alt Hacker NewsAgreed.
> Then he declared that there is another distinct problem — why the brain’s behavior is accompanied by experience at all — which he christened the “hard” problem of consciousness.
This is what the article is positioned against.
> We have souls. We have an inner self. We can treat ourselves as transcendental subjects in the Kantian sense.
Isn't this an equivalent declaration? I understand the desire to cling to such ideas (as the article itself propounds), but if you don't understand the underlying laws to a high enough degree I consider this equivalent to ancient Greeks sitting around saying "there is a double of our soul inside the mirror, WE HAVE SEEN IT". We know today there is absolutely nothing at all "inside" that mirror. How do we know all this qualia isn't just some sort of illusion, that we ACTUALLY experience something?
Unfortunately, this article puts forth an intriguing promise and then completely fails to deliver.
> How do we know all this qualia isn't just some sort of illusion, that we ACTUALLY experience something?
I know what it means to have an experience that is illusory. For example, a mirage, or a drug-induced hallucination.
What doesn’t make sense to me is how it’s possible for it to be an illusion that anything is being experienced at all. An illusion is a type of experience, isn’t it? If the experience is illusory, then who/what is being deceived?
(This is basically just Descartes “I think therefore I am”)