Philosophers make a big deal of the Hard Problem of Consciousness. This is the problem of what it is like to be a conscious person from a point of view other than our own. We know our own minds, but we cannot know other minds.
But note that this is a problem of what can be known. In the jargon it is an epistemic problem. If we try to explain this in terms of what exists (or ontology) without reference to what can be known, then we usually say stupid things.
For example, David Chalmers, the young philosopher who in 1995 outlined the Hard Problem for the first time, in 1996 proposed a subtle form of mind-body dualism as a "solution". And since then has dabbled in all kinds of ontologies that don't solve the problem.
Consider that bees can see ultraviolet light and humans cannot. We will never know what it is like to see ultraviolet light. Even though we have cameras that sense ultraviolet light and feed it back to us a visible light. In the end our eyes only physically sense visible light and our brains are only equipped to process nerve impulses from our eyes.
So there is a Hard Problem here also. We simply lack the apparatus to ever know what it is like to see ultraviolet light. We will never know.
But the solution to this problem is not to propose that ultraviolet light is a different kind of stuff. We know that radiation comes in wavelengths from sub-millimetre to kilometers. Ultraviolet light is clearly part of a spectrum of electromagnetic radiation and differs only in wavelength.
We don't need to redesign the entire universe in order to account for not being able to see UV light. Our eyes are not sensitive to it. And that is the end of the story until someone engineers an eye that is responsive to those frequencies and a brain that can make sense of nerve impulses from such eyes.
Epistemology, what can be known, is always limited. In this sense it is a domain to be described rather than a problem to be solved. Some things will always be beyond our knowledge or understanding. There is the universe and then the observable universe: the former may be infinitely bigger than the latter, but we'll never know.
So the question is not how do we solve the Hard Problem. There are stupid questions and this is one of them. It is a stupid question because it elicits stupid answers, mainly in the realm of ontology.
A non-stupid question is, "What can we know about other minds?" Or better, "How do we know about other minds?" We know by observation and inference - the same way we know anything at all about the world beyond ourselves. And, very importantly, we compare notes. What we can know is the dispositions of others.
Of course the validity of inferred knowledge is always a bit doubtful. We often make mistakes due to cognitive biases and logical fallacies. But most of the time we get a pretty good understanding of other people - some of us better than others. And this is partly because we evolved in groups and we have the cognitive apparatus for sussing out the dispositions and relationships of our group. We know because we evolved to know, to some extent.
So the Hard Problem is just a specific case of the general rule that there are limits to what we can know. Don't panic.
But note that this is a problem of what can be known. In the jargon it is an epistemic problem. If we try to explain this in terms of what exists (or ontology) without reference to what can be known, then we usually say stupid things.
For example, David Chalmers, the young philosopher who in 1995 outlined the Hard Problem for the first time, in 1996 proposed a subtle form of mind-body dualism as a "solution". And since then has dabbled in all kinds of ontologies that don't solve the problem.
Consider that bees can see ultraviolet light and humans cannot. We will never know what it is like to see ultraviolet light. Even though we have cameras that sense ultraviolet light and feed it back to us a visible light. In the end our eyes only physically sense visible light and our brains are only equipped to process nerve impulses from our eyes.
So there is a Hard Problem here also. We simply lack the apparatus to ever know what it is like to see ultraviolet light. We will never know.
But the solution to this problem is not to propose that ultraviolet light is a different kind of stuff. We know that radiation comes in wavelengths from sub-millimetre to kilometers. Ultraviolet light is clearly part of a spectrum of electromagnetic radiation and differs only in wavelength.
We don't need to redesign the entire universe in order to account for not being able to see UV light. Our eyes are not sensitive to it. And that is the end of the story until someone engineers an eye that is responsive to those frequencies and a brain that can make sense of nerve impulses from such eyes.
Epistemology, what can be known, is always limited. In this sense it is a domain to be described rather than a problem to be solved. Some things will always be beyond our knowledge or understanding. There is the universe and then the observable universe: the former may be infinitely bigger than the latter, but we'll never know.
So the question is not how do we solve the Hard Problem. There are stupid questions and this is one of them. It is a stupid question because it elicits stupid answers, mainly in the realm of ontology.
A non-stupid question is, "What can we know about other minds?" Or better, "How do we know about other minds?" We know by observation and inference - the same way we know anything at all about the world beyond ourselves. And, very importantly, we compare notes. What we can know is the dispositions of others.
Of course the validity of inferred knowledge is always a bit doubtful. We often make mistakes due to cognitive biases and logical fallacies. But most of the time we get a pretty good understanding of other people - some of us better than others. And this is partly because we evolved in groups and we have the cognitive apparatus for sussing out the dispositions and relationships of our group. We know because we evolved to know, to some extent.
So the Hard Problem is just a specific case of the general rule that there are limits to what we can know. Don't panic.
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