Skeptic Bob
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2014
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- Texas
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- Political Leaning
- Libertarian - Left
Philosophy is a hobby of mine. I don't pretend to be good at it, but I really enjoy it. Lately the hard problem of consciousness has been occupying much of my spare time.
Basically the hard problem of consciousness is why is there experience? Why is there a subjective point of view?
If you really think about it, there is no obvious reason why you need consciousness to go about your life as a human. Practically everything you do happens on a level you are not conscious of. When someone speaks to you your brain interprets what they say without any conscious effort. Your brain is constantly processing information from your senses that you are not consciously aware of. Experimental data even seems to reveal that the decisions we make are made subconsciously moments before the conscious self becomes aware of the decision.
So why even have that last step of being consciously aware of what your brain is doing? Why aren't we just really complicated organic machines. Why are "the lights on"?
And an equally difficult question to answer is how? How do the purely physical processes of your brain result in what feels to be a non-physical consciousness? It is easy to imagine how the firing of neurons causes muscles to move and organs to do their work and to cause reaction to stimuli. We may not understand all the pathways but it is easy to theorize what they might be and how they might act. I can even imagine biologically how the people I interact with every day could do everything they do without them being conscious. Philosophical zombies is the term, I think. But it is hard to even theorize a mechanism for how the subjective experience of consciousness could emerge from that physical interaction of neurons.
Lots of scientists avoid the question altogether. Or perhaps they dismiss it by saying that consciousness is just an illusion. But it seems to me that consciousness is the one thing in the universe that CAN'T be an illusion. I could be a brain in a vat being fooled into thinking I am living in this universe, typing on this computer right now. But I can't deny the fact that I am conscious. My sense of self might be an illusion, but consciousness itself can't be.
There does appear to be a two-way interaction between my consciousness and the physical processes of my brain. After all, if I put things like alcohol or weed into my system, it alters the nature of my consciousness. And the mere fact that I am sitting here addressing the hard problem of consciousness means that my physical brain is aware that consciousness exists and is aware what subjective experience feels like, otherwise it wouldn't even occur to my brain to make this thread.
I'll stop there to see if this thread gets any traction.
Basically the hard problem of consciousness is why is there experience? Why is there a subjective point of view?
If you really think about it, there is no obvious reason why you need consciousness to go about your life as a human. Practically everything you do happens on a level you are not conscious of. When someone speaks to you your brain interprets what they say without any conscious effort. Your brain is constantly processing information from your senses that you are not consciously aware of. Experimental data even seems to reveal that the decisions we make are made subconsciously moments before the conscious self becomes aware of the decision.
So why even have that last step of being consciously aware of what your brain is doing? Why aren't we just really complicated organic machines. Why are "the lights on"?
And an equally difficult question to answer is how? How do the purely physical processes of your brain result in what feels to be a non-physical consciousness? It is easy to imagine how the firing of neurons causes muscles to move and organs to do their work and to cause reaction to stimuli. We may not understand all the pathways but it is easy to theorize what they might be and how they might act. I can even imagine biologically how the people I interact with every day could do everything they do without them being conscious. Philosophical zombies is the term, I think. But it is hard to even theorize a mechanism for how the subjective experience of consciousness could emerge from that physical interaction of neurons.
Lots of scientists avoid the question altogether. Or perhaps they dismiss it by saying that consciousness is just an illusion. But it seems to me that consciousness is the one thing in the universe that CAN'T be an illusion. I could be a brain in a vat being fooled into thinking I am living in this universe, typing on this computer right now. But I can't deny the fact that I am conscious. My sense of self might be an illusion, but consciousness itself can't be.
There does appear to be a two-way interaction between my consciousness and the physical processes of my brain. After all, if I put things like alcohol or weed into my system, it alters the nature of my consciousness. And the mere fact that I am sitting here addressing the hard problem of consciousness means that my physical brain is aware that consciousness exists and is aware what subjective experience feels like, otherwise it wouldn't even occur to my brain to make this thread.
I'll stop there to see if this thread gets any traction.