Re: Consciousness is information?
Kelly Harmon wrote: I think your discussing the functional aspects of consciousness. AKA, the easy problems of consciousness. The question of how human behavior is produced. My question was what is the source of phenomenal consciousness. What is the absolute minimum requirement which must be met in order for conscious experience to exist? So my question isn't HOW human behavior is produced, but instead I'm asking why the mechanistic processes that produce human behavior are accompanied by subjective first person conscious experience. The hard problem. Qualia. I wasn't asking how is it that we do the things we do, or, how did this come about, but instead given that we do these things, why is there a subjective experience associated with doing them. Do you suppose that something could behave just as humans do yet not be conscious, i.e. could there be a philosophical zombie? So none of the things you reference are relevant to the question of whether a computer simulation of a human mind would be conscious in the same way as a real human mind. If a simulation would be, then what are the properties that those to two very dissimilar physical systems have in common that would explain this mutual experience of consciousness? The information processing? Brent On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 3:22 AM, Alberto G.Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: No. Consciousness is not information. It is an additional process that handles its own generated information. I you don´t recognize the driving mechanism towards order in the universe, you will be running on empty. This driving mechanism is natural selection. Things gets selected, replicated and selected again. In the case of humans, time ago the evolutionary psychologists and philosophers (Dennet etc) discovered the evolutionary nature of consciousness, that is double: For social animals, consciousness keeps an actualized image of how the others see ourselves. This ability is very important in order to plan future actions with/towards others members. A memory of past actions, favors and offenses are kept in memory for consciousness processing. This is a part of our moral sense, that is, our navigation device in the social environment. Additionally, by reflection on ourselves, the consciousness module can discover the motivations of others. The evolutionary steps for the emergence of consciousness are: 1) in order to optimize the outcome of collaboration, a social animal start to look the others as unique individuals, and memorize their own record of actions. 2) Because the others do 1, the animal develop a sense of itself and record how each one of the others see himself (this is adaptive because 1). 3) This primitive conscious module evolved in 2 starts to inspect first and lately, even take control of some action with a deep social load. 4) The conscious module attributes to an individual moral self every action triggered by the brain, even if it driven by low instincts, just because that´s is the way the others see himself as individual. That´s why we feel ourselves as unique individuals and with an indivisible Cartesian mind. The consciousness ability is fairly recent in evolutionary terms. This explain its inefficient and sequential nature. This and 3 explains why we feel anxiety in some social situations: the cognitive load is too much for the conscious module when he tries to take control of the situation when self image it at a stake. This also explain why when we travel we feel a kind of liberation: because the conscious module is made irrelevant outside our social circle, so our more efficient lower level modules take care of our actions --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Consciousness is information?
The hard problem may be unsolvable, but I think it would be much more unsolvable if we don´t fix the easy problem, isn´t? With a clear idea of the easy problem it is possible to infer something about the hard problem: For example, the latter is a product of the former, because we perceive things that have (or had) relevance in evolutionary terms. Second, the unitary nature of perception match well with the evolutionary explanation My inner self is a private reconstruction, for fitness purposes, of how others see me, as an unit of perception and purpose, not as a set of processors, motors and sensors, although, analytically, we are so. Third, the machinery of this constructed inner self sometimes take control (i.e. we feel ourselves capable of free will) whenever our acts would impact of the image that others may have of ourselves. If these conclusions are all in the easy lever, I think that we have solved a few of moral and perceptual problems that have puzzled philosophers and scientists for centuries. Relabeling them as easy problems the instant after an evolutionary explanation of them has been aired is preposterous. Therefore I think that I answer your question: it´s not only information; It´s about a certain kind of information and their own processor. The exact nature of this processor that permits qualia is not known; that’s true, and it´s good from my point of view, because, for one side, the unknown is stimulating and for the other, reductionist explanations for everything, like the mine above, are a bit frustrating. On May 16, 8:39 pm, Kelly Harmon harmon...