(Preface/note on usage: Even if you feel well acquainted with this topic, I would still urge you to read through the introductory sections, and to steel yourself for framings/phrasings that normally would trigger you to stop reading. This problem has remained unsolved for so long in part due to improper framings of the problem itself. Don’t interpret any lack of reference to traditional theories as ignorance; I address them near the end.)
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.
Interesting read, but I'm still a bit confused by your logic that a rock is conscious. Wouldn't it be more accurate (assuming your ec model) to say that the rock is not conscious because it does not have the internal model of the universe because it has no system to represent that model, update it to new stimuli, etc?
Also, by this logic, aren't all ai conscious already? Kinda a freaky interpretation.
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.
Interesting read, but I'm still a bit confused by your logic that a rock is conscious. Wouldn't it be more accurate (assuming your ec model) to say that the rock is not conscious because it does not have the internal model of the universe because it has no system to represent that model, update it to new stimuli, etc?
Also, by this logic, aren't all ai conscious already? Kinda a freaky interpretation.