I was using David Chalmer's terminology. The science, however advanced it
might become, is the "easy problem". Suppose alien scientists discover that
human consciousness is caused by angels that reside in tiny black holes inside
every neuron. They study these angels so closely that they come to understand
them as well as humans understand hammers or screwdrivers today: well enough
to build a human and predict his every response. Despite such detailed knowledge,
they might still have no idea that humans are conscious, or what it is like to be a
human, or how having one type of angel in your head feels different to having a
different type of angel. For that matter, we have no idea whether hammers and
screwdrivers have any kind of phenomenal consciousness. We assume that they do
not, but maybe they experience something which for us is utterly beyond imagination.
It's not a question science can ever answer, even in principle.
Stathis Papaioannou
> > The hard problem is not that we haven't discovered the physics that
> > explains
> > consciousness, it is that no such explanation is possible. Whatever
> > Physics X
> > is, it is still possible to ask, "Yes, but how can a blind man who
> > understands
> > Physics X use it to know what it is like to see?" As far as the hard
> > problem goes,
> > Physics X (if there is such a thing) is no more of an advance than knowing
> > which
> > neurons fire when a subject has an experience.
> >
> > Stathis Papaioannou
>
> I think you are mixing up modelling and explanation. It may be that 'being
> something' is the only way to describe it. Why is that invalid science?
> Especially when 'being something' is everything that enables science.
>
> Every oject in the universe has a first person story to tell. Not just us.
> Voicelessness is just an logistics issue.
>
> Colin
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Received on Tue Nov 28 2006 - 23:42:47 PST