@gmail.com wrote: I think your discussing the functional aspects of consciousness. AKA, the easy problems of consciousness. The question of how human behavior is produced. My question was what is the source of phenomenal consciousness. What is the absolute minimum requirement which must be met in order for conscious experience to exist? So my question isn't HOW human behavior is produced, but instead I'm asking why the mechanistic processes that produce human behavior are accompanied by subjective first person conscious experience. The hard problem. Qualia. I wasn't asking how is it that we do the things we do, or, how did this come about, but instead given that we do these things, why is there a subjective experience associated with doing them. So none of the things you reference are relevant to the question of whether a computer simulation of a human mind would be conscious in the same way as a real human mind. If a simulation would be, then what are the properties that those to two very dissimilar physical systems have in common that would explain this mutual experience of consciousness? On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 3:22 AM, Alberto G.Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: No. Consciousness is not information. It is an additional process that handles its own generated information. I you don´t recognize the driving mechanism towards order in the universe, you will be running on empty. This driving mechanism is natural selection. Things gets selected, replicated and selected again. In the case of humans, time ago the evolutionary psychologists and philosophers (Dennet etc) discovered the evolutionary nature of consciousness, that is double: For social animals, consciousness keeps an actualized image of how the others see ourselves. This ability is very important in order to plan future actions with/towards others members. A memory of past actions, favors and offenses are kept in memory for consciousness processing. This is a part of our moral sense, that is, our navigation device in the social environment. Additionally, by reflection on ourselves, the consciousness module can discover the motivations of others. The evolutionary steps for the emergence of consciousness are: 1) in order to optimize the outcome of collaboration, a social animal start to look the others as unique individuals, and memorize their own record of actions. 2) Because the others do 1, the animal develop a sense of itself and record how each one of the others see himself (this is adaptive because 1). 3) This primitive conscious module evolved in 2 starts to inspect first and lately, even take control of some action with a deep social load. 4) The conscious module attributes to an individual moral self every action triggered by the brain, even if it driven by low instincts, just because that´s is the way the others see himself as individual. That´s why we feel ourselves as unique individuals and with an indivisible Cartesian mind. The consciousness ability is fairly recent in evolutionary terms. This explain its inefficient and sequential nature. This and 3 explains why we feel anxiety in some social situations: the cognitive load is too much for the conscious module when he tries to take control of the situation when self image it at a stake. This also explain why when we
Re: Consciousness is information?
Let me please insert my remarks into this remarkable chain of thoughts below
(my inserts in bold)
John M
On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 2:03 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.comwrote:
Kelly Harmon wrote:
I think your discussing the functional aspects of consciousness. AKA,
the easy problems of consciousness. The question of how human
behavior is produced.
*I believe it is a 'forced artifact' to separate any aspect of a complex
image from the entire 'unit' we like to call 'conscious behavior'. In our
(analytical) view we regard the 'activity' as separate from the initiation
and the process resulting from it through decision(?) AND the assumed
maintaining of the function. *
My question was what is the source of phenomenal consciousness.
What is the absolute minimum requirement which must be met in order
for conscious experience to exist? So my question isn't HOW human
behavior is produced, but instead I'm asking why the mechanistic
processes that produce human behavior are accompanied by subjective
first person conscious experience. The hard problem. Qualia.
*We are 'human' concentrated and slanted in our views. *
*Extending it not only to other 'conscious' animals, but to phenomena in the
so (mis)called 'inanimate' - and reversing our logical habit (see below to
Brent) brings up different questions so far not much discussed. The 'hard
problem' is a separation in the totality of the phenomenon -*
*[from its physical/physiological observation within our so far
outlined figment of viewing the 'physical world' separately and its
reduced, conventional ('scientific') explanations] - *
* into assuming (some) undisclosed other aspects of the same complex. From
'quantized' into some 'qualia'. *
I wasn't asking how is it that we do the things we do, or, how did
this come about, but instead given that we do these things, why is
there a subjective experience associated with doing them.
*And we should exactly ask what you wasn't asking. *
**
Brent: Meeker:
Do you suppose that something could behave just as humans do yet not be
conscious, i.e. could there be a philosophical zombie?
*Once we consider the totality of the phenomenon and do not separate aspects
of th complexity, the zombie becomes a meaningless artifact of the
primitive ways our thinking evolved. *
Kelly:
So none of the things you reference are relevant to the question of
whether a computer simulation of a human mind would be conscious in
the same way as a real human mind. If a simulation would be, then
what are the properties that those to two very dissimilar physical
systems have in common that would explain this mutual experience of
consciousness?
