/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19263064]

What book will help me understand the hard problem of consciousness?

[Anonymous No.19263068]

Consciousness evolved because we required awareness to survive.

It's material, hate to break it to you.

[Anonymous No.19263069]

>>19263064
This comic is smug and pseud as hell.

[Anonymous No.19263085]

>>19263068
>Consciousness evolved because we required awareness to survive
Do you have scientific proof of this or is it just a 'theory'?

[Anonymous No.19263088]

>>19263064

I enjoy that my post has prompted two other people to take up the issue. I'm not this guy >>19263068 btw

[Anonymous No.19263103]

>>19263085
Read a biology textbook

[Anonymous No.19263162]

>>19263069
filtered

>>19263103
>a biology textbook
okay, which one? Have you actually read any biology outside of what was required for your high school science class?

[Anonymous No.19263167]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PX1RuXU4_o

[Anonymous No.19263174]

>>19263167
"InspiringPhilosphy"

I don't know if I trust this

[Anonymous No.19263268]

>>19263068
The hard problem focuses on subjectivity, subjectivity is irrelevant for survival.

[Anonymous No.19263296]

>>19263068
Why, from the evolution standpoint, would we need awareness when animals can do just fine with instinct?

[Anonymous No.19263317]

>>19263296
Other people. We probably developed theories of mind for other people first to better anticipate their behavior and it was a short jump to apply that same theory to ourselves. Also the ability to lie about your motivations depends on knowing what your motivations are.

[Anonymous No.19264207]

Any book by David Chalmers. He's the leading expert on the philosophy of consciousness and describes a classification of all possible theories of consciousness.

[Anonymous No.19264220]

>>19263068
the hard problem is concerned with what qualia is and how it is possible in the first place. evolution itself doesnt answer this
>>19263296
>>19263317
"awareness" in this sense doesnt refer to the 1st person experience of the hard problem

[Anonymous No.19264337]

>>19263068
>>19263296
Do you routinely post about topics you have no knowledge of?

[Anonymous No.19264344]

>>19263085
Do you have any scientific proof that the soul exists or is it just a Jewish hippy that told you so?

[Anonymous No.19264355]

>>19263296
What benefit is it to animals to have no "instinct"? To not be aware of their surroundings to prevent their death, which would help ensure their survival -- the basic drive of biology?

[Anonymous No.19264384]

>>19263103
Do biology textbooks have evidence of consciousness emerging from non-consciousness? Because if it isnt reproducible it isnt real.

[Anonymous No.19264434]

>>19263064
Capacity for suffering make one's conscious. Take a deep look at sick stray dog on the street, after observing his pain for few minutes he will start resembling humans.

[BigFemaleSmallMale !!+L0aIjRAFci No.19264457]

>>19263103
You have no understanding of biology buddy.

[Anonymous No.19264539]

>>19264457
It's reasonable to believe consciousness evolved, right?

[Anonymous No.19264548]

>>19264384
It's reproducable, you just cannot measure it so no hard proof, but trust me it's there

[Anonymous No.19264607]

>>19264548
I don't know if you understand evolutionary biology, anon.

[Anonymous No.19264673]

>>19264548
>>19264607
Technically nothing in evolutionary biology is reproducible. It's just an elaborate guess about the past. You cannot reproduce the evolution of dinosaurs in a lab.

[Deep&Edgy !pSkjEcB9sQ No.19264716]

One of Oswald Hanfling's books

[Anonymous No.19264858]

>>19263064
You don't need a book to understand the hard problem of consciousness, because the problem itself is rather simple: How is it possible that the experience of consciousness can arise out of seemingly non-conscious matter? Why do we have experience at all, and don't just run on autopilot like a machine without having any qualia/phenomenal experiences?
Now if you're looking for a definitive answer, the bad news is that there isn't one... but there are several approaches one can take to consciousness and what it might be. None of these truly answer the problem in a satisfactory way—some even circumvent the question alltogether—but as long as we don't have definitive proof, metaphysical speculation is as good as it's gonna get.

