I don't even understand how Adam's act of eating from the tree of good and evil was evil if he didn't know what evil even was until he ate the apple. — Hanover

It was gaining that knowledge which was the problem. They were then kicked out before they could eat form the tree of life and live forever like the gods.

In the Book of Enoch, 200 angels sin by having sex with human women and then teaching them and other men about secret knowledge from the heavens, such as metallurgy, what sort of roots to eat and so on. That and their kids were giants who ate up all the food and started eating humans. So then El decided to send a flood.

It's a Pandora's Box tale. Christians changed the meaning to be about original sin, the devil and rebellion.

I believe David Chalmers wrote a book related to that called Constructing the World. He focuses on the idea of scrutability where you start off with a few basic assumptions and build up your metaphysics.

Yeah, physicalism isn't the same thing as materialism. — Pfhorrest

But physicalism is understood in the realist sense of materialism. There is some kind of mind-independent stuff making up the world.

then phenomenal experience is just the input into our function of signals from other functions of that structure, which in turn have their own inputs that constitute their own phenomenal experiences, and outputs that constitute their behaviors, which constitute all of their observable, empirical, physical properties. To do is to be perceived, to perceive is to be done unto, and to do or perceive or be perceived or be done unto is to be. — Pfhorrest

I don't see where the functional turns into the phenomenal. You have every bit as much a hard problem with functionalism as you do with materialism.

MUH is not incompatible with physicalism (it just reframes what physical things are), — Pfhorrest

It's certainly incompatible with materialism. A mathematical ontology isn't compatible with there being stuff, so I don't see how it's physical. But I guess if we're allowed to redefine the meaning of "physical" to be whatever is consistent with physical models.

Some, like Dennett, just don't accord "phenomenal consciousness" the kind of autonomous metaphysical status that philosophers like Searle, Nagel and Chalmers think it ought to have. — SophistiCat

Dennett argues against phenomenal consciousness in all his talks and writings, because he's knows well it can't be squared with physicalism. On this, he and Chalmers do agree. For Dennett we're conscious in the functional sense, which can cause a cognitive illusion that we experience more than that.

Is this your position or your proposed reading of theirs? — bongo fury

Neither. It's a response to the idea of pictures in the head.

So you're a panpsychist informationist. Materialism is wrong, it's information.

I misunderstood your point based on previous discussions about all human activity being natural.

Oh, I get it. You come to expose the illusionists, not to praise? — bongo fury

I came to do what I stated in the OP.

Your overly long analysis simply ignores the fact that economies are part of the natural ecology of the Earth. — Janus

I don't think this is meaningful. Environmentalists, biologists, ecologists and economists would not agree. You're just saying that everything on Earth is part of nature. Sure, but that doesn't add anything when it comes to discussing pollution, climate change and the impact humans have.

If humans weren't here, there would be no plastic, no concrete jungles, no monetary systems. The fossilized plant material would remain in the ground. And the climate would be different.

There is no hard problem for a monist. — Harry Hindu

Provided you can give an adequate description for consciousness AND he world.

I agree that idealism doesn't have this problem.

A picture in the head? — bongo fury

A homunculi watching moving pictures in its head. In. color, with sound.

Wait, I thought we needed many people to tell us what an object is, yet now you are asking what an object is without people. You're not being consistent. — Harry Hindu

Difference between epistemology and ontology. Hard problem raises the possibility that the ontology of the world is dualistic, but it also raises an epistemological question of whether we can know what the nature of consciousness is.

This is one aspect of the modern version of the problem of perception.

They even overlap providing fault-tolerant and reaffirming information about an object's location relative to the body — Harry Hindu

Yes, and those senses still don't tell us most of what an object is without serious investigation by many people.

So it seems to me that a very important part of the description of some object is it's location relative to the body. — Harry Hindu

Yes, but that's a relation. What is an object when we're not around to sense it?

Maybe the problem (illusion) is assuming some kind of dualism, like subjective/objective, physical/mental, direct/indirect, etc., — Harry Hindu

Qualia certainly makes dualism a possibility. But there's no getting around some sort of dualism, even if it's only epistemic. There's a difference between how we experience, think and talk about the world and the world itself. Unless you're an anti-realist.

What is an "experience"? What does it mean for an object (a brain) to have, or generate, an "experience"? — Harry Hindu

i feel like this ground has been covered already.

How is the brain different from the experience? — Harry Hindu

Are you asking whether idealism is the case?