*A fitting computer simulation would include ALL aspects involved - call it
mind AND body, 'physically' observable 'activity' and 'consciousness as
cause' -- but alas, no such thing so far. Our embryonic machine with its
binary algorithms, driven by a switched on (electrically induced) primitive
mechanism can do just that much, within the known segments designed 'in'. *
*What we may call 'qualia' is waiting for some analogue comp, working
simultaneously on all aspects of the phenomena involved (IMO not practical,
since there cannot be a limit drawn in the interrelated totality, beyond
which relations may be irrelevant). *
**
Brent:
The information processing?
*Does that mean a homunculus, that 'processes' the (again separated) aspect
of 'information' into a format that fits our image of the aspectwise
formulated items? *
*What I question is the 'initiation' and 'maintenance' of what we call the
occurrence of phenomena. We do imagine a 'functioning' world where
everything just does occur, observed by itself and in no connection to the
rest of the world. *
*I am looking for 'relations' that 'influence' each other into aspects we
consider as 'different' (from what?) and call such relational
interconnectedness the world. *
*We are far from knowing it all, even further from any 'true' understanding
so we fabricted in our epistemic enrichment over the millennia a stepwise
approach to 'explain' the miracles. *
*Learning of acknowledged(?) relational aspects (call it decisionmaking?)
and realization of ramifications upon such (call it process, function,
activity) is the basis of our (now still reductionistic) physical
worldview. *
*Please excuse my hasty writing in premature ideas I could not detail out or
even justify using inadequate old words that should be relaced by a fitting
vocabulry. ((Alberto (below) even mentions 'memory' - that could as well be
a re-visiting of relations in the a-temporal totality view we coordinate as
a time - space physics)). *
Brent
*John M*
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 3:22 AM, Alberto G.Corona agocor...@gmail.com
wrote:
No. Consciousness is not information. It is an additional process that
handles its own generated information. I you don´t recognize the
driving mechanism towards order in the
Re: Victor Korotkikh
I read in this exchange: I have a problem with infinite time (or something of such meaning). Since IMO time is an auxiliary coordinate to 'order the view from the inside of this (our) universe and in view of the partial knowledge we so far obtained about it, it is (our?) choice HOW we construct our concept of that 'time'. Reminds me of my son, who - at 5 - did not dare to fall asleep because of 'sorcerers' he learned about in the Kindergarten and was afraid that in dreamland they come up. So I said: you little stupid kid, why don't you choose a dreamland in which there are NO sorcerers? He looked at me OK and sweetly went to sleep. We can change our ID of time into a format in which there is no problem with its infinity. (Maybe not so easy, but who said 'everything' is easy?) In my 'narrative' about the world I have problems how to handle the timeless (a-temporal) world and its concepts. I cannot 'change' the no-time into another one. G John M (PS: also waiting for a 'readable' new version of UDA). JM On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 7:44 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Hi Ronald, On 15 May 2009, at 14:25, ronaldheld wrote: Bruno: I will wait for your most recent UDA to be posted here. All right. I have problems with infinite time and resources for your computations, if done in this physical Universe. Sure. Note that I use unbounded physical resources only in the step seven, to make the argument smoother, but the step 8 eliminates the need of that assumption. All you have to believe in is that a mathematical Turing machine either stop or not stop. Best, Bruno On May 14, 12:22 pm, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: Ronald, On 14 May 2009, at 13:19, Ronald (ronaldheld) wrote: Can you explain your Physics statement in more detail, which I can understand? UDA *is* the detailed explanation of that physics statement. So it would be simpler if you could tell me at which step you have a problem of understanding, or an objection, or something. You can search UDA in the archives for older or more recent versions, or read my SANE2004 paper: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/ SANE2004MARCHALAbstract... In a nutshell, the idea is the following. If we are machine we are duplicable. If we distinguish the first person by their personal memories, sufficiently introspective machine can deduce that they cannot predict with certainty they personal future in either self- duplicating experience, or in many-identical-states preparation like a concrete universal dovetailer would do all the time. So, if you are concretely in front of a concrete universal dovetailer, with the guaranty it will never stop (in some steady universe à-la Hoyle for example), you are in a high state of first person indeterminacy, given that the universal dovetailer will execute all the computations going through your actual state. Sometimes I have to remind the step 5 for helping the understanding here. In that state, from a first person perspective you don't know in which computational history you belong, but you can believe (as far as you are willing to believe