It sounds like Seth’s position is that the hard problem of consciousness is the result of confusion, so he’s not ignoring it, but saying that it only appears to exist because it’s asked within the context of a confused frame.
Seth seems to be suggesting that the hard problem of consciousness is a bit like asking why don’t people fall off the edge of the Earth? We think of this question as confused because we believe the Earth is round. But if you start from the assumption that the Earth is flat, then this is a reasonable question, and no amount of explanation will convince you otherwise.
The reason these two situations look different is that it’s now easy for us to verify that the Earth is not flat, but it’s hard for us to verify what’s going on with consciousness. Seth’s book is making a bid, by presenting the work of many others, to say that what we think of as consciousness is explainable in ways that make the Hard Problem a nonsensical question.
That seems quite a big different from “simply ignoring the Hard Problem”, though I admit Jacob does not go into great detail about Seth’s full arguments for this. But I’d posit that if you want to disagree with something, you need to disagree with the object-level claims Seth makes first, and only after reaching a point where you have no more disagreements is it worth considering whether or not the Hard Problem still makes sense, and if you do then it should be possible to make a specific argument about where you think the Hard Problem arises and what it looks like in terms of the presented model.
Without reading the book we can’t be sure. But the trouble is that this claim has been made a million times, and in every previous case the author has turned out to be either ignoring the hard problem, misunderstanding it, or defining it out of existence. So if a longish, very positive review with the title ‘x explains consciousness’ doesn’t provide any evidence that x really is different this time, it’s reasonable to think that it very likely isn’t.
The reason these two situations look different is that it’s now easy for us to verify that the Earth is flat, but it’s hard for us to verify what’s going on with consciousness.
Even if I had no way of verifying it, “the earth is (roughly) spherical and thus has no edges, and its gravity pulls you toward its centre regardless of where you are on its surface” would clearly be an answer to my question, and a candidate explanation pending verification. My question was only ‘confused’ in the sense that it rested on a false empirical assumption; I would be perfectly capable of understanding your correction to this assumption. (Not necessarily accepting it—maybe I think I have really strong evidence that the earth is flat, or maybe you haven’t backed up your true claim with good arguments—but understanding what it means and why it would resolve my question).
Are you suggesting that in the case of the hard problem, there may be some equivalent of the ‘flat earth’ assumption that the hard-problemists hold so tightly that they can’t even comprehend a ‘round earth’ explanation when it’s offered?
Are you suggesting that in the case of the hard problem, there may be some equivalent of the ‘flat earth’ assumption that the hard-problemists hold so tightly that they can’t even comprehend a ‘round earth’ explanation when it’s offered?
Yes. Dualism is deeply appealing because most humans, or at least most of humans who care about the Hard Problem, seem to experience themselves in dualistic ways (i.e. experience something like the self residing inside the body). So even if it becomes obvious that there’s no “consciousness sauce” per se, the argument is that the Problem seems to exist only because there are dualistic assumptions implicit in the worldview that thinks the Problem exists.
I’d go on to say that if we address the Meta Hard Problem like this in such a way that it shows the Hard Problem to be the result of confusion, then there’s nothing to say about the Hard Problem, just like there’s nothing interesting to say about why ships never sail off the edge of the Earth.
So you don’t believe there is such a thing as first-person phenomenal experiences, sort of like Brian Tomasik? Could you give an example or counterexample of what would or wouldn’t qualify as such an experience?
I think that there’s a process we can meaningfully point to and call qualia, and it includes all the things we think of as qualia, but qualia is not itself a thing per se but rather the reification of observations of mental processes that allows us to make sense of them.
I have theories of what these processes are and how they work and they mostly line up with the what’s pointed at by this book. In particular I think cybernetic models are sufficient to explain most of the interesting things going on with consciousness, and we can mostly think of qualia as the result of neurons in the brain hooked up in loops so that their inputs include information not only from other neurons but also from themselves, and these self-sensing loops provide the input stream of data that other neurons interpret as self-experience/qualia/consciousness.
but qualia is not itself a thing per se but rather the reification of observations of mental processes
I don’t see how that helps. We don’t have a reductive explanation of consciousness as a thing, and we don’t have a reductive explanation of consciousness as a process.