It seems to me that if you claim that it is an illusion, then you know how to overcome the illusion and see things as they truly are. — Harry Hindu

First step would be understanding how the illusion is generated. Neuroscience would have to supply that.

As for seeing things as they really are, eyes only give you limited information from a certain perspective. You need other instruments to form a proper physical description.

What is it that is being misinterpreted, and what is it being misinterpreted as, — Harry Hindu

Our subjective experiences are being misinterpreted as something which is hard to reconcile with any sort of objective explanation.

If we see light and not objects, mirages and bent sticks in water is what you would expect one to experience. — Harry Hindu

Sure, but that doesn't work for the experience of color, because physically color is a label for the wavelength of photons based on our having experiences of color. The photons themselves are not colored. It wouldn't matter if they were, because it's electrons which get sent to the visual cortex, not photons. The brain has to turn that stimulus into an experience of color.

As some people like to say in response to direct realism, the green grass doesn't get into our heads. It's not like the color green (or it's shape) hops onto photons from their reflective surface, rides the photons into our eyes, then hops on electrons to ride into the brain for us to see it. Rather, we generate an experience of green grass from the information provided by our senses.

If we're having any kind of illusion at all, we are having *some* experience, regardless of how it relates to physical reality. And the having of experiences is the definition of consciousness. — Daz

Sure, but is that definition one that is incompatible with physical reality?

Only if they possess the cognitive mechanism that creates the illusion.

Why do you ask? — Janus

Just wondering if Trump is considered a more important matter than a pandemic.

You can always prove you are conscious to yourself because you are the one experiencing the phenomena you just can't prove it to other people/ give it third person accessibility — Forgottenticket

Only if your introspection is telling you that reliably.

Because it builds on "problem of other minds" Chalmers' argument is set up in a way that it can't be refuted. He even said as such to another neuroscientist. — Forgottenticket

One might consider this a flaw with the argument

Fwiw, don't bother with Dennett if you're interested in anything mind related. if you look at his earlier psychology work he denies dreams exist during sleep ignoring a lot of empirical evidence they do. — Forgottenticket

Yeah, the coming-to-seem-to-remember. It was wrong, and illusionism needs to be able to handle dreaming.

Any chance this thread gets half the attention that the Trump thread has gotten?

But zombies like soggy meat.

The point of the argument is that the appearance doesn't have the qualities which would cause a hard problem. It only seems like qualia, p-zombies, inverted spectrum and Mary the Color scientist are a thing.

I still don't know about the damned bat, though. But I think Ned Block's harder problem can be addressed if illusionism is the case. That's libertarianism for you.

What is an illusion? What is not an illusion? — A Seagull

An appearance of something which isn't there. And it's not limited to the visual. It could be any sensation or object.

it is odd, but what the illusionist is saying is there are no ineffable, intrinsic, private and immediately apprehended sensations. There is no redness of red. Instead, there is an appearance of something which seems to have those qualities.

I'm not sure illusionism entirely avoids the problem, but I thought it worth summarizing my understanding of their argument, because most people just dismiss it of hand.

In addition, it seems to me that all Illusionism does is shift the problem. Isn't the problem of creating illusins of qualia just as hard? — Echarmion

Nope, because an illusion of qualia does not present a fundamental conceptual problem That's what the illusionists think.

But we don't need a justification to ignore the hard problem. We can just concentrate on the easier problems regardless. It's not like the hard problems presents any barrier to physical research. — Echarmion

You don't need a justification to ignore any philosophical problem. You can just do it. Same with math, history, unsolved crimes, etc. But some people will continue to be interested in those puzzles and want to solve them. Even some scientists. Why does it matter at all? Because the hard problem potentially alters what we think about the world and ourselves. But again, you can ignore that if you want.

I would take the self to be part of the experience we miscategorize as phenomenal, and not something separate from that. But I'm not saying illusionism is necessarily right. Only that it's more sophisticated than has been given credit.

I have no idea what consciousness is. I only know it presents a confounding puzzle.

Our perceptual sensations are out there in the world if there are other minds. — Harry Hindu

"Out there in the world" is understood to be mind-independent. Naive realism assumes that objects have all the properties we perceive them to have, the way we perceive them. That has been shown to be wrong. The mind-independent world is not simply a reflection of our perceptions. Not unless you're a subjective idealist.