in comp) that there are infinitely many of them. If you agree to identify an history by its infinite steps, or if you accept the Y = II principle (that if a story bifurcate, Y , you multiply their similar comp-past, so Y gives II), then you can understand that the cardinal (number) of your histories going through you actual state is 2^aleph_zero. It is a continuum. Of course you can first person distinguish only a enumerable quotient of it, and even just a finite part of that enumeration. Stable consciousness need deep stories (very long yet redundant stories, it is deep in Bennett sense) and a notion of linear multiplication of independent stories. Now the laws of arithmetic provides exactly this, and so you can, with OCCAM just jump to AUDA, but you have to study one or two book of mathematical logic and computer science before. (the best are Epstein Carnielli, or Boolos, Burgess and Jeffrey). Or, much easier, but not so easy, meditate on the eighth step of UDA, which shows that form their first point of view universal machine cannot distinguish real from virtual, but they cannot distinguish real from arithmetical either, so that the arithmetical realm defines the intrinsic first person indeterminacy of any universal machine. Actually the eighth step shows that comp falsifies the usual mind/physical-machine identity thesis, but it does not falsify a weaker mind/many-mathematical machines thesis. If interested I suggest you study UDA in Sane2004, and ask any questions, or find a flaw etc. (or wait for a more recent version I have yet to put on my page) Thanks for the reference to Kent's paper (it illustrates very well the knotty problems you get into when you keep Everett, materialism
Re: Consciousness is information?
On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 2:03 AM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Do you suppose that something could behave just as humans do yet not be conscious, i.e. could there be a philosophical zombie? I think that somewhere there would have to be a conscious experience associated with the production of the behavior, THOUGH the conscious experience might not supervene onto the system producing the behavior in an obvious way. Generally I don't think that what we experience is necessarily caused by physical systems. I think that sometimes physical systems assume configurations that shadow, or represent, our conscious experience. But they don't CAUSE our conscious experience. So a computer simulation of a human brain that thinks it's at the beach would be an example. The computer running the simulation assumes a sequence of configurations that could be interpreted as representing the mental processes of a person enjoying a day at the beach. But I can't see any reason why a bunch of electrons moving through copper and silicon in a particular way would cause that subjective experience of surf and sand. And for similar reasons I don't see why a human brain would either, even if it was actually at the beach, given that it is also just electrons and protons and neutrons.moving in specific ways. It doesn't seem plausible to me that it is the act of being represented in some way by a physical system that produces conscious experience. Though it DOES seem plausible/obvious to me that a physical system going through a sequence of these representations is what produces human behavior. The information processing? Well, I would say information processing, but it seems to me that many different processes could produce the same information. And I would not expect a change in process or algorithm to produce a different subjective experience if the information that was being processed/output remained the same. So for this reason I go with consciousness is information, not consciousness is information processing. Processes just describe ways that different information states CAN be connected, or related, or transformed. But I don't think that consciousness resides in those processes. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Consciousness is information?
On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 8:07 AM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: A fitting computer simulation would include ALL aspects involved - call it mind AND body, 'physically' observable 'activity' and 'consciousness as cause' -- but alas, no such thing so far. Our embryonic machine with its binary algorithms, driven by a switched on (electrically induced) primitive mechanism can do just that much, within the known segments designed 'in'. What we may call 'qualia' is waiting for some analogue comp, working simultaneously on all aspects of the phenomena involved (IMO not practical, since there cannot be a limit drawn in the interrelated totality, beyond which relations may be irrelevant). So you're saying that it's not possible, even in principle, to simulate a human brain on a digital computer? But that it would be possible on a massively parallel analog computer? What extra something do you think an analog computer provides that isn't available from a digital computer? Why would it be necessary to run all of the calculations in parallel? 'consciousness as cause' You are saying that consciousness has a causal role, that is additional to the causal structure found in non-conscious physical systems? What leads you to this conclusion? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Consciousness is information?