Are you suggesting that in the case of the hard problem, there may be some equivalent of the ‘flat earth’ assumption that the hard-problemists hold so tightly that they can’t even comprehend a ‘round earth’ explanation when it’s offered?
I wouldn’t say “can’t even comprehend” but my current theory is that one such detrimental assumption is “I have direct knowledge of content of my experiences”.
but my current theory is that one such detrimental assumption is “I have direct knowledge of content of my experiences”
It’s true this is the weakest link, since instances of the template “I have direct knowledge of X” sound presumptuous and have an extremely bad track record.
The only serious response in favor of the presumptuous assumption [edit] that I can think of is epiphenomenalism in the sense of “I simply am my experiences”, with self-identity (i.e. X = X) filling the role of “having direct knowledge of X”. For explaining how we’re able to have conversations about “epiphenomenalism” without it playing any local causal role in us having these conversations, I’m optimistic that observation selection effects could end up explaining this.
Similarly, I think that one inapplicable assumption is the idea that people can reliably self-analyze and come to accurate conclusions, thus being presumed reliable in their reports, including consciousness. I remember reading something that people’s ability to self-analyze correctly is basically 0, that is people are pretty much always incorrect about their own traits and thoughts.
The point is that they’re usually not even that useful, as bringing an outsider would probably help the situation, and therefore one of the basic assumptions of a lot of consciousness discourse and intuitions is false, and they don’t know this, and in particular, it’s why I now dislike a lot of consciousness intuitions, but this goes especially for dualism.
The fact that we are so bad at self-analysis is why we need outsider help so much.
Is there a reason why it is detrimental? Note that it “I have direct knowledge of content of my experiences”.doesn’t imply certain knowledge, a or non-physical ontology, or epiphenomenalism...
I think it’s detrimental because “direct” there prevents people from accepting weak forms of illusionism, and that creates problems additional to The Hard Problem like Mary or Chalmer’s conceivability of qualia’s structure. And because… I don’t want to say “the assumption is wrong” because knowledge is arbitrary high-level concept, but you can formulate a theory of knowledge where it doesn’t hold and that theory is better.
It sounds like Seth’s position is that the hard problem of consciousness is the result of confusion, so he’s not ignoring it, but saying that it only appears to exist because it’s asked within the context of a confused frame.
Seth seems to be suggesting that the hard problem of consciousness is a bit like asking why don’t people fall off the edge of the Earth? We think of this question as confused because we believe the Earth is round. But if you start from the assumption that the Earth is flat, then this is a reasonable question, and no amount of explanation will convince you otherwise.
The reason these two situations look different is that it’s now easy for us to verify that the Earth is not flat, but it’s hard for us to verify what’s going on with consciousness. Seth’s book is making a bid, by presenting the work of many others, to say that what we think of as consciousness is explainable in ways that make the Hard Problem a nonsensical question.
That seems quite a big different from “simply ignoring the Hard Problem”, though I admit Jacob does not go into great detail about Seth’s full arguments for this. But I’d posit that if you want to disagree with something, you need to disagree with the object-level claims Seth makes first, and only after reaching a point where you have no more disagreements is it worth considering whether or not the Hard Problem still makes sense, and if you do then it should be possible to make a specific argument about where you think the Hard Problem arises and what it looks like in terms of the presented model.
Without reading the book we can’t be sure. But the trouble is that this claim has been made a million times, and in every previous case the author has turned out to be either ignoring the hard problem, misunderstanding it, or defining it out of existence. So if a longish, very positive review with the title ‘x explains consciousness’ doesn’t provide any evidence that x really is different this time, it’s reasonable to think that it very likely isn’t.
Even if I had no way of verifying it, “the earth is (roughly) spherical and thus has no edges, and its gravity pulls you toward its centre regardless of where you are on its surface” would clearly be an answer to my question, and a candidate explanation pending verification. My question was only ‘confused’ in the sense that it rested on a false empirical assumption; I would be perfectly capable of understanding your correction to this assumption. (Not necessarily accepting it—maybe I think I have really strong evidence that the earth is flat, or maybe you haven’t backed up your true claim with good arguments—but understanding what it means and why it would resolve my question).
