why do we enjoy poetry From the perspective of neuroscience?

[bennyboy]

The problem is that the "meaningful similarity" defined as consciousness in a lab setting is probably operationalized for study. For example, you can study brain function and the waves the brain gives off, and say "consciousness is when brain regions X,Y and Z are all processing more than ___ calories / minute" or whatever.

[The Grand Nudger]

The problem is that the "meaningful similarity" defined as consciousness in a lab setting is probably operationalized for study.

OFC, but why is that a problem?

For example, you can study brain function and the waves the brain gives off, and say "consciousness is when brain regions X,Y and Z are all processing more than ___ calories / minute" or whatever.

Sure, which is a much better description (even as-is) than our previous idea of the cartesian theater.

[Belacqua]

Some People™ believe strange things.  

Off the top of my head, here are a few of the Some People who agree with me and bennyboy, and disagree with you and Thoreavian:

Adam Frank professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester in New York. 

Marcelo Gleiser theoretical physicist at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, Appleton professor of natural philosophy and professor of physics and astronomy, and the director of the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement (ICE). 

Evan Thompson professor of philosophy and a scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. 

Alva Noe, Ph.D. Harvard 1995, professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, member of the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the Center for New Media.

Peter Hacker, fellow in philosophy of St John's College, Oxford

I would never say that they are right because they have had professional success. I am saying that to dismiss my concerns as uninformed is, itself, uninformed about what the problems are.

[bennyboy]

Sure, which is a much better description (even as-is) than our previous idea of the cartesian theater.

It's only better if you insist that reality must be operationalized for the lab.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's better, in the hypothetical.. because it's more accurate, lol.  I'm not sure that some generalized gripe about a lab is going to get you very far when discussing scientific inquiry.

[Alan V]

We may not know all the details, but they are likely technical anyway.  Nothing about this is difficult in principle as far as I can see.

It's not difficult if we are satisfied to say "It just happens." But the experience of smell or color presents itself to me in non-abstract ways. Qualia are among the few things we have concrete experience of. Far from being just technical details, the ontological jump from electrochemical events to felt experience is completely unexplained.

Let's just assume, for a moment, that we have complete knowledge of how electrochemical events are translated into felt experiences. My contention is that such knowledge would be entirely technical and not explanatory in the sense you and others are looking for. This is because I think the real hard problem of qualia does not lie at the translation, but at the evolutionary creation of subjective selves. This would seem to be upheld by the fact that elementary consciousness ceases with the interruption of the functioning of the midbrain. The higher, more evolved centers of the brain are add-ons or supplements to that basic consciousness. They add more abilities, including more refined translations of information which is already felt to whatever extent.

So what I have been trying to convey all along is that the hard problem of consciousness is hard in part because it is misframed. I have been trying to reframe it, as I think the book The Consciousness Instinct does a good job of doing. In my estimation, the problem of qualia is really the evolutionary problem of how selves emerged. That makes the problem both more complex and easier to tackle, because it can now be broken down into smaller pieces which can be addressed separately. The book takes a premilinary stab at this reframed problem.

So this is the reason I think scientists have already solved the qualia problem as it is presently framed by many philosophers. You will say this just transfers the problem elsewhere, and I agree that it does. But it also significantly changes the nature of the problem.

[bennyboy]

In my estimation, the problem of qualia is really the evolutionary problem of how selves emerged.

The problem of qualia is that in the mechanistic world view described by physics, there's no need for it-- either as an evolved property, or even as a potential property to be allowed for by the Universe at all. There's no "qualia coefficient" in any physical description, including that of brain function. Saying the word "evolution" doesn't solve this dilemma: if experience adds something that cannot be solved by pure mechanistic calculation, then reality is dualistic, and a physical monist model is incomplete. If it does not add anything, it's not necessary and therefore cannot be an evolved property.

It's a little suspicious that the most important aspect of existence, the ability to experience and enjoy it as a sentient agent, is so absolutely unrepresented in a physical view of reality.

[The Grand Nudger]

In my estimation, the problem of qualia is really the evolutionary problem of how selves emerged.

The problem of qualia is that in the  mechanistic world view described by physics, there's no need for it

Why do you think this is a problem?  Why -should- consciousness be required, is everything that exists a required or needful thing?  

if experience adds something that cannot be solved by pure mechanistic calculation, then reality is dualistic, and a physical monist model is incomplete.  If it does not add anything, it's not necessary and therefore cannot be an evolved property.

There it is again!  Why do you think that evolved properties must be necessary?

[bennyboy]

Why do you think this is a problem?  Why -should- consciousness be required, is everything that exists a required or needful thing?  

If you are making a model of reality, and the leftover piece of the puzzle is the central feature of our existence, and also the means by which we investigate and formulate that model, then yes. Everything is needed.

[Belacqua]

In my estimation, the problem of qualia is really the evolutionary problem of how selves emerged.  

I agree that the problem of qualia and the problem of the experienced self are, in essence, the same problem. 

The self seems to consist mostly of experienced qualia, or the memory of them, or the imaginative recombination of those memories. So in a sense the self is just built of qualia. 

I don't see that as making the problem any easier or harder. Get the self, you get the qualia. Get the qualia, you get the self.

I hadn't framed it quite like this before, so I'm glad you suggested it.