The qualitative nature of our experience is what I think is difficult to understand (may relate to qualia although I ‘m not fond of the term. We know all our inputs are electrical. But why pain is bad and food can taste so good feels like a hard issue. And I’m not even talking about cognition.
Pain and pleasure start with sensory data submitted by electrical signals. But what is it that experiences one signal as pain and the other signal as pleasure?
Why do we feel there’s something that experiences these sensations, that decides it feels good/bad. It’s easy to just say “evolutionary pressures” but it may explain the how-we-got-here but not how it actually works.
And on top of all of that there’s abstract reasoning that we do well, which we can’t reproduce with all the ML and computer power in the world. But let’s forget about this now.
If we can ‘just’ explain the qualitative nature of our experience and what that “something” is that experiences things in the first place, that would be beyond interesting.
Oh and because of nothing, the brain seems more like an FPGA that a system with separate static hardware and software. Like the hardware and software are intertwined and the computer analogy really doesn’t apply.
Pain and pleasure start with sensory data submitted by electrical signals. But what is it that experiences one signal as pain and the other signal as pleasure?
Why do we feel there’s something that experiences these sensations, that decides it feels good/bad. It’s easy to just say “evolutionary pressures” but it may explain the how-we-got-here but not how it actually works.
And on top of all of that there’s abstract reasoning that we do well, which we can’t reproduce with all the ML and computer power in the world. But let’s forget about this now.
If we can ‘just’ explain the qualitative nature of our experience and what that “something” is that experiences things in the first place, that would be beyond interesting.
Oh and because of nothing, the brain seems more like an FPGA that a system with separate static hardware and software. Like the hardware and software are intertwined and the computer analogy really doesn’t apply.