Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
In the history of discussions about consciousness, there have always been ideas that some aspects of human experience are irreducible to physics. Colors have long had a special place in these discussions. During the scientific revolution, colors lost their status as objective properties in the world, with people like Galileo relegating them to secondary qualities … Continue reading The function of color
This week the latest Mind Chat episode focused on whether regular people actually perceive a hard problem of consciousness, or if it's an issue largely created by philosophers. Keith Frankish and Philip Goff interview Michelle Liu and Edouard Machery. (The video is a bit over two hours. You don't necessarily need to watch it to … Continue reading Do regular people see a hard problem of consciousness?
Often when I mention that I'm a functionalist in terms of the mind, someone references the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on functionalism. Strange to say, but I've never gone through that entire entry. This week I poked around a little in it, mostly in the objections section. Most of the objections either strike me as more … Continue reading The function of qualia
The hard problem of consciousness, a term coined by philosopher David Chalmers, asks how physical systems can produce phenomenal consciousness. Chalmers' term, coined in the 1990s, applied to an older problem that's been around for along time, the mind-body problem. More recently, Chalmers noted his intuition that the hard problem is widely and intuitively held … Continue reading Regular people: What hard problem of consciousness?
The Journal of Consciousness Studies has an issue out on the meta-problem of consciousness. (Unfortunately, it's paywalled, so you'll need a subscription, or access to a school network that has one.) As a reminder, there's the hard problem of consciousness, coined by David Chalmers in 1995, which is the question of why or how we … Continue reading Is consciousness really a problem?
David Chalmers is famous as the philosopher who coined the hard problem of consciousness, the idea that how and why consciousness is produced from a physical system, how phenomenal experience arises from such a system, is an intractably difficult issue. He contrasts the hard problem with what he calls "easy problems" such as discriminating between … Continue reading David Chalmers on the meta-problem of consciousness
Michael Shermer has an article up at Scientific American asking if science will ever understand consciousness, free will, or God. I contend that not only consciousness but also free will and God are mysterian problems—not because we are not yet smart enough to solve them but because they can never be solved, not even in … Continue reading The prospects for a scientific understanding of consciousness
In 1995, David Chalmers coined the "hard problem of consciousness": It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory … Continue reading A possible answer to the hard problem of consciousness: subjective experience is communication
Michael Graziano has an article at The Atlantic explaining why consciousness is not mysterious.  It's a fairly short read (about 3 minutes).  I recommend anyone interested in this stuff read it in full.  (I tweeted a link to it last night, but then decided it warranted discussion here.) The TL;DR is that the hard problem of … Continue reading Michael Graziano: What hard problem?
It's a common sentiment, even among many staunch materialists, that we will never understand consciousness.  It's one I held to some degree until a few years ago.  But the more I've read about neuroscience, the more convinced I've become that we will eventually understand it, at least at an objective level. That's actually an important distinction to make … Continue reading Why I think we will eventually have a scientific understanding of consciousness
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