RE: why do we enjoy poetry From the perspective of neuroscience?
January 1, 2019 at 8:02 pm
(This post was last modified: January 1, 2019 at 8:06 pm by Alan V.)
(January 1, 2019 at 7:31 pm)Belaqua Wrote:(January 1, 2019 at 7:28 pm)Thoreauvian Wrote: My answer to the hard problem of consciousness was not "because of evolution," but rather, to paraphrase, because self-organization organizes selves. There is simply nothing in an indifferent or hostile environment to program biological organisms to choose survival over death, so if they are to survive at all they must evolve self-motivations, pleasures, pains, and so on -- at least at a certain level of complexity. In other words, such things can only come from inside the organisms themselves.
Right, that all seems very likely. Is someone here suggesting that something comes from outside the organism?
The question is how -- the mechanism by which -- electrochemical brain events present themselves to the subject as experiences. There is currently no explanation for this.
And yet I still think I just offered a probable explanation. Go figure.
I would also suggest that consciousness is really just awareness filtered through a self-concept. It is not a being at all, but a process of the body's brain. So there is no actual subject aside from the body, as I said before. That means the electrochemical events are necessarily experiences of brains in bodies, and are merely interpreted for content.
(January 1, 2019 at 7:53 pm)Belaqua Wrote: Yes, we can pragmatically and confidently assume that all other humans are not p-zombies. No problem.
What is it in their experience that makes them different from zombies or computers?
OK, I look out my window from where I'm sitting. Mostly I see green.
As you know, there is no green out there. There is only light, vibrating at ~ 560–520 nm. There is no green in my eyeball, there is only that light hitting the retina. There is no green between my retina and my brain, only nerve impulses. There is no green in my brain -- it's in the skull, there's no light in there. Why do I experience green?
The difference between a p-zombie or a computer is this experience. How does this experience come about?
You are correct. I really do not see the problem as a problem.
What you are really asking is why we are selves. But that is a given.
