Comment by staticvars on The "hard" problem of consciousness is the least interesting problem of consciousness · 2020-06-11T23:56:28.916Z · LW · GW

Just as the parts of the brain more directly involved with vision take as input the electrical impulses that travel down the neural pathways that originate in rods and cones, some other parts of the brain take as input the signals coming from other parts of the brain. Do we just call the more direct ones experience of the outside world, the higher level ones, experiences of the brain?

If we measured the signal level coming out of different people's neurons connected to the photoreceptors when exposed to Colors.ORANGE, surely we all have slightly different numbers of rods and cones, they are all wired up slightly differently, their transmission rate depends on neurotransmitter levels, etc. All of these parts are connected in various ways to the brain, and the excitation interacts in complex ways, so that the Colors.ORANGE today is never going to be exactly the same as the Colors.ORANGE of yesterday, but many of the same pathways are triggered.

I find the "hard problem" incredibly annoying to discuss with people, because it is just a shape-shifting question with most people, for which there isn't even a possible answer. It seems like it is not hard, but rather just an insistence on drawing a distinction between neurons feeding in more directly from sensory inputs connected to the outside world, and those parts of the brain which are fed more by the activity generated in other parts of the brain. Claiming that the difference between those is a problem is not clear to me at all.

I think about breathing. Usually you don't notice that you are breathing. But sometimes, when you are running you might notice that your breathing has changed. The parts of the brain that observe breathing are just getting a constant signal most of the time, and it disappears. The network adapts to the input to a point where it becomes like nothing, much like the input of the eye adapts to not see the nose, but if we cover one eye, it appears. If we meditate, we focus on our normal breathing.

What does paying attention mean? Is that the hard problem? Is the hard problem just the nature of the hippocampus? If so, you could probably solve it some kind of brain scan. Until then, who cares? Maybe the only people that care are those that experience the hard problem as a problem. To me, it's just what the brain is doing all of the time. There's no other layer of explanation needed.