Closer to the latter, though I wouldn’t call it “unreal.” The experience of suffering exists in the same sense that my video game character is down to one life and has low HP: that state is legibly inspectable on screen, and is encoded in silicon. I only scorn the term “consciousness” to the extent it is used as woo.
I think some version of the Hard Problem really was meaningful in the past, and that it was hard: it’s far from obvious how “mere matter” could encode states as rich as what one … perceives, experiences, receives as the output of the brain’s processes. Mills and clocks, as sophisticated as they may have been, were still far too simple. I consider modern technology to have demonstrated in sufficient detail precisely how it’s possible. It didn’t require anything conceptually new, so also I understand why some don’t find the answer satisfying.
Closer to the latter, though I wouldn’t call it “unreal.” The experience of suffering exists in the same sense that my video game character is down to one life and has low HP: that state is legibly inspectable on screen, and is encoded in silicon. I only scorn the term “consciousness” to the extent it is used as woo.
I think some version of the Hard Problem really was meaningful in the past, and that it was hard: it’s far from obvious how “mere matter” could encode states as rich as what one … perceives, experiences, receives as the output of the brain’s processes. Mills and clocks, as sophisticated as they may have been, were still far too simple. I consider modern technology to have demonstrated in sufficient detail precisely how it’s possible. It didn’t require anything conceptually new, so also I understand why some don’t find the answer satisfying.