How to Hornswoggle Chalmer's Hard Problem
in [Logic]
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From: Immortalist on 22 Jul 2010 20:43 Beginning with Thomas Nagel, various philosophers have proposed setting conscious experience apart from all other problems of the mind as "the most difficult problem." When critically examined, the basis for this proposal reveals itself to be unconvincing and counter- productive. Use of our current ignorance as a premise to determine what we can never discover is one common logical flaw. Use of "I- cannot-imagine" arguments is a related flaw. When not much is known about a domain of phenomena, our inability to imagine a mechanism is a rather uninteresting psychological fact about us, not an interesting metaphysical fact about the world. Rather than worrying too much about the meta-problem of whether or not consciousness is uniquely hard, I propose we get on with the task of seeing how far we get when we address neurobiologically the problems of mental phenomena. The Hornswoggle Problem. by Patricia Smith Churchland. http://www.wm-johnston.co.uk/philosophy/hornswoggle.htm To fill out the point, consider several telling examples from the history of science. Before the turn of the twentieth century, people thought that the problem of the precession of the perihelion of Mercury was essentially trivial. It was annoying, but ultimately, it would sort itself out as more data came in. With the advantage of hindsight, we can see that assessing this as an easy problem was quite wrong -- it took the Einsteinian revolution in physics to solve the problem of the precession of the perihelion of Mercury. By contrast, a really hard problem was thought to be the composition of the stars. How could a sample ever be obtained? With the advent of spectral analysis, that turned out to be a readily solvable problem. When heated, the elements turn out to have a kind of fingerprint, easily seen when light emitted from a source is passed through a prism... ....What is the point...? ...reinforce[s] the message of the argument from ignorance: from the vantage point of ignorance, it is often very difficult to tell which problem is harder, which will fall first, what problem will turn out to be more tractable than some other. Consequently our judgments about relative difficulty or ultimate tractability should be appropriately qualified and tentative....
From: Giga2 on 23 Jul 2010 05:06 On 23 July, 01:43, Immortalist <reanimater_2...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > Beginning with Thomas Nagel, various philosophers have proposed > setting conscious experience apart from all other problems of the mind > as "the most difficult problem." When critically examined, the basis > for this proposal reveals itself to be unconvincing and counter- > productive. Use of our current ignorance as a premise to determine > what we can never discover is one common logical flaw. Use of "I- > cannot-imagine" arguments is a related flaw. When not much is known > about a domain of phenomena, our inability to imagine a mechanism is a > rather uninteresting psychological fact about us, not an interesting > metaphysical fact about the world. Rather than worrying too much about > the meta-problem of whether or not consciousness is uniquely hard, I > propose we get on with the task of seeing how far we get when we > address neurobiologically the problems of mental phenomena. > > The Hornswoggle Problem. > by Patricia Smith Churchland.http://www.wm-johnston.co.uk/philosophy/hornswoggle.htm > > To fill out the point, consider several telling examples from the > history of science. Before the turn of the twentieth century, people > thought that the problem of the precession of the perihelion of > Mercury was essentially trivial. It was annoying, but ultimately, it > would sort itself out as more data came in. With the advantage of > hindsight, we can see that assessing this as an easy problem was quite > wrong -- it took the Einsteinian revolution in physics to solve the > problem of the precession of the perihelion of Mercury. By contrast, a > really hard problem was thought to be the composition of the stars. > How could a sample ever be obtained? With the advent of spectral > analysis, that turned out to be a readily solvable problem. When > heated, the elements turn out to have a kind of fingerprint, easily > seen when light emitted from a source is passed through a prism... > > ...What is the point...? ...reinforce[s] the message of the argument > from ignorance: from the vantage point of ignorance, it is often very > difficult to tell which problem is harder, which will fall first, what > problem will turn out to be more tractable than some other. > Consequently our judgments about relative difficulty or ultimate > tractability should be appropriately qualified and tentative.... Very true.