The first is the physicalist approach: consciousness is just an emergent phenomenon that naturally arises when matter is arranged in such a way that it can do computation, such as our brain. There's nothing mystical about it, and in fact it's really nothing more than a "trick" played on us by our brain. Read "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel Dennett.

The second is the panpsychist approach: consciousness can arise out of matter, because matter itself has within it the fundamentals of consciousness, as it's actually one of the fundamental properties of the universe. Of course, a single particle, a rock or an amoeba does not have "consciousness" in the sense that it thinks and feels the way we do, but a sufficiently complex arrangement such as a human being can indeed have self awareness. Read "Process and Reality" by Alfred North Whitehead. Alternatively, as a quick introduction, you can read "Process-relational Philosophy" by C. Robert Mesle, because Whitehead is dense and difficult while Mesle can be read by anyone.

Finally, there's the idealist approach: there is no hard problem, because there is only mind. The material world is an illusion that resides within mind, so to ask how consciousness can arise out of matter is to turn things upside down. It doesn't emerge from matter; matter emerges from it. There are various ways of conceptualizing this, and it has been a popular idea for literally thousands of years so there's a shitload of literature on various interpretations of idealism. I would recommend "The World as Will and Representation" by Schopenhauer but it's like a billion pages long. I like Bernardo Kastrup as a simpler alternative... he makes solid arguments, but his books are also concise and easy to read. Try "The Idea of the World".

[Anonymous No.19265190]

>>19264539
Sure, but no biology textbook is going to explain how the rudimentary biological structures out of which we eventually evolved went from being not conscious to being conscious. In fact, biology textbooks generally don't even mention consciousness at all, unless it's specifically about neurology. Even then, all you will find are correlations between activity in certain areas of the brain and particular mental states, which at best answer the so called "easy problems of consciousness".

[Anonymous No.19265211]

>>19264858
Is materialism really challenged here? I already swallowed the materialism blackpill when I could accept these other two and have some kind of hope?

[Anonymous No.19265239]

>>19265211
It's still a shame that we're conscious at all.

[Anonymous No.19265240]

>>19264858
nice post, saved

[Anonymous No.19265272]

>>19264858
Quality post

[Anonymous No.19265310]

Look up professor Bernardo Kastrup

[Anonymous No.19265346]

>>19263064
Touching grass and going outside.

[Anonymous No.19265377]

Julian Jaynes' book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

[Anonymous No.19265391]

>>19265211
If you want to read something that really challenges materialism, try "Why Materialism is Baloney" by Bernardo Kastrup. I mean, the title speaks for itself. Kastrup has a background in computer science, working in prestigious places like CERN before turning to metaphysics. Having such a scientific background helps his case IMO, because the success of science is what lent materialism credulity in the first place.

It will probably come as no surprise that I lean towards idealism myself, and I'll give you a quick thought of my own on materialism. I think the core assumption of materialism arises from a conflation between science and metaphysics: it's undeniable that the scientific method has enabled us to describe the natural world in great detail, but it doesn't actually tell us what reality is. We can describe everything we see in terms of particles, forces, etc. but that description is a notional model of reality. Materialism is the confusion between the model, and the thing which it models.

Personally, the book that influenced me the most is "Saving the Appearances" by Owen Barfield. He explicitly claims that his book is not about metaphysics... and it's not (it's about the "evolution of consciousness" in a phenomenological sense) but it still ends up challenging materialism by putting some of its core tenets into question. Barfield is a highly underrated thinker IMO.

[Anonymous No.19265733]

>>19263174
It's a bunch of wishy-washy new-age rhetoric, that upon closer inspection actually turns out to be a call to embrace Christ. Highly recommended.

[Anonymous No.19265856]

>>19263064
Husserl, specifically the LI, to understand how the Problem doesn't exist and is simply a confusion of terms.

