[ExI] There Is No ‘Hard Problem Of Consciousness’

[Brent Allsop]

On Sat, May 9, 2026 at 4:42 AM John Clark via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> *David Chalmers wanted to know why the brain’s behavior is accompanied by
> experience at all, but it seems to me that if Charles Darwin was right then
> there can be only one answer to that question, because consciousness is the
> inevitable byproduct of intelligence. That's because Natural Selection
> can't directly detect consciousness any better than we can detect it in
> other people, and nothing can select for something that it can't see. But
> Natural Selection CAN see intelligent behavior. *
>

We've probably had this discussion before, but I disagree that
consciousness is the inevitable byproduct of intelligence.  There are
clearly multiple ways to achieve intelligence.  abstract discrete logic
gates and running on physical phenomenal qualities being two very different
types.  If one is more efficient than the other, evolution will naturally
select for that.

Again, my prediction is that there are far more efficient ways to achieve
intelligence than using abstract, brute force, discrete logic  gates.

Just because something can see colored light better than you can, doesn't
mean its redness will be anything like yours.  You always seem to ignore
the fact that the word 'red' is nothing like a redness quality.  A redness
quality will never be the byproduct of an abstract word like red.






>
> *Chalmers also claimed that even after hypothetically accounting for our
> entire behavior, and for all our reports about our inner life, there would
> still be an explanatory gap between brain processes and experience; and I
> agree with Chalmers about that because any iterative sequence of "why"
> questions will either go on forever or terminate in a brute fact, such as
> consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed
> intelligently.  *
>
>
> *John K Clark*
>
>>
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