How can you even claim that science has provides answers if we don't get at the real states-of-affairs of the universe in some way. — Harry Hindu

Of course I'm assuming science is providing answers based on some correlation with the real world. But there is a long standing problem of perception. Which is why skepticism never completely goes away, and people come to different metaphysical conclusions about the nature of reality.

We've had 100+ page debates on this in the old forum before.

If the world isn't colored in, or sound or feel like we experience it, then how can you say that there are brains that produce qualia? It seems to me that minds produce brains - which is a 3-dimensional colored shape as we experience it. What is it really "out there" - brains or minds? How does a mind "fictionalize" other minds - as brains? — Harry Hindu

Inference to the best explanation, given the overwhelming data from studies, experiments and various medical cases we have now.

Science is not compatible with the world being colored in, full of sound, feels, etc. But this was known to an extent in ancient philosophy. Full-blown naive realism just cannot be the case. Now maybe a sophisticated version of direct realism can work, but not one that places our perceptual sensations out there in the world.

The self is is itself a useful fiction. Don't Buddhists consider it to be an illusion?

and a mirage would be an illusion within the "illusion" of consciousness, — Harry Hindu

I'm not sure whether this is a pro or con. Maybe the fact that we're subject to illusions and hallucinations suggests that the entire thing is illusiory. Why would genuine qualia be subject to illusion?

Maybe chill out while reading this:

https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/k0711/kf_articles/blob/master/Frankish_Illusionism%20as%20a%20theory%20of%20consciousness_eprint.pdf

https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/papers/illusionism.pdf

True, but it's also being used as a metaphor. Illusionists aren't saying there's literally a computer-like graphical display in the brain. Also because vision is just one of the senses, and we should be mindful not to base too much philosophical argument based on vision alone, as that can be misleading.

However, to your point, I do wonder about dreams and day dreams, which very much seem like a theater or movie playing in the head. It's weird to me how the hard problem is super-focused on perception, when I think the hardest part is the non-perceptual experiences, because those aren't originating from outside. A dream is almost entirely a product of the brain (setting aside occasional external stimulus making their way into the dream). And that presents a problem.

And what are the implications, other than that the hard problem doesn't exist? — Echarmion

That's the point of the debate. If there's no hard problem, then it's just a matter of the easier problems amenable to neuroscience and psychology. Easier as in they don't cause a metaphysical or epistemological issue.

But sensory modalities are a thing, and bat's utilize sonar which we don't, so they may have a kind of experience, or at least an illusion that we don't.

"What it's like" is just a way of saying that.

That's the problem... — creativesoul

The what it's like is the illusion that we have qualia. So we are having an experience that seems to be what it's like in the sense of the hard problem. It's a powerful illusion.

I admit this isn't entirely convincing. The crux of the argument is whether one can present this in a way where the illusion isn't itself phenomenal.

But what it is doing is attacking the notion that we can just take our introspective judgement of consciousness at face value. What if we're wrong?

That strikes me as a we bit circular. The hard problem is the reason we are even considering the approach. — Echarmion

Yes, but this is a rejection of the hard problem, while explaining why we mistakenly think there is one.

But since, in that scenario, we are the computer desktop, it seems entirely irrelevant (much like the simulation hypothesis, incidentally). — Echarmion

Yes, the brain is presenting an "interface" to itself. Some people have suggested this is for an greater ability to reflect instead of just automatic responses.

How does the brain introspect, and when a brain introspects, why doesn't it experience an arrangement of excited neurons rather than the qualia of colors, shapes, sounds, etc.,? — Harry Hindu

Why would the brain produce a qualia of colors, shapes, sounds, etc.? Qualia aren't compatible with neuroscience. That's why it's called the hard problem.

For something to be useful, it has to have some sort of connection with real states of affairs in the environment. — Harry Hindu

Yes, but I take it this position is assuming indirect realism. It's certainly assuming that science has shown that the world is not colored in, doesn't sound or taste or feel like we experience it.

I don't understand how a "fiction" is useful for anything but entertainment, — Harry Hindu

A fiction would be useful for hiding the overwhelming complexity an organism is dealing with. But you raise some good question I don't know enough to answer.

What's the difference between experiencing the illusion of qualia and experiencing qualia themselves? — Echarmion

One leads to a hard problem and one doesn't.

What difference does it make in any practical capacity? — Echarmion

An analogy used is that the illusion is like a computer desktop, which is a useful abstraction for users, while the underlying computer system is quite different from the visual interface.