[Anonymous No.19266005]

>>19265856
>the Problem doesn't exist and is simply a confusion of terms
quick rundown?

[Anonymous No.19266015]

>>19264548
>Source: trust me bro
lol

[Anonymous No.19266020]

>>19264673
>You cannot reproduce the evolution of dinosaurs in a lab.
...yet

[Anonymous No.19267033]

>>19264548
>It's reproducable, you just cannot measure it

[Anonymous No.19267070]

>>19263064
The Hard Problems is god-of-the-gaps for making subjectivity special.

[Anonymous No.19267094]

>>19267070
>god-of-the-gaps
is pseud garbage
you think pagans care if they learn the science of lightning?

[Anonymous No.19267131]

>>19264858
+1 for Kastrup suggestion, however I don’t like your panpsychist approach explanation. The best way to approach panpsychism (imo & tho i came up with this approach) is to ask, how many neurons can you remove from the human brain before you no longer have an experiencing subject? What is the “minimum brain” structure, so to speak? Five neurons, ten, a million, ten million? The panpsychist suspects that you never truly remove experience until you get to the last couple neurons, that experience exists in some form wherever you have a system of material stuff, and that experience is actually everywhere, not just in your closed individual brain but between brains as well, although you are not the whole of that super-organism, and electricity or neurotransmitters may not be its primary way to communicate, you are only you, so you only experience your little narrow view, while you also may be a part of larger subjective experiences that likely are nothing like you could imagine, momentary fragments of experiences, sort of fractionary Boltzmann brains

[Anonymous No.19267149]

>>19267094
Pagan here.
You tell me why bolt man cursed my land many times this year.

[Anonymous No.19267166]

>>19267070
This does not make any sense. Paint me one picture of a reality, any reality, doesn’t matter if it’s feasible, where configurations of matter can give rise to the subjective experience of color

[Anonymous No.19267185]

>>19267149
nah, you have to listen closely while reflecting next storm or something

[Anonymous No.19267193]

>>19267166
>Paint me one picture of a reality
Okay, let me reach into by bag of ontological possibility and pull out a reality.

I don't know why we have states and reflexive whatnots. It could be that its some special mechanism (panpsych, IIT, whatev), but the point was we're hiding the significance of consciousness in the last possible place; The very notion of self that can't be probed and is so vague its hard to explain to people.

I know there's a hard problem, for now anyway.

[Anonymous No.19267200]

>>19264355
he didn't say that it wouldn't be beneficial to have instincts, you fucking retard
did you even read his post?
>when animals can do just fine with instinct

[Anonymous No.19267293]

>>19263317
>>19263068
bitch a crow will anticipate behavior
none of this requires that shit I have

[Anonymous No.19267302]

>>19267293
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/crows-consciousness-humans-primates-study-tubingen-university-germany-b717390.html
Crows appear to have type of consciousness only seen before in humans and primates, study finds

Matter of degree

[Anonymous No.19267650]

>>19263064
Read Louise Antony's paper The Mental and the Physical. More of a summary of various consciousness related arguments but definitely touches upon this subject and is great as an introduction.

[Anonymous No.19267707]

Is this book good?

[Anonymous No.19267749]

>>19267650
Is she a materialist?

[Anonymous No.19267783]

>>19267302
>sensory perception = consciousness

[Anonymous No.19267797]

>>19267783
Sensory perceptions are part of consciousness (and as such they are equally unobservable). The error is in inferring phenomenical experience for externsl behaviours. As far as we know crows have no phenomenical consciousness (or, as Chalmers says, they're lights are off)

[Anonymous No.19267821]

>>19263069

[Anonymous No.19267823]

>>19267797
>The error is in inferring phenomenical experience for externsl behaviours
How else are you going to tell? Telepathy?

[Anonymous No.19267825]

>>19267797
>Sensory perceptions are part of consciousness (and as such they are equally unobservable).
If sensory perceptions are unobservable, how would anyone ever be aware of them?

