It's so strange to read comments from people who think there's nothing to explain. It must be just as strange for those people to hear from the other side of the debate.

To me it seems so obvious that there's an explanatory gap between any functional explanation of behaviour and information processing - and the feeling of experiencing something. The various thought experiments around p-zombies crystalises this for me.

The "feeling of experiencing" is just a perception. That became obvious to me after dabbling in meditation/mindfulness exercises. My mental model of this is that in addition to regular sensory perception, the brain also perceives some of its own internal processing. That is, part of the further processing of the sensory data (or more generally of any cognitive processing) becomes itself subject to an internal perception (a bit like a debugger or profiler applied to its own execution). That recursion may even go one or two levels deeper. Or rather, there is no clean separation between the recursion levels, which somewhat obfuscates to the internal observer what is going on. Furthermore, it only perceives parts of its internal processing, so it doesn’t get the whole picture (probably far from it).

This is why consciousness seems magic and confusing. But when you think about it, everything we mean when we talk about consciousness is something we perceive ("feel", "experience", "qualia"), so clearly it’s something having a representation in the brain that is being perceived by another part of the brain (or partially the same part). What makes it confusing is that at that level there’s no clear separation between subject and object of the perception. But that fits nicely with the general messiness and staggering complexity of biological systems.

With roughly a 100 billion neurons and a 100 trillion synapses in a brain, it shouldn’t be surprising that the internal self-perception can be very detailed, complex, multifaceted, nuanced, subtle, and subject to itself.

It just seems magic because of time maybe. Which would imply the “answer” to the “hard” non-question of consciousness probably lies in time series data. The idea gravity is tied to consciousness through time and space may be related through the assertion space is a dimension similar to a search index using an array of timestamps.

Being hungry is just my stomach being empty, over time. A feeling emerges, which is then synthesized into a perception. Similar to how the world model emerges inside us from sound and imagery, imagery and sound bites which are themselves built from sensors and post processing, which aren’t necessarily made aware to the user in and of themselves (the image from the left half of the right eye only, for example).

Imagine an apple, if you can. Where does the image of the apple come from? Can you, like many, see the apple for what it is (an iconic image) projected into your perception? If you want some esoteric text on this, read up on Theosophy. They present the idea the image comes from a “mind body”, made from alternate types of matter. This is relevant when looking at older schools of philosophical thought, which used to encompass the sciences.

In Tibetan Buddhism this internal model or map of the world is presented no different than someone having a full immersion PTSD episode...a “broken” model run “on the side”, in mind, which appears to be “real”, occluding the “reality” model most of us agree is “here”.

> For me I say God, y'all can see me now 'Cos you don't see with your eyes You perceive with your mind That's the end of it So I'mma stick around with Russ and be a mentor -The Gorillaz

> The "feeling of experiencing" is just a perception.

That's exactly the phenomenon we're trying to explain. You've just said "feeling is just feeling".

The question is - why is there someone experiencing a feeling. A machine or algorithm can be self-referential. Is there some magical "amount of recursion" that suddenly results in consciousness? That seems strange to me.

In my view, consciousness is a gradual thing, not a binary property. In addition, it's also not really "a thing", as in not "something extra". By that I mean, when you make it a habit to probe into your consciousness/awareness, you will find that all there is are perceptions. You may think that you have a qualia about a particular perception (e.g. of a color, a scent, a mood, a memory, an insight, etc.), but then the qualia is only there by virtue of you perceiving the qualia. There is nothing that is pure subject. When you perceive yourself as being a subject (an "I"), it thereby becomes an object of perception. It can't exist without being an object of perception. (E.g. it isn't there when you're unconscious.) That raises the question whether it is really anything more than an object (as opposed to a subject).

Now, a perception in that sense only requires that the thing perceived (the object of perception) has a representation in the brain, plus that some information processing of that representation is occuring in the brain (the act of perceiving). Our objects of perception, including qualia and e.g. the awareness of being conscious, can be very rich and complex, but it's certainly not implausible that they are fully represented in the brain with all their richness — and there is nothing more to it than that representation. (In fact, my personal experience is that the range of qualia is not that large, when you observe it over a longer term and for example compare it to our memory capabilites.)

So, when I introspect my consciousness, I cannot pinpoint anything that doesn't fit that model of "information processing (perceiving) of representations (objects, including qualia)". Even what I think of as "I", in the end, is just one of those objects (or probably more a cluster of those). The confusion, I believe, stems from the fact that we can only introspect a fraction of the information processing that is really going on, and that the "I" as an independent subject is a very strong illusion. But when you try to look closely for it, there is arguably nothing really there. (The Buddhists do have a point with their concept of non-self.)

