(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.
The main weakness of this text seems to be that it does not address qualia (the nature of qualia and their "subjective texture").
Of course, this is the weakness shared by 99%+ of the "theories of consciousness".
99%+ of the "theory of consciousnes" only speak of whether something is or is not conscious. But that's not the most interesting question, the most interesting question is **how** does it feel to be that something, not whether it feels like anything at all.
The "hard problem of qualia" is the hard core of the hard problem of consciousness. For example, we understand why the space of colors is three-dimensional, but we don't understand why any particular color mixture has this particular subjective color for me. And we don't understand why a particular strange electronic sound feels this particular way for me, and so on...
Almost all attempts to solve the hard problem of consciousness ignore the "hard problem of qualia", and I think this is the reason why they don't generally seem to lead to much progress in our understanding.
If we understand qualia (quale is an element of subjective feeling which is felt by some entity, we want to understand what is the nature of those elements and what they are), we would probably be able to figure out the rest (why qualia tend to group into single consciousnesses, and so on).
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.
The main weakness of this text seems to be that it does not address qualia (the nature of qualia and their "subjective texture").
Of course, this is the weakness shared by 99%+ of the "theories of consciousness".
99%+ of the "theory of consciousnes" only speak of whether something is or is not conscious. But that's not the most interesting question, the most interesting question is **how** does it feel to be that something, not whether it feels like anything at all.
The "hard problem of qualia" is the hard core of the hard problem of consciousness. For example, we understand why the space of colors is three-dimensional, but we don't understand why any particular color mixture has this particular subjective color for me. And we don't understand why a particular strange electronic sound feels this particular way for me, and so on...
Almost all attempts to solve the hard problem of consciousness ignore the "hard problem of qualia", and I think this is the reason why they don't generally seem to lead to much progress in our understanding.
If we understand qualia (quale is an element of subjective feeling which is felt by some entity, we want to understand what is the nature of those elements and what they are), we would probably be able to figure out the rest (why qualia tend to group into single consciousnesses, and so on).
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.