On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 12:32 AM, Jesse Mazer laserma...@hotmail.com wrote: I don't have a problem with the idea that a giant lookup table is just a sort of zombie, since after all the way you'd create a lookup table for a given algorithmic mind would be to run a huge series of actual simulations of that mind with all possible inputs, creating a huge archive of recordings so that later if anyone supplies the lookup table with a given input, the table just looks up the recording of the occasion in which the original simulated mind was supplied with that exact input in the past, and plays it back. Why should merely replaying a recording of something that happened to a simulated observer in the past contribute to the measure of that observer-moment? I don't believe that playing a videotape of me being happy or sad in the past will increase the measure of happy or sad observer-moments involving me, after all. And Olympia seems to be somewhat similar to a lookup table in that the only way to construct her would be to have already run the regular Turing machine program that she is supposed to emulate, so that you know in advance the order that the Turing machine's read/write head visits different cells, and then you can rearrange the positions of those cells so Olympia will visit them in the correct order just by going from one cell to the next in line over and over again. What if you used a lookup table for only a single neuron in a computer simulation of a brain? So actual calculations for the rest of the brain's neurons are performed, but this single neuron just does lookups into a table of pre-calculated outputs. Would consciousness still be produced in this case? What if you then re-ran the simulation with 10 neurons doing lookups, but calculations still being executed for the rest of the simulated brain? Still consciousness is produced? What if 10% of the neurons are implemented using lookup tables? 50%? 90%? How about all except 1 neuron is implemented via lookup tables, but that 1 neuron's outputs are still calculated from inputs? At what point does the simulation become a zombie? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Consciousness is information?
On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 9:13 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Generally I don't think that what we experience is necessarily caused by physical systems. I think that sometimes physical systems assume configurations that shadow, or represent, our conscious experience. But they don't CAUSE our conscious experience. So if we could track the functions of the brain at a fine enough scale, we'd see physical events that didn't have physical causes (ones that were caused by mental events?). No, no, no. I'm not saying that at all. Ultimately I'm saying that if there is a physical world, it's irrelevant to consciousness. Consciousness is information. Physical systems can be interpreted as representing, or storing, information, but that act of storage isn't what gives rise to conscious experience. You're aware of course that the same things were said about the physio/chemical bases of life. You mentioned that point before, as I recall. Dennett made a similar argument against Chalmers, to which Chalmers had what I thought was an effective response: --- http://consc.net/papers/moving.html Perhaps the most common strategy for a type-A materialist is to deflate the hard problem by using analogies to other domains, where talk of such a problem would be misguided. Thus Dennett imagines a vitalist arguing about the hard problem of life, or a neuroscientist arguing about the hard problem of perception. Similarly, Paul Churchland (1996) imagines a nineteenth century philosopher worrying about the hard problem of light, and Patricia Churchland brings up an analogy involving heat. In all these cases, we are to suppose, someone might once have thought that more needed explaining than structure and function; but in each case, science has proved them wrong. So perhaps the argument about consciousness is no better. This sort of argument cannot bear much weight, however. Pointing out that analogous arguments do not work in other domains is no news: the whole point of anti-reductionist arguments about consciousness is that there is a disanalogy between the problem of consciousness and problems in other domains. As for the claim that analogous arguments in such domains might once have been plausible, this strikes me as something of a convenient myth: in the other domains, it is more or less obvious that structure and function are what need explaining, at least once any experiential aspects are left aside, and one would be hard pressed to find a substantial body of people who ever argued otherwise. When it comes to the problem of life, for example, it is just obvious that what needs explaining is structure and function: How does a living system self-organize? How does it adapt to its environment? How does it reproduce? Even the vitalists recognized this central point: their driving question was always How could a mere physical system perform these complex functions?, not Why are these functions accompanied by life? It is no accident that Dennett's version of a vitalist is imaginary. There is no distinct hard problem of life, and there never was one, even for vitalists. In general, when faced with the challenge explain X, we need to ask: what are the phenomena in the vicinity of X that need explaining, and how might we explain them? In the case of life, what cries out for explanation are such phenomena as reproduction, adaptation, metabolism, self-sustenance, and so on: all complex functions. There is not even a plausible candidate for a further sort of property of life that needs explaining (leaving aside consciousness itself), and indeed there never was. In the case of consciousness, on the other hand, the manifest phenomena that need explaining are such things as discrimination, reportability, integration (the functions), and experience. So this analogy does not even get off the ground. -- Though it DOES seem plausible/obvious to me that a physical system going through a sequence of these representations is what produces human behavior. So you're saying that a sequence of physical representations is enough to produce behavior. Right, observed behavior. What I'm saying here is that it seems obvious to me that mechanistic computation is sufficient to explain observed human behavior. If that was the only thing that needed explaining, we'd be done. Mission accomplished. BUT...there's subjective experience that also needs explained, and this is actually the first question that needs answered. All other answers are suspect until subjective experience has been explained. And there must be conscious experience associated with behavior. Well, here's where it gets tricky. Conscious experience is associated with information. But how information is tied to physical systems is a different question. Any physical systems can be interpreted as representing all sorts of things (again, back to Putnam and Searle, one-time pads, Maudlin's Olympia example, Bruno's movie graph
Re: Consciousness is information?