I think there is a definite distinction between perceptions and models. For example, we don't consciously perceive the edge and motion detection of our vision system but instead the aggregate interpretation of modelling those perceptions. Similarly we don't seem to be conscious of some internal organs, but conscious of others under different circumstances. Usually we aren't conscious of our breath but by focusing we can both raise conscious awareness and control of it. So it seems like we have a "consciousness" module in the brain that can be directed and connected to different other parts of our nervous system, but not all, in order to "do the perceiving". With practice it seems possible to become conscious of more autonomous parts of the body, but not all.

And still the question remains of how the brain produces the conscious experience and expands or contracts it, while not being fully conscious of the whole brain or of its own operation (in which case we would understand consciousness much better). Is it the chemical activity? The electrical? A combination? Is it in the energy transfers between matter or in the relationships that get established?

Wow, that idea about internal perception recursion is making things much clearer for me and quite enlightening. Thank you for this :)

There's an obvious explanation for the differences in perspective, which is covered by the title of this paper:

https://philarchive.org/archive/KEACDD

That's wonderful. I'm going to read it full later but I've been looking for some writing on this topic.

The paper isn't quite as directly about what the title says as I might have liked, but since it's a mostly serious academic paper it probably can't be.

It does contain some gems though, like:

> In spite of his claim to have "long claimed" that the conceivability of zombies is only apparent, one suspects that it is non-zombic humans that Dennett finds if not inconceivable, then unendurable. [...] Zombies are perfect for Dennett! If the human world turned out to be populated only by them, his troubles would be over. Non-zombic humans, by contrast, are a nightmare for Dennett.

It's also a serious but short look at the topic, which I found useful.

It's my comment he's responding to, and even though I may not agree with his formulation, I'm sensing he has a point. What if this is a bias that we've acquired while growing up? Perhaps we've conflated consciousness with intent and reactivity (another term introduced by Jaynes 40 years ago). We've gotten used to thinking that a chair, for example, is not conscious by our definition because it reacts in a purely non-intentional way. But does that mean it doesn't have some rudimentary level of "experience" (sans pain, pleasure, a sense of self or other things that come with higher intelligence)?

I agree "consciousness" is a hodgepotch of different things, some of which are easier to fit into a materialist world view than others.

But that doesn't detract from my belief that there's an irreducible nub that remains once you've removed all the easy bits. That nub is what I regard as the "hard problem"

I'm firmly on the other side: I don't think there's anything special about consciousness. Consciousness is merely the capacity of the brain to keep track of everything that's happening and adapting behaviour. The I is merely a thought structure, we're just a very complicated deterministic script with lots of inputs.

I score quite high for psychopathy and I didn't understand emotions for a long time (as a kid I imagined that people just pretended to have emotions), so the lack of that emotion processing capability, may influence my view in that topic.

Either my brain is defective or it's this century version of geocentrism.

> Consciousness is merely the capacity of the brain to keep track of everything that's happening and adapting behaviour.

Problem comes in when you take into account color, sound, pain, etc. How does the brain keeping track of itself produce conscious sensations? They're not coming in as such from the outside world. It's just EM radiation, vibrations in the air, molecular motion on the skin, etc. Our nervous system turns that noise into sensations.

It's easy to see this problem when you think of how you might go about making a conscious robot. A sophisticated robot can keep track of its sensory inputs and adapt its behavior. But what would you add to turn that into colors and sounds and feels?

> A sophisticated robot can keep track of its sensory inputs and adapt its behavior. But what would you add to turn that into colors and sounds and feels?

The common thinking along those lines is that you would add introspection and nothing more. That is, "red" is the brain's interpretation of the brain processes that happen when light of some wavelength is hitting the retina (or perhaps we need a few more layers - the brain's interpretation of the brain processing the information that the brain is processing the information that [...]).

Under this general idea, emotions would be similarly explained as analysis of other brain processes, ultimately reacting to even older (evolutionarily speaking) mechanisms for motivation and goal-seeking.

It's interesting that you mention psychopathy. I wonder if there's a correlation between these traits and the dismissal of the "hard problem".

Maybe you don't experience selfhood in the same way that I do? Or maybe you just find it easier to disregard that aspect than I do.

What gap are you speaking of though? Do you suspect there is some as yet undiscovered fundamental quantity of the universe which lay dormant for billions of years until the human form evolved to make use of it?

> Do you suspect there is some as yet undiscovered fundamental quantity of the universe which lay dormant for billions of years until the human form evolved to make use of it?

No idea. That's not what I'm discussing here.

The gap is the fact that I indisputably experience things that happen to me. I feel them. There is an "I" to talk about that has genuine meaning in a way that it wouldn't do if a fictional character or a computer programming used the word.

