Bloggingheads.tv recently aired a conversation between writer John Horgan, former senior science writer at Scientific American, and David Chalmers, philosopher and popularizer of the "hard problem" of consciousness. It is this: why do we all have unique, subjective experiences? Or reframed: "what is it like to be me?" The conversation covers a lot of territory. Still, it's pretty accessible, so I invite you to listen as well.
Here's my quick and dirty summary:
- Chalmers describes his appearance before the first ever Tucson conference in 1994, where he distinguished between the easy problems of consciousness and the hard problem. Horgan happened to be in attendance at this seminal meeting and explains why Chalmer's formulation of the issues has remained so popular. That along is worth the time to listen.
- Horgan reads a piece of writing from the 17 century states the problem. Chalmers says that consciousness, as a problem, didn't present itself until relatively recently. Greek philosophers didn't concern themselves with it, and, in fact, the Enlightenment was necessary for its formulation because it provided the necessary context or background against which the issue could be seen.
- Chalmers suggests that a purely physical theory won't fully explain a problem so intimately related to experience. This is a principled problem, an explanatory gap that calls for a new way of formulating the issues in order to arrive at possible answers. Chalmers cites James Maxwell
as an example of what he means. Maxwell couldn't explain
electro-magnetic dynamics using the language of his day. He had to
develop new methods for analyzing and describing the phenomenon to
arrive at his conclusions.
- Chalmers nominates the concept of information as something that might be applied to consciousness studies. Could it bridge the gap between physical reality and experience? Chalmers advances one definition of information that I haven't heard before: "It is the difference that makes a difference."
- Horgan in general agrees with that assessment, describing physicist John Wheeler as having an "imaginative, poetic mind," able to conceive of and describe black holes before science at large was ready to accept their reality.
- Issac Asimov has influenced Chalmer's thinking.
- The two also engage in a dialog about whether consciousness is a
scientific or philosophical question. Whereas a scientific theory of
consciousness would, in principle, be able to describe the dynamics
behind our subjective, interior life with a high degree of confidence,
philosophical approaches to the issue may not yield an answer that can
necessarily be relied on, according to Horgan. Chalmers suggests that
the problem is one of proof, by which I think he means, "what's an
acceptable answer?" There isn't a "consciousness meter" that can be
waived in front of someone or something potentially conscious in order
to determine whether it is so.
- The two disagree on the degree to which neuroscience can solve the
hard problem. Horgan believes it could. Chalmers is more skeptical,
saying that an enumeration of the states of mind that correlate with
certain activities is good, but, again, why should that all be
accompanied by subjective experience? That's the question.
- The two also get into the brain in a vat (Matrix) issue, which is a question related to virtuality: who is to say we aren't just brains in a vat, manipulated be an external reality of which we are not aware? What can rule out that possibility? And isn't the very idea offensive to our ethics? Chalmers suggests that any onto-mechanical (love that word) description of consciousness doesn't negate our worth.
The whole exchange is worth the time if your interests run to this area.
Two issues stand out for me. If there is an "onto-mechanical description" forthcoming, will it be accompanied by proof? It seems to me that one trades certainty for completeness and vice versa. Secondly, information, as Chalmers suggests, does offer fertile conceptual ground thinking about the issues, and, potentially, arriving at answers. Information as an idea has qualities, both private and shared.
Wayne
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