What's the point of philosophy any more?

[polymath257]

Well, yes, the first person experience isn't discernible to me because their brain isn't my brain. But I would know that they are feeling pain, or in the case of the bat, sonar. I would be able to describe, probably in some detail, *what* they are experiencing. But yes, it is not my brain that is experiencing it all.

But I fail to see why that is such a deep issue to so many people. When my computer gets some information, and processes it, your computer may not get the same information or it may process it slightly differently. That seems, to me, to the sole difference in 'first person' versus 'third person' descriptions.

The problem isn't missing information. The problem is, even when every single piece information is accounted for, something is still missing.

That is the essence of the mind/body problem, and that is the great riddle of consciousness.

Of course, some will say it's really no big problem at all, which is why super empirically-minded folks seem comfortable with functionalism. I'm not one of them though. Something about the mystery of consciousness intrigues me. Looking at it one way, it almost seems more fundamental than any other metaphysical problem. Looking at it another way, its a simple distinction that (if made like the functionalists make it) is really no problem at all.

I guess I fail to see what is missing *other* than it is a different brain that is doing the processing. From what I can see, there is *only* a 'easy' problem of consciousness: how to find the neural correlates and how they are causally linked together. What else is there that is left unexplained? The experience is mine because the processing happens in my brain. The experience isn't yours because it doesn't happen in yours.

I really don't see a 'hard' problem of consciousness at all.

Another common example is the case of Mary, who knows everything factual about color vision, but has never seen red. When exposed to red, does she learn anything? Yes, of course. She learns that *she* has seen red. But that's the only piece of new information that I can see.

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You maintain the validity of your subjective experience even as you negate it.  That, is a problem.  It's not a problem in your everyday life, granted..obviously you can hold those opinions and function,.but it reduces your position to noise signifying nothing.  You don't even know..or cant coherently explain, why -you- think what you do.  That's laying aside the plain reading..that you have an incoherent thought process, for generosity's sake, alone... - which..just like before, is at least a possibility that is unlikely to impact your daily function.  

How would experience be invalid?  It's not a position, a philosophy, or a world view.  I don't see that there's anything about it that CAN be invalid.  What can be invalid are interpretations about the objectivity of experienced objects-- but that's really not the same thing.

I don't think a sense of self can be, or need be, interpreted.  It's not a conclusion or an inference.  It's just a label for whatever-it-is.

yes, but like all sensory information, it can be wrong. For example, we have a sense of the 'continuity of the self'. In actuality, the continuity is an illusion of after-writing in the brain. In reality, many different 'selves' from different areas of the brain combine to give the 'sense of self' and they are not always working, or working in tandem.