I’m usually very on board with claim that Hard Problem is non-problem, but I always struggled to understand illusionst point of view. When I see illusion of appearing white spots in grid illusion, I know that it is illusion in a sense that there are reality in form of constant state of pixels that doesn’t change. If “experiencing” is “illusion”, what is reality?
(My position on Hard Problem is that subjective experience exists and has completely mundane physical/computatonal explanation.)
I don’t know!
I don’t like the whole formulation of “Hard Problem” because it looks so arrogant: it is assumed that all possible computational solution to question “how can conscious behaviour be produced” are so trivial, that they can’t provide answer to “why we have subjective experience”. Let’s find computational solution for conscious behavior first and check that we won’t find any unexpected insights that make us say “wow, this is really obvious mundane way to produce conscious experience”.
The hard problem argument only says that some problems are harder than others, not that they are impossible.
The mundane approach had been tried over and over. When you say that a mundane solution exists , you seem to mean that the thing that hasn’t worked for decades will start working.
By “mundane solution” I mean “deep gear-level understanding of functional aspects of consciousness, such as someone who has such understanding can program functionally-conscious entity from scratch”. Claim of “Hard Problem” is “even if you have such understanding, you can’t explain subjective experience” and I consider this claim to be false.
I agree that if you can use a non trial-and-error method to build consciousness, then you understand it well enough.
But do you have a non trial-and-error method for building something that has conscious experience? Or are you assuming you get it for free with the rest of the functionality?
I don’t like the word “illusionism” here because people just get caught on the obvious semantic ‘contradiction’ and always complain about it.
The arguments based on perceptual illusions in general are meant to show that our perception is highly constructed by the brain, it’s not something ‘simple’. The point of illusionism is just to say that we are confused about what the phenomenological properties of qualia really are qua qualia because of wrong ideas that come from introspection.
I don’t like “illusionism” either, since it makes it seem like illusionists are merely claiming that consciousness is an illusion, i.e., it is something different than what it seems to be. That claim isn’t very shocking or novel, but illusionists aren’t claiming that. They’re actually claiming that you aren’t having any internal experience in the first place. There isn’t any illusion.
“Fictionalism” would be a better term than “illusionism”: when people say they are having a bad experience, or an experience of saltiness, they are just describing a fictional character.
I’m usually very on board with claim that Hard Problem is non-problem, but I always struggled to understand illusionst point of view. When I see illusion of appearing white spots in grid illusion, I know that it is illusion in a sense that there are reality in form of constant state of pixels that doesn’t change. If “experiencing” is “illusion”, what is reality?
(My position on Hard Problem is that subjective experience exists and has completely mundane physical/computatonal explanation.)
Which is what?
I don’t know! I don’t like the whole formulation of “Hard Problem” because it looks so arrogant: it is assumed that all possible computational solution to question “how can conscious behaviour be produced” are so trivial, that they can’t provide answer to “why we have subjective experience”. Let’s find computational solution for conscious behavior first and check that we won’t find any unexpected insights that make us say “wow, this is really obvious mundane way to produce conscious experience”.
The hard problem argument only says that some problems are harder than others, not that they are impossible.
The mundane approach had been tried over and over. When you say that a mundane solution exists , you seem to mean that the thing that hasn’t worked for decades will start working.
By “mundane solution” I mean “deep gear-level understanding of functional aspects of consciousness, such as someone who has such understanding can program functionally-conscious entity from scratch”. Claim of “Hard Problem” is “even if you have such understanding, you can’t explain subjective experience” and I consider this claim to be false.
I agree that if you can use a non trial-and-error method to build consciousness, then you understand it well enough.
But do you have a non trial-and-error method for building something that has conscious experience? Or are you assuming you get it for free with the rest of the functionality?
It’s plausible that reverse-engineering the human mind requires tools that are much more powerful than the human mind.
I don’t like the word “illusionism” here because people just get caught on the obvious semantic ‘contradiction’ and always complain about it.
The arguments based on perceptual illusions in general are meant to show that our perception is highly constructed by the brain, it’s not something ‘simple’. The point of illusionism is just to say that we are confused about what the phenomenological properties of qualia really are qua qualia because of wrong ideas that come from introspection.
I don’t like “illusionism” either, since it makes it seem like illusionists are merely claiming that consciousness is an illusion, i.e., it is something different than what it seems to be. That claim isn’t very shocking or novel, but illusionists aren’t claiming that. They’re actually claiming that you aren’t having any internal experience in the first place. There isn’t any illusion.
“Fictionalism” would be a better term than “illusionism”: when people say they are having a bad experience, or an experience of saltiness, they are just describing a fictional character.