What ia the The hard problem of consciousness?
I dont understand the debate on the “I”. So how does materialists explain consciousness and how are their believes unprovable? Are everything including science “just” a religion?
In: Physics
The hard problem basically refers to the challenge of explaining why and how subjective experiences, or qualia, arise from physical processes in the brain.
Basically it is asking if there is more to consciousness than just the physical processes and neural activities in the brain. It seeks to understand why and how these processes are associated with subjective experiences and whether there’s an explanation that goes beyond the purely physical or functional aspects of the brain.
Can consciousness be fully explained by physical processes or do they point to something more fundamental or different about the nature of consciousness.
I don’t see why the source of consciousness would be unprovable.
No, we don’t have a good answer to it today, but that doesn’t make it unptovable. I can easily imagine a future where we have full mapped and understand the brain, and are able to perfectly, in a scientific way, could explain the concept of consciousness.
I’m not saying that must be the case, but looking at the history of scientific discovery, I tend to lean more towards “do not yet understand” rather than “is impossible to understand”.
>So how does materialists explain consciousness and how are their believes unprovable?
No one can. Even religious “explanations” such as a “soul” just kicks the can down the road. A “soul” is then just a different kind of thing, to which we can then ask “how do souls work? What lets them give rise to subjective experience.”. It’s no more an explanation than giving the answer of: “stuff, because reasons”.
The hard part of the hard question is that we don’t as of yet even have an idea how to really formulate the question. We don’t yet even know what answer would even look like.
Latest Answers