[Anonymous No.19267828]

>>19267707
Seconding this, its quite extensive and if its good it is probably worth checking out, so would like an opinion on it

[Anonymous No.19267830]

>>19267823
not that anon but
>How else are you going to tell?
is begging the question that there must be a way to tell. As it stands, there is no way. No amount of brain scanning is going to tell you whether or not something is having a phenomenal experience

[Anonymous No.19267841]

>>19267830
So you could just as easily say a crow has phenomenal experience. And that other people don't

[Anonymous No.19267844]

>>19267823
Or better yet: not at all. We don't know anything about what crows experience, or whether they experience anything at all. Flashing dim lights at them isn't going to solve that mystery.

[Anonymous No.19267854]

>>19267193
>Okay, let me reach into by bag of ontological possibility and pull out a reality.
I'm not asking you to be omniscient, I'm effectively trying to get you to realize (as I do) that there is no empirical evidence or wordplay is going to explain why qualia is a thing. The hard problem of consciousness is best explained via Mary's Red Room. It's not a "god of the gaps" and, as trite as that opinion is, I still don't know any serious thinkers that regard it this way, which to me is totally obvious, that is, because no amount of mathematical modelling et al is going to explain phenomenal qualities

[Anonymous No.19267856]

>>19267844
This just leads to p-zombies and solipsism. The kind of thing Turing was addressing with the Turing test.

[Anonymous No.19267868]

>>19267841
>So you could just as easily say a crow has phenomenal experience.
Why would I say that if I don't know it? But yes, I could just as easily say that nobody else but me has phenomenal experiences. There is no way for me to know at all, really, but I behave as if it is the case because I believe it is the case, but I don't know

[Anonymous No.19267871]

>>19267854
>no amount of mathematical modelling et al is going to explain phenomenal qualities
Blame the tool, doesn't mean these qualities are unknowable. It just means we don't know.

It seems like we can't know, on account of subjective experience being just that, but hey, strange shit happens. We perturb until we have an outline and whatnot.

[Anonymous No.19267889]

>>19267856
I have no reason to believe crows don't have a phenomenal experience, and in fact I'm almost sure they do... but there is no way to know what crows experience by measuring their brain activity.

[Anonymous No.19267888]

>>19267797
>Sensory perceptions are part of consciousness
Consciousness is partless, sensory perceptions are not consciousness because they are known by consciousness, they themselves lack any sentience and don't deserve to be called conscious or consciousness in any form or fashion.

When you are aware of the sensation of seeing a blue sky, that visual sensation of seeing blue is known by awareness, that visual sensation is completely insentient (unconscious), consciousness is the awareness which knows all the information conveyed by the senses, while being non-identical with those senses, being distinguished from them by its innate characteristic of knowing, by its lack of complexity and by its freedom from change and interruption.

Modern philosophy of mind and neuroscientists make a persistent error in calling non-conscious mental processes 'consciousness'.

[Anonymous No.19267891]

>>19267871
>Blame the tool, doesn't mean these qualities are unknowable. It just means we don't know.
Again, this is just Mary's Red Room. There is no tool to jam this guillotine between empiricism and qualia. Also, "god of the gaps" is also begging the question by assuming everything has an answer, that is, I can just as easily say "god of the gaps" to absolutely everything that is not known, but you're the one making that assumption here, that everything is knowable, not me.

[Anonymous No.19267908]

>>19267891
I said GOTG because its a hazy concept, and outside of the known neural correlates of consciousness, its ever shrinking territory.
The Hard Problem is getting cramped in there.

Therefore, its living in that poorly illuminated sliver.
Its getting more difficult to make a non-material argument.

[Anonymous No.19267909]

>>19267749
She calls herself a "non-reductive physicalist". While physicalism does not necessarily entail materialism, I'm pretty sure her stance in her other works is one of a materialist (I haven't read much of her other stuff unfortunately)

[Anonymous No.19267934]

>>19267908
>Its getting more difficult to make a non-material argument.
I don't think you can say this. It seems like you're implying here (although I see no evidence to believe this) that empirical progress has gotten us any closer to solving the hard problem of consciousness. I see this as an unfounded assumption.