Kelly Harmon wrote: On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 9:13 PM, Brent Meeker meeke...@dslextreme.com wrote: Generally I don't think that what we experience is necessarily caused by physical systems. I think that sometimes physical systems assume configurations that shadow, or represent, our conscious experience. But they don't CAUSE our conscious experience. So if we could track the functions of the brain at a fine enough scale, we'd see physical events that didn't have physical causes (ones that were caused by mental events?). No, no, no. I'm not saying that at all. Ultimately I'm saying that if there is a physical world, it's irrelevant to consciousness. Consciousness is information. Physical systems can be interpreted as representing, or storing, information, but that act of storage isn't what gives rise to conscious experience. You're aware of course that the same things were said about the physio/chemical bases of life. You mentioned that point before, as I recall. Dennett made a similar argument against Chalmers, to which Chalmers had what I thought was an effective response: --- http://consc.net/papers/moving.html Perhaps the most common strategy for a type-A materialist is to deflate the hard problem by using analogies to other domains, where talk of such a problem would be misguided. Thus Dennett imagines a vitalist arguing about the hard problem of life, or a neuroscientist arguing about the hard problem of perception. Similarly, Paul Churchland (1996) imagines a nineteenth century philosopher worrying about the hard problem of light, and Patricia Churchland brings up an analogy involving heat. In all these cases, we are to suppose, someone might once have thought that more needed explaining than structure and function; but in each case, science has proved them wrong. So perhaps the argument about consciousness is no better. This sort of argument cannot bear much weight, however. Pointing out that analogous arguments do not work in other domains is no news: the whole point of anti-reductionist arguments about consciousness is that there is a disanalogy between the problem of consciousness and problems in other domains. As for the claim that analogous arguments in such domains might once have been plausible, this strikes me as something of a convenient myth: in the other domains, it is more or less obvious that structure and function are what need explaining, at least once any experiential aspects are left aside, and one would be hard pressed to find a substantial body of people who ever argued otherwise. When it comes to the problem of life, for example, it is just obvious that what needs explaining is structure and function: How does a living system self-organize? How does it adapt to its environment? How does it reproduce? Even the vitalists recognized this central point: their driving question was always How could a mere physical system perform these complex functions?, not Why are these functions accompanied by life? It is no accident that Dennett's version of a vitalist is imaginary. There is no distinct hard problem of life, and there never was one, even for vitalists. In general, when faced with the challenge explain X, we need to ask: what are the phenomena in the vicinity of X that need explaining, and how might we explain them? In the case of life, what cries out for explanation are such phenomena as reproduction, adaptation, metabolism, self-sustenance, and so on: all complex functions. There is not even a plausible candidate for a further sort of property of life that needs explaining (leaving aside consciousness itself), and indeed there never was. In the case of consciousness, on the other hand, the manifest phenomena that need explaining are such things as discrimination, reportability, integration (the functions), and experience. So this analogy does not even get off the ground. -- On the contrary, I think it does. First, I think Chalmers idea that vitalists recognized that all that needed explaining was structure and function is revisionist history. They were looking for the animating spirit. It is in hind sight, having found the function and structure, that we've realized that was all the explanation available. And I expect the same thing will happen with consciousness. We will eventually be able to make robots that behave as humans do and we will infer, from their behavior, that they are conscious. And we, being their designers, will be able to analyze them and say, Here's what makes R2D2 have conscious experiences of visual perception and here's what makes 3CPO have self awareness relative to humans. We will find that there are many different kinds of conscious and we will be able to invent new ones. We will never solve Chalmers hard problem, we'll just realize it's a non-question. Though it DOES seem plausible/obvious to me that a physical
