Hard Problem of Consciousness

Consciousness (as in: a subjective EXPERIENCE) is IMHO in the same category as "why there is something rather than nothing?".That is, it falls back to the anthropic principle. If we didn't exist, we wouldn't even be able to consider this question. Or in other words: it is hard to formulate the opposite.I can be wrong, of course. For long decades scientists considered the hidden variable theory of quantum mechanics ("God does not play dice" - as summarised by E

That's because consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, not part of fundamental physics. Every atom in your brain behaves according to the laws of particle physics, and somehow consciousness emerges out of that. Our theories of neuroscience aren't developed enough to explain it yet, but there isn't any reason to believe that there is something magical or non-physical going on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness> As the laws of physics do not seem to stop at the borders of a skullThere doesn't need to be a magic dust for consciousness, it could still be a primitive compatible with existing physics. See what Roger Penrose worked on.

Until there is a better hypothesis I'm applying Occam's razor. Nothing "unmaterial" has ever been found in brains. There are 0 indications that consciousness needs more than matter (or I should say, more than our our laws of Physics can describe currently).Believing that something special is required, sort of stops the reasoning about this topic, as that something is very vague. Or do you have some hypotheses with some experiments you can suggest?

Your answers all suggest you think consciousness is computational. If we could simulate the complex computations of the brain there’s nothing else there. I’m of the opinion that consciousness is not computational but a fundamental property of the universe that we can’t explain with current physics. I believe this because I can’t adequately explain what I experience otherwise.

Are you claiming there is a non-physical source of human consciousness?

This line of thinking begs the question of whether consciousness is some special thing in nature. You only have to look for an explanation if you think there is something to explain.If I start from the assumption that I am mistaken about what I think consciousness is--that maybe it doesn't exist at all the way I think it does--then I don't have to worry about how matter gives rise to it. I can focus instead on trying to understand where my definition went wrong.Humans have never

That's a weak argument. The reason some of us don't believe that consciousness is something else than the state of a brain following physical processes is that the latter is a much simpler theory and matches every objective observation we can make.If you try to explain consciousness as just the state of a physical brain, all the observations agree with you. The brain is known to be capable of computing. There are known regions inside it that activate when the subject feels certain e

> It's impossible to explore consciousness with empirical methods, because we have no mechanism to observe it other than our own brains.Only if you assume the conclusion in thinking consciousness is magic by making first-person subjective experience some irreducible fact of reality.Your exact same argument would apply to "living matter" too. What distinguishes living matter from non-living matter? Some philosophers made a big stink about how living matter cannot be create

What if consciousness is fundamental instead of emergent?