Seth:
How about this formulation of the hard problem of consciousness - "Please explain how unconsciously dead materials/energy suddenly come alive and summon an infinitely rich variety of immaterial conscious qualia whose characteristics seem to have nothing to do with the material/energy involved."
Philip:
So, you inject the “suddenly” word in there, and that’s sort of David’s light switch analogy. I don’t think any of it was sudden. The leap from non-life to life is a difficult one to ponder, but once you have life, all the other bootstrapping is quite clear to me. And again, it’s not like the sources of qualia weren’t there. This is where David and I might disagree, because I think there must be something experiential about an atom holding itself together and bonding with other atoms in predictable ways. The technologies of translation (consciousness) don’t come online until biology, and that’s what makes the qualia, at least as I understand things at the moment.
Seth:
Philip Walter So, like I'm perfectly fine with accepting the "emergentist" explanation for consciousness as slowly building in capability over time. No problems there.
The problem is that the consciousness that slowly comes online seems to have nothing to do with the materials that are bringing it online.
It's like aggregating rocks (atoms) and then a visible ghost (consciousness) is produced. And the more rocks you gather, the more visually impressive the ghost. But the attributes of this ghost seem to have nothing to do with the rocks gathered. This transition from rocks to ghost is then quite confusing. Similarly, that transition from atoms to emotions/feelings/qualia is so weird that it bothers people.
David:
Seth Garrett What about hydrogen and oxygen creating water?
How do 1's and 0's create programs?
This is also what I am saying about acting like Consciousness is some extra special jump unlike others in nature.
Philip:
Seth Garrett Also, I think the notion that consciousness has nothing to do with the materials that bring it online is naive at best. On the contrary, it is intimately and exquisitely and tragically and inescapably linked to the material reality that brought it online.
Seth:
David Long Those are great examples of natural jumps! I fully expect there to be a naturalist explanation for how consciousness develops, but I definitely feel the significance of the gap.
For example, I can accept that 1s and 0s emerge into a software program but I can't accept the idea that all software programs are conscious. There's a gap there that hasn't been bridged. Yet, I can't fully explain that gap.
Philip:
Seth Garrett I don’t see the development of self reflective consciousness as being fundamentally different from the development of motility either really.
David:
Seth Garrett All you need is the concept of "self" thrown in the mix and some real means to interact with the environment, give it enough time, and you're basically there.
I think we are running a type of programming and caught in a type of language game and it should lead us to questions about how different are we really from an AI and why are biological machines different from man-made machines. - Is the difference just a technology gap?
I think it is.
Philip:
David Long The substrate is critical.
Seth:
David Long I believe '10001110' signifies red in machine code. I assume you would acknowledge the gap between '10001110' and the qualia of 'redness'?