Are you saying that you don’t think there’s any fact of the matter whether or not you have phenomenal experiences like suffering? Or do you mean that phenomenal experience is unreal in the same way that the hellscape described by Dante is unreal?
Closer to the latter, though I wouldn’t call it “unreal.” The experience of suffering exists in the same sense that my video game character is down to one life and has low HP: that state is legibly inspectable on screen, and is encoded in silicon. I only scorn the term “consciousness” to the extent it is used as woo.
I think some version of the Hard Problem really was meaningful in the past, and that it was hard: it’s far from obvious how “mere matter” could encode states as rich as what one … perceives, experiences, receives as the output of the brain’s processes. Mills and clocks, as sophisticated as they may have been, were still far too simple. I consider modern technology to have demonstrated in sufficient detail precisely how it’s possible. It didn’t require anything conceptually new, so also I understand why some don’t find the answer satisfying.
Of course it exists! It’s like the Harder Problem of Zelionicity. And the Impossible Problem of Allimoxing.
Are you saying that you don’t think there’s any fact of the matter whether or not you have phenomenal experiences like suffering? Or do you mean that phenomenal experience is unreal in the same way that the hellscape described by Dante is unreal?
Closer to the latter, though I wouldn’t call it “unreal.” The experience of suffering exists in the same sense that my video game character is down to one life and has low HP: that state is legibly inspectable on screen, and is encoded in silicon. I only scorn the term “consciousness” to the extent it is used as woo.
I think some version of the Hard Problem really was meaningful in the past, and that it was hard: it’s far from obvious how “mere matter” could encode states as rich as what one … perceives, experiences, receives as the output of the brain’s processes. Mills and clocks, as sophisticated as they may have been, were still far too simple. I consider modern technology to have demonstrated in sufficient detail precisely how it’s possible. It didn’t require anything conceptually new, so also I understand why some don’t find the answer satisfying.