(March 25, 2018 at 7:38 pm)polymath257 Wrote:(March 25, 2018 at 7:02 pm)vulcanlogician Wrote: 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.
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.
Yep. Those who see it as a hard problem are making it hard for themselves because they are seeking an explanation for something that they cannot define and won't ever be able to.
Take the recent study that's hit the media about how LSD breaks down a sense of self. We can scan brains and correlate how the drug is inhibiting or exciting different parts of the brain with what people are reporting. Eventually we'll reach a point where we understand exactly how the brain functions and why. But those who talk about qualia and who perceive something else are trying to use their own brains to define their own subjective experience to relate it to other's subjective experience all the while knowing that no one will ever be sure that it's possible without being that person, which is impossible.
In other words, it's a hard problem for them because they are asking to do the impossible by the way they have defined their own terms. Not that the word qualia is properly defined anyway or anyone can even be sure it exists. It's like using X as a placeholder.
They are trying to use the brain's internal experience to understand it's nature without taking into account its functionality, it's environment, thermodynamic origins or evolutionary history. That approach is never going to make progress. Considering that philosophy is supposed to study the nature of knowledge, by asking such ill defined questions it is failing quite spectacularly at doing what it claims to be best at doing. It's like economics failing to predict a crash that everyone else can see coming.
The conclusion I am coming up with is that there is a need for philosophy, but because of historical baggage it is not fit for purpose and needs a new paradigm to stay relevant. It happens in other fields, why not also philosophy?