But even that aside, I think you're putting a little too much of your pocket change into science. Our fundamental understanding of reality right now is a huge collection of interpretations because, similar to the hard problem, mathematical models do not seem to perfectly encode reality. As far as we know, there may only ever be interpretations. We already know there is a fundamental indeterminacy caked-in to the universe

[Anonymous No.19267957]

>>19267934
>Our fundamental understanding of reality right now is a huge collection of interpretations
I admit that, but the point is, if we ever get just an outline of what makes subjective things subjective, its going to be like 2% of a phenomona that will be explained largely through brain work.

I admit, its all cloudy now, but the role of memory and neurotransmitters makes that direction smell right, like its the bulk of this story.

That said, if the hard problem is solved in some metaphysical bonkers way, even if its a small dualist type influence, that'll be earth-shattering.

[Anonymous No.19268132]

>>19263068
If free will doesn't exist there is no reason why experience should occur. If everything we do is biologically automated then there is no room left for consciousness and we should be like robots or plants, which we assume are not conscious despite their biology.

[Anonymous No.19268167]

>>19264344
>claims soul is material
>doesnt provide evidence
gg reddit faggot

[Anonymous No.19268181]

>>19268132
Free will just means ‘free want’.
If you choose to want chocolate milkshake instead of your favourite that means you’ve chosen to want to not want vanilla milkshake.

However I’ll assume you’re making a semantically error. Agency is what you’re assuming is free.

[Anonymous No.19268207]

>>19267131
Fair enough... Of the three approaches I mentioned, panspychism is the one I understand the least and my own biases probably also play a part in my less than stellar summary. DESU my understanding of panpsychism comes from my attempts at reading Whitehead (which I found very difficult), Mesle (who is easy to read but superficial) and the youtuber Matthew Segall a.k.a. footnotes2plato a.k.a. ThouArtThat, a guy who is clearly very smart but he has his own biases.

[Anonymous No.19268745]

>>19265856
Marxist identity politics

[Anonymous No.19268755]

>>19268132
Everything happens from necessity is the determinist argument.

[Anonymous No.19268847]

>>19263068
Yeah but why stupid fag

[Anonymous No.19268857]

>>19263068
We don't acquire awareness to survive. Just look at literally any other animal on the planet

[Anonymous No.19269245]

>>19263064
New Self New World by Phil Sheperd will help, but its not a complete picture. He has a great approach tho

[Anonymous No.19269310]

>they believe they can understand consciousness without quantum theory

[Anonymous No.19269315]

>>19269310
Fuck off

[Anonymous No.19269322]

>>19269315
Why?

[Anonymous No.19269420]

>>19268207
im sure there's many versions of panpsychism but they generally seem painfully obscure unless they're outright stating that material reality is a clutter of circumscribed consciousnesses. I found a passage on the panpsychism wiki that basically states what I said
>The problem arises from the tension between the seemingly irreducible nature of consciousness and its ubiquity. If consciousness is ubiquitous, then every atom (or every bit, depending on the theory) has a minimal level of it. How then, as Keith Frankish puts it, do these "tiny consciousnesses combine" to create larger conscious experiences such as "the twinge of pain" he feels in his knee?[104]

>whitehead
who knows what the fuck that guy was thinking

[Anonymous No.19269428]

>>19269310
to be fair i remember him explaining his process on that book he tried to work out the problem and he basically admitted he had no idea what he was doing but had to finish it anyway. his goal was simply to ask the question and point to remotely possible answers

[Anonymous No.19269447]

>>19263103
There is not a single biology textbook that discusses this wtf?

[Anonymous No.19269452]

>>19265190
Wdym sure? You can’t even quantify consciousness I’m pretty sure. How can you confidently say consciousness evolved?