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The Kinematical Problem of Consciousness (kinematics is all you need)

burntcircuit.blog

5 points by psyphy 2 years ago · 5 comments

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nabla9 2 years ago

>Correct or delusional? Experiment will tell.

I would say neither. It's easy to define the hard problem in a way that allows a neat theory. The problem is that you are alone with your definition of the problem, nobody is interested in the solution.

In philosophy the devil is in the details. I have 60 pages of hand written notes about consciousness just from trying to map different issues related to monism and panpsychism before I gave up.

  • psyphyOP 2 years ago

    Heh, one thing I can tell you- it is NOT easy to define the hard problem in a way that allows a neat theory. It took me a couple of physics degrees + years of work, and really, a lifetime of obsession. And I am not done yet.

    But you are right about the social problem- consciousness studies is terribly fragmented, and everyone agrees it is mostly full of nonsense (only disagreeing about which parts are nonsense).

    Motivating serious examination by domain experts is extremely difficult - completely independently of the coherency of your ideas, and to some extent even of your pedigree.

    You can try to solve this social problem by personally climbing the status hierarchy. Or by doing your best to distill a convincing introduction to a few minutes of reading.

    This is an attempt at the latter.

    • nabla9 2 years ago

      >You can try to solve this social problem by personally climbing the status hierarchy.

      That's something I don't agree. It's not a social problem. It's a problem with your own intellectual effort. The problem is not coherence, its relevance and completeness. If you make an argument that shows that you are familiar with the problem setting in deep level, you have an audience among domain experts in philosophy.

      The problem with amateur philosophers like you an me is that we want to talk more than listen.

      • psyphyOP 2 years ago

        > The problem with amateur philosophers like you an me is that we want to talk more than listen.

        that's some healthy self-awareness :) (for someone jumping to conclusions without bothering to read the introduction to the linked paper, and without knowledge of who read it and what they thought of it- which may surprise you).

        I truly have no animosity towards you, I am even glad you engaged. But meta-social discussions with "amateur philosophers" is indeed not what I am looking for. Farewell :-)

psyphyOP 2 years ago

The Hard Problem of consciousness is a stop-gap term for a deeper, more precise, and more solvable(!) problem buried within; a problem that a physicist would call the kinematical problem of consciousness.

This short article will characterize the kinematical tension at the heart of the Hard Problem: a mismatch between our model of the universe and 2 specific qualities we implicitly ascribe to consciousness (qualities which may be called ‘classical indescribability’ & ‘non-emergent integration’.) Then, having reframed the Hard Problem as a precise & explicit problem of kinematics (physics), we’ll go on to motivate, outline, and reference an experimentally falsifiable resolution to the problem of consciousness.

Kinematics is all you need.

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