[ExI] What is Consciousness?

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Mon, Apr 3, 2023 at 10:29 AM Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>> ### Oh, not ignoring. Nobody knows why signal processing through these
>> differing parts of the neural network feels as it feels, rather than
>> feeling as something else. This is the hard problem of consciousness.
>> Nobody has even the rudiments of the knowledge of ontology that is
>> presumably needed to solve this problem.
>>
>> Since the problem is way beyond my (or anybody else's) capabilities, I
>> defer further analysis until and if new pertinent information is available.
>> I would advise all people to do the same.
>>
>
> We're working to build and track consensus around a message to the world
> that says there IS no hard problem, it is just a color quality problem.
>

### Most definitely there is a hard problem at the core of ontology. Or
rather I should say, ontology as a branch of philosophy is a morass of
unanswered and perhaps unanswerable questions that steadfastly refuse to
yield to the progress of mere natural science. What does it mean to exist?
Why does our existence feel in the way it feels? What is this "physics"
that people talk about? Do you really understand the words "material" and
"immaterial"?

We can determine which particular structures and processes in the world
seem to be associated with conscious experience, in excruciating detail but
all that does not shed light on why things feel like they feel to us,
whether you are talking about the experience of color, or sound, or emotion.

Of course there is a hard problem of consciousness, right there at the core
of ontology.

Science succeeds. The mystery endures.

Rafal
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