From: Neon on 23 Jul 2010 05:46 On Jul 23, 1:43 am, Immortalist <reanimater_2...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > Beginning with Thomas Nagel, various philosophers have proposed > setting conscious experience apart from all other problems of the mind > as "the most difficult problem." When critically examined, the basis > for this proposal reveals itself to be unconvincing and counter- > productive. Use of our current ignorance as a premise to determine > what we can never discover is one common logical flaw. Use of "I- > cannot-imagine" arguments is a related flaw. When not much is known > about a domain of phenomena, our inability to imagine a mechanism is a > rather uninteresting psychological fact about us, not an interesting > metaphysical fact about the world. Rather than worrying too much about > the meta-problem of whether or not consciousness is uniquely hard, I > propose we get on with the task of seeing how far we get when we > address neurobiologically the problems of mental phenomena. > > The Hornswoggle Problem. > by Patricia Smith Churchland.http://www.wm-johnston.co.uk/philosophy/hornswoggle.htm > > To fill out the point, consider several telling examples from the > history of science. Before the turn of the twentieth century, people > thought that the problem of the precession of the perihelion of > Mercury was essentially trivial. It was annoying, but ultimately, it > would sort itself out as more data came in. With the advantage of > hindsight, we can see that assessing this as an easy problem was quite > wrong -- it took the Einsteinian revolution in physics to solve the > problem of the precession of the perihelion of Mercury. By contrast, a > really hard problem was thought to be the composition of the stars. > How could a sample ever be obtained? With the advent of spectral > analysis, that turned out to be a readily solvable problem. When > heated, the elements turn out to have a kind of fingerprint, easily > seen when light emitted from a source is passed through a prism... > > ...What is the point...? ...reinforce[s] the message of the argument > from ignorance: from the vantage point of ignorance, it is often very > difficult to tell which problem is harder, which will fall first, what > problem will turn out to be more tractable than some other. > Consequently our judgments about relative difficulty or ultimate > tractability should be appropriately qualified and tentative.... How do we percieve ourselves in imaginary landscapes? I was looking at some very old illustrations from a newspaper, before photography was invented, so instances when some reported event occurred would have had to have been illustrated by some guy who only had the report to go by. Editors generally go thru news reports and most likely have given the text that needed illustrating to an artist. The more information you have the better the picture can be built up. Certain 'illusions' about area space, time, perspective run concurrently with developments in text, type and literacy, so some people won't even need perspective, just so long as events along a time scale are reported. The identity of the individuals in a scene, first, second and third person, groups and you the observer outside the picture..... like you were looking into a room from the realworld into a additional area space separated by invisible surface, have to be ajusted, as although we might identify with a first person and project our imaginary self into the place of the occupants of any imaginary scene, our true place is only as an outsider looking back into an imaginary constructions of someone elses minds
From: Zerkon on 23 Jul 2010 08:12 On Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:43:31 -0700, Immortalist wrote: > Beginning with Thomas Nagel, various philosophers have proposed setting > conscious experience apart from all other problems of the mind as "the > most difficult problem." When critically examined, the basis for this > proposal reveals itself to be unconvincing and counter- productive. Use > of our current ignorance as a premise to determine what we can never > discover is one common logical flaw. Use of "I- cannot-imagine" > arguments is a related flaw. When not much is known about a domain of > phenomena, our inability to imagine a mechanism is a rather > uninteresting psychological fact about us, not an interesting > metaphysical fact about the world. Rather than worrying too much about > the meta-problem of whether or not consciousness is uniquely hard, I > propose we get on with the task of seeing how far we get when we address > neurobiologically the problems of mental phenomena. There is no 'we' in neurobiology as there is in philosophy. Neurobiology is exclusive and under private ownership. It's methods, machinery, data and the processing of that data are all proprietary. It only reveals itself as the self interest of it's corporate state owners. Pretending a 'we' can address anything through neurobiology is the hard problem here. Science addresses and reveals nothing, scientists do. God is either dead or never was. Science should not be forced into becoming a stand in.
From: Daniel T. on 23 Jul 2010 23:17
Immortalist <reanimater_2000(a)yahoo.com> wrote: What is this "hard problem"? I'm not saying that the Chalmers' "hard problem" doesn't exist, rather I'm thinking that it is so poorly defined, we would never know if it was solved. The real hard problem, as I see it, is in defining what this "hard problem" actually entails. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580363,00.html |