It's possible to imagine a form of life as complex as ours with functioning societies where non of the lifeforms experienced the world as an "I". Maybe ants don't have an "I". NPCs in a video game or GPT3 almost certainly don't. At some point GPTx or video game NPCs might become as complex or behaviourly rich as a real person but still lack an "I".

This is a p-zombie. The "gap" I'm referring to is the difference beween similar entities, one of which experiences qualia when the other doesn't.

I see what you mean, however in my opinion this "I" you are talking about is just an evolution of the human brain, most likely for the purpose of social cohesiveness/activity/integration/interaction. Everything we do beyond maintaining our own body is for society.

Every action taken is rooted in social hierarchy, social undertakings, social interaction. Better clothes, better cars, better phones for better social status, more knowledge, more money, more research to advance society.

Someone who lives alone in the woods will not take care of themselves much (just like ants, btw), and everyone who has discovered/learned something has an almost compulsive need to share it with others. If they didn't share, they'd be an outcast, considered broken by everyone else. A lot of similarities with an ant or bee hive there, except we're more autonomous as individuals.

Our species is not just about the individual, and as society grew, it required more and more advanced individual hardware and software, which our primitive brains did not have. So it was evolving. Evolving likely by cooperative/social individuals/groups being superior to less cooperative/social ones in survival and warfare. And what it has evolved into is the "I" we experience today.

It adds a whole new layer of complexity, but it's still just "software" running on the same brain as everything else and using the same resources.

There is that theory of the bicameral mind, not sure how accepted it is, but it does seem like a good description of an earlier version of our current minds.

And yes, I believe other social animals also have this sense of "I", even if primitive.

Just one of my (possibly insane) theories, since I find myself thinking about this quite often, in the context of artificial intelligence based on the human one.

I agree with most of this but all that adaptation and behavioral complexity could also happen to a race of p-zombies. And I still struggle to see how "I" (as distinct from behavioral patterns mostly indistinguishable from "I"-hood) can emerge in a materialist univere without some substrate that has properties beyond the mechanical.

I'm veering dangerously close to mysticism and the non-falsifiable here. But it seems inescapable for the same reason Descartes clearly stated. My "I"-ness is the only indisputable fact about reality and the one from which all other beliefs follow.

You seem to extrapolate from a single sample that the probabilities of an “I” experience differs between individuals based on how similar they are to you.

I would say that if you can imagine other complex life forms without that experience it must be equally valid to assume the same can be true for everyone around you. Perhaps it’s only you.

> Perhaps it’s only you.

And thus solipsism rears it's slightly unsightly head once again.

Solipsism has always had the virtue of being coherent - unlike many other theories in this area. I think pan-psychism also has this quality.

The issue is they are both lead you to some bizarre conclusions. In some ways it's an analogue to the role Many Worlds plays in the philosophy of Quantum Theory. "cheap on assumptions, expensive on universes"...

I do lean towards some form of pan-psychism. Or at least I'm not sure you can get to "I" from a strictly materialist starting point.

However I think it's also likely that we're missing a fundemental part of the problem and these conversations will one day look like the babblings of children.

I think its not only analogue to the many worlds, I quite suspect it’s the same problem actually.

Or rather it seems we’re basically asking the wrong questions and therefore ending up with seemingly bizarre or contradicting things like particle/wave duality or the concept of time.

How can we have consciousness when there is no objective “now”?

To me the question of which processes experience consciousness is akin to asking if a sound wave is a crescendo or how many image frames in a movie is required to make a scene.

Well, it depends... you might say, and the follow up question “depends on what?” is much more interesting.

Some physicists say the world is fully determined. That there are at least four fully existing dimensions of space time, or even more than that given some interpretations of quantum mechanics.

So we are given a static structure with certain patterns following specific laws of how the structure may be formed. Like if you made a 3D-print of a play of conways game of life.

Now in that static structure we have this interesting phenomenon called consciousness that at first approximation looks like paths of focus tracing specific patterns.

There might be just a single path, or many, or even a single connected path through them all as you say. I’m a compaibilist here, I don’t think it’s a difference with more substance to it than the particle/wave duality. It’s mostly a matter of perspective.

Yes, a lot of naturalist seem to think it's just about the ability to process information, but that's not it at all.

One can readily find persuasive critiques of Chalmers' theories by professional philosophers. Book length even.

The GP comment was specifically talking about the "hard problem." That's hardly "Chalmer's theory," although he did name it.

There are critiques of the hard problem, like eliminativism. I'm not aware of any that are "persuasive," though. Do you have any recommendations?