We must insist that it is not merely the brain which exists, but the software program that the brain implements exists. The existence of the software program is the “inner reality” that befuddles the hard-questioner. This doesn’t require some magical “extra-existence” of the program alone; this existence is just a restatement of what is already there. Not taking that existence seriously enough—whether by imagining the program is merely a useful metaphor, or a useful abstraction, or a human-invented interpretation of the physical events in the brain, or by any other means—is the problem.
Once you have equated “the existence of the software program” with “our consciousness”, the full problem is almost ready to melt away. What remains is to realize that there is nothing special—as far as consciousness alone is concerned—with the mere capabilities of the software program. What matters is existence, full stop. So just as the software program exists, so too do rocks, atoms, galaxies, and well… everything. Identifying and equating “existence” with “consciousness” is how you actually solve the hard problem in all its variants. Consciousness is existence, but what exists in our case is the software program that is implemented by our brains. Further exploration of this identity solves all relevant problems/confusions regarding consciousness that have ever been raised.
It seems that “existence is consciousness” is doing all the lifting here. If we weren’t software programs, we would still exist and be conscious.
And I am not clear about what motivates the idea that we are software. Software/Code doesn’t really have an ontological existence separate from matter/hardware, it’s more of a stance or abstraction.
With the hard problem clear, there are still some fundamental premises that need to be established. These could be argued at length, but are justified here only briefly:
A certain interpretation of Physicalism is true, whereby we refuse to resort to “magic”. This just means that we care about reductionism, and believe in the in-principal
You have not put forward a reductive explanation of consciousness, because there is no physical reason that every existing thing should just be conscious.
What is hard about the hard problem is the requirement to explain consciousness, particularly conscious experience, in terms of a physical ontology. Its the combination of the two that makes it hard. Which is to say that the problem can be sidestepped by either denying consciousness, or adopting a non-physicalist ontology.
Examples of non-physical ontologies include dualism, panpsychism and idealism . These are not faced with the Hard Problem, as such, because they are able to say that subjective, qualia, just are what they are, without facing any need to offer a reductive explanation of them. But they have problems of their own, mainly that physicalism is so successful in other areas.
It seems that “existence is consciousness” is doing all the lifting here. If we weren’t software programs, we would still exist and be conscious.
Yes, talk about software is mostly irrelevant.
You have not put forward a reductive explanation of consciousness, because there is no physical reason that every existing thing should just be conscious.
Сonsciousness is reduced to existence by equivalence. And existence is a part of physical ontology. That’s how all reductions work—there is no “physical reason” that sound is a moving air—it’s just that we had one model and now we have a better one.
No, reductive explanations have to show the properties of the level phenomenon vary in a detailed way with the details of reduction base. A reductive explanation of consciousness would result in being able to to predict qualia from neural activity.
Reductive explanations result in identifications, but not all identifications are reductive explanations.
The level of detail depends on the phenomenon and in the case of hard-problem-consciousness there just not much detail on the physical side. So the only requirement is correctness, not the level of detail.
Predicting specific qualia is mostly separate problem, but… it was never in doubt that qualia are predictable? You don’t even need neural activity—you can just predict that you will see the sky if you look at the sky. Developing high-level model of qualia recognized by humans may be interesting, but it’s not the hard problem—once you figured that consciousness is existence, it’s not mysterious or conceptually difficult to predict qualia because you can reuse physicalist framework you used to predict all other things.
But the human brain is often cited a the most complex thing in the known universe.
That’s why it’s unsurprising that the solution doesn’t involve brain much.
I see no reason to suppose that.
The reason I was thinking of is the difference in naturallness of the phenomenon when translated into physical ontology. If your question is “what’s light?” you can point to the electromagnetic field term. If you want to predict the exact picture on your screen from first principles, you’ll need the electromagnetic field but also additional unrealistic amount of work. Yes, reductionist explanation should provide reasons why it’s compatible with non-reduced phenomenon. But that’s done—it solves conceivability argument by substituting “existence” for “consciousness”, it explains why apparent unity of experience is not precisely true, it provides explanations for why we can extrapolate/isolate solution in many concrete example problems. And you didn’t specify any concrete aspects of consciousness that you think are not derivable from physical description given consciousness=existence. Like, what step of justification you’re unconvinced by? The only reason for prediction from neural activity to matter is if you think physicalism does not work for physics. But that is even not how it works in the zombie world.
It seems that “existence is consciousness” is doing all the lifting here. If we weren’t software programs, we would still exist and be conscious.
And I am not clear about what motivates the idea that we are software. Software/Code doesn’t really have an ontological existence separate from matter/hardware, it’s more of a stance or abstraction. With the hard problem clear, there are still some fundamental premises that need to be established. These could be argued at length, but are justified here only briefly:
You have not put forward a reductive explanation of consciousness, because there is no physical reason that every existing thing should just be conscious.
What is hard about the hard problem is the requirement to explain consciousness, particularly conscious experience, in terms of a physical ontology. Its the combination of the two that makes it hard. Which is to say that the problem can be sidestepped by either denying consciousness, or adopting a non-physicalist ontology.
Examples of non-physical ontologies include dualism, panpsychism and idealism . These are not faced with the Hard Problem, as such, because they are able to say that subjective, qualia, just are what they are, without facing any need to offer a reductive explanation of them. But they have problems of their own, mainly that physicalism is so successful in other areas.
Yes, talk about software is mostly irrelevant.
Сonsciousness is reduced to existence by equivalence. And existence is a part of physical ontology. That’s how all reductions work—there is no “physical reason” that sound is a moving air—it’s just that we had one model and now we have a better one.
No, reductive explanations have to show the properties of the level phenomenon vary in a detailed way with the details of reduction base. A reductive explanation of consciousness would result in being able to to predict qualia from neural activity.
Reductive explanations result in identifications, but not all identifications are reductive explanations.
The level of detail depends on the phenomenon and in the case of hard-problem-consciousness there just not much detail on the physical side. So the only requirement is correctness, not the level of detail.
Predicting specific qualia is mostly separate problem, but… it was never in doubt that qualia are predictable? You don’t even need neural activity—you can just predict that you will see the sky if you look at the sky. Developing high-level model of qualia recognized by humans may be interesting, but it’s not the hard problem—once you figured that consciousness is existence, it’s not mysterious or conceptually difficult to predict qualia because you can reuse physicalist framework you used to predict all other things.
I see no reason to suppose that.
But the human brain is often cited a the most complex thing in the known universe.
That’s why it’s unsurprising that the solution doesn’t involve brain much.
The reason I was thinking of is the difference in naturallness of the phenomenon when translated into physical ontology. If your question is “what’s light?” you can point to the electromagnetic field term. If you want to predict the exact picture on your screen from first principles, you’ll need the electromagnetic field but also additional unrealistic amount of work. Yes, reductionist explanation should provide reasons why it’s compatible with non-reduced phenomenon. But that’s done—it solves conceivability argument by substituting “existence” for “consciousness”, it explains why apparent unity of experience is not precisely true, it provides explanations for why we can extrapolate/isolate solution in many concrete example problems. And you didn’t specify any concrete aspects of consciousness that you think are not derivable from physical description given consciousness=existence. Like, what step of justification you’re unconvinced by? The only reason for prediction from neural activity to matter is if you think physicalism does not work for physics. But that is even not how it works in the zombie world.
Huh?
I mentioned the hard problem , which is literally defined in terms.of qualia.