the concept of consciousness, forgetting, ignoring, not paying attention to the fact the their single specific own experience of consciousness cannot be reduced to a general idea of consciousness. Now let’s consider why it cannot be reduced.
My own specific experience of consciousness is like being inside my car: I can realize how being in my car gives me my experience of the world, my perspective, my tastes, the way colors are experienced by me. By considering this, I can realize that I can figure other people’s experience of being inside their car by assuming that it must be somewhat the same, at least very similar. But I can realize as well that me is me and nobody else will ever be able to be me, to experience my experience of being inside my car. This perception is connected to an instinctive experience of feeling free: I can feel that I can move my arm, if I want, so I assume that other people must feel something similar. But my arm is my arm only, it exists only in me and nobody in the world will ever be able to experience what exactly I feel in moving my arm. It’s not about fine details that may differ between bodies. About this, it is important to realize that the difference of experience that I can figure between two friends of mine is totally different from the difference I can feel by comparing them to me. The two friends of mine are different from each other, but I perceive both of them external to me, so, in this they are very similar. They are both external to me, while instead I am internal to me: this is the real huge difference. So, the essence of my own experience of being me is that I cannot escape from feeling it absolutely unique, impossible to repeat, also because I feel that, when I die, it is equivalent to the whole world stopping to exist, while when other people die I can see that the world continues to exist. This experience of uniqueness of myself is also quite disturbed by the tendency of our brain to organize knowledge through abstraction. This means that there is in me like a force that tries continuously to make me forget the uniqueness of my experience. I need to concentrate, to leave aside for a moment a lot of thoughts to remember again my experience of myself, to re-enter in myself and re-realize that the “me” is here, I am inside my car, I am experiencing my unique experience of mastery on my body, my thoughts, my perspectives.
Here is the core, the solution, of what makes the hard problem of consciousness hard: what makes it hard is the fact that science is not at all organized to deal with anything unique. It’s not its job, it is outside its being. So, we might even say that the unique experience that each of us can feel when we concentrate on the existence of our mastery over our body and thoughts is something completely outside the domain of science. This can’t avoid to appear to us quite weird because each of us can perceive hiw own perspective from the inside in a way so evident, so clear, so undeniable, that we can’t avoid to wonder how it is possible that science can’t deal with it. Now we have the reason: it is because science is based on repeatability, while instead my own exclusive experience of my conscience has to me a side, from the inside of my, that is impossible to repeat. We get confused also because we see that science is able to deal with a lot of aspects of the experience of conscience; we get even more confused because this ability of science can even make us forget the uniqueness of our experience from the inside of us.
There is no solution to the hard problem of consciousness. There is no emergence. I have an argument for that.
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