Are you suggesting that in the case of the hard problem, there may be some equivalent of the ‘flat earth’ assumption that the hard-problemists hold so tightly that they can’t even comprehend a ‘round earth’ explanation when it’s offered?
Yes. Dualism is deeply appealing because most humans, or at least most of humans who care about the Hard Problem, seem to experience themselves in dualistic ways (i.e. experience something like the self residing inside the body). So even if it becomes obvious that there’s no “consciousness sauce” per se, the argument is that the Problem seems to exist only because there are dualistic assumptions implicit in the worldview that thinks the Problem exists.
I’d go on to say that if we address the Meta Hard Problem like this in such a way that it shows the Hard Problem to be the result of confusion, then there’s nothing to say about the Hard Problem, just like there’s nothing interesting to say about why ships never sail off the edge of the Earth.
So you don’t believe there is such a thing as first-person phenomenal experiences, sort of like Brian Tomasik? Could you give an example or counterexample of what would or wouldn’t qualify as such an experience?
I think that there’s a process we can meaningfully point to and call qualia, and it includes all the things we think of as qualia, but qualia is not itself a thing per se but rather the reification of observations of mental processes that allows us to make sense of them.
I have theories of what these processes are and how they work and they mostly line up with the what’s pointed at by this book. In particular I think cybernetic models are sufficient to explain most of the interesting things going on with consciousness, and we can mostly think of qualia as the result of neurons in the brain hooked up in loops so that their inputs include information not only from other neurons but also from themselves, and these self-sensing loops provide the input stream of data that other neurons interpret as self-experience/qualia/consciousness.
I don’t see how that helps. We don’t have a reductive explanation of consciousness as a thing, and we don’t have a reductive explanation of consciousness as a process.
I wouldn’t say “can’t even comprehend” but my current theory is that one such detrimental assumption is “I have direct knowledge of content of my experiences”.
It’s true this is the weakest link, since instances of the template “I have direct knowledge of X” sound presumptuous and have an extremely bad track record.
The only serious response in favor of the presumptuous assumption [edit] that I can think of is epiphenomenalism in the sense of “I simply am my experiences”, with self-identity (i.e. X = X) filling the role of “having direct knowledge of X”. For explaining how we’re able to have conversations about “epiphenomenalism” without it playing any local causal role in us having these conversations, I’m optimistic that observation selection effects could end up explaining this.
Personally I wouldn’t say “I am my experiences” is epiphenomenalism—I have a casual role.
Response to what?
Response in favor of the assumption that Signer said was detrimental.
Similarly, I think that one inapplicable assumption is the idea that people can reliably self-analyze and come to accurate conclusions, thus being presumed reliable in their reports, including consciousness. I remember reading something that people’s ability to self-analyze correctly is basically 0, that is people are pretty much always incorrect about their own traits and thoughts.
Interpret things strictly enough and everyone is always wrong about everything. They can still be usefully right.
The point is that they’re usually not even that useful, as bringing an outsider would probably help the situation, and therefore one of the basic assumptions of a lot of consciousness discourse and intuitions is false, and they don’t know this, and in particular, it’s why I now dislike a lot of consciousness intuitions, but this goes especially for dualism.
The fact that we are so bad at self-analysis is why we need outsider help so much.
Is there a reason why it is detrimental? Note that it “I have direct knowledge of content of my experiences”.doesn’t imply certain knowledge, a or non-physical ontology, or epiphenomenalism...
Doesn’t “direct” have the implication of “certain” here?
Some people think so, other don’t. Indirectness adds extra uncertainty, but it’s not the only possible source of uncertainty.
I think it’s detrimental because “direct” there prevents people from accepting weak forms of illusionism, and that creates problems additional to The Hard Problem like Mary or Chalmer’s conceivability of qualia’s structure. And because… I don’t want to say “the assumption is wrong” because knowledge is arbitrary high-level concept, but you can formulate a theory of knowledge where it doesn’t hold and that theory is better.