Start with an analogy to physics. There’s a Stephen Hawking quote I like:
> “Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”
I could be wrong, but Hawking’s question seems to be pointing at a real mystery. But as Hawking says, there seems to be no possible observation or scientific experiment that would shed light on that mystery. Whatever the true laws of physics are in our universe, every possible experiment would just confirm, yup, those are the true laws of physics. It wouldn’t help us figure out what if anything “breathes fire” into those laws. What would progress on the “breathes fire” question even look like?? (See Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe book for the only serious attempt I know of, which I still find unsatisfying. He basically says that all possible laws of the universe have fire breathed into them. But even if that’s true, I still want to ask … why?)
By analogy, I’m tempted to say that an illusionist account can explain every possible experiment about consciousness, including our belief that consciousness exists at all, and all its properties, and all the philosophy books on it, and so on … but yet I’m tempted to still say that there’s some “breathes fire” / “why is there something rather than nothing” type question left unanswered by the illusionist account. This unanswered question should not be called “the hard problem”, but rather “the impossible problem”, in the sense that, just like Hawking’s question above, there seems to be no possible scientific measurement or introspective experiment and that could shed light on it—all possible such data, including the very fact that I’m writing this paragraph, are already screened off by the illusionist framework.
Well, hmm, maybe that’s stupid. I dunno.
My provisional answer is “An infinity of FLOPs/compute backs up the equations to make sure it works.”
My provisional answer is “An infinity of FLOPs/compute backs up the equations to make sure it works.”