Mysterianism
Does mysterianism entail that all brains in the universe cannot understand consciousness, or just us? If some superior intellect (machine or biological) could figure out consciousness, it would seem that they could explain it to us in a way we could understand. For example, suppose ChatGPT greatly surpasses us in a thousand years and claims to have solved the Hard Problem. If mysterianism is true, that would mean we would be unable to understand ChatGpt's solution to the Hard Problem, but that seems wrong. At the very least, we could ask a series of yes/no questions about consciousness and get quite a bit of understanding about ChatGpt's solution.
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Since a day has passed by and I don't see any reply yet to your topic, I would like to honor it.
Quoting RogueAI
I want kindly want that you pause here and consider this: the human intellect is the highest we know about that exist in our planet.
As for ChatGPT, I believe that you must learn a few things about Artificial Intelligence, and esp. machine learning. Because it is on the latter that ChatGPT --and othe chatbots-- are based on.
Ok, instead of ChatGpt, let's just assume that an advanced alien race tell us they have it all figured out.
There are a lot of things that we can assume. But we cannot form truths or foundations based on them.
And of course we can assume that there are beings in other planets with a more advanced civilization and higher intellect than ours. And it would be logical. What would be illogical and unfounded is to say that there aren't any. (Besides, this is why the SETI research has been developed.)
No, "just us"; specifically: only human brains cannot scientifically explain human consciousness. IMO, ChatGPT is a toy compared to the AGI that's coming, which I suspect will be exceedingly capable of comprehending human consciousness far in excess of however much we can or cannot comprehend ourselves. Perhaps AGI will even explain us to us in a way we can understand. Btw, I'm in no way a 'mysterian'.
Quoting 180 Proof
Two points:
A) What about augmented human brains? I can see us developing technology that vastly improves our brains.
B) Even if we stipulate mysterianism only applies to us, it still doesn't make much sense. Again, suppose aliens arrive and tell us they have it all figured out. If we're capable of asking them a bunch of yes/no questions which would greatly help us understand their solution to the hard problem (e.g., are atoms conscious? Can machines be conscious? Can consciousness arise from non-conscious matter), then we're capable of figuring out the answers to those questions. Why wouldn't we be?
Quoting 180 Proof
Mysteries are creature dependent. What's a mystery to a dog, is not mystery to us.
The universe just is, but its existence and resultant properties are ultimately a mystery to us.
Could a differently constituted creature, with perhaps more intelligence than us understand the "hard problem?". I do not see why not.
But I'd only add, that in turn, that creature that understands the hard problem, will have its own mysteries, or it isn't a natural creature.
What would a solution to the hard problem look like? For that matter, what is the problem? I had thought that the problem is actually a simple one: that you can't produce a third-person account of first-person experience, because the latter includes an experiential dimension that must always be omitted by the objective account. It is basically a rhetorical strategy to demonstrate the limitations of objectivity.
And what would an explanation of consciousness consist of? If the question is 'why does consciousness exist', the most obvious answer is that if it did not, no explanation would be possible, because explanations are only meaningful to conscious subjects such as ourselves (per Descartes' cogito ergo sum).
Consciousness, or 'the mind', is what used to be denoted by the term psyche, which can also be translated as 'soul'. Nowadays 'soul' is said to be a remnant of an earlier age, unilluminated by science, which provides no room for it. And yet.....
Any idea how "idealism" can be used to solve "the hard problem"? Do share, Rogue.
Deflationism, that rejects representational accounts of semantics , shares much in common with subjective idealism and logical positivism that both considered every proposition to be reducible to sense-data.
In so far as the hard-problem is considered to be a metaphysical problem that is an artifact of representationalism, idealism can be considered to be a metaphysical strategy for dissolving the hard-problem, even if such a strategy is regarded to be epistemically impractical for the inter-subjective purposes of science , as the positivists discovered.
Consciousness according to some mysterians is, or at least results from, that necessary incompleteness. Even if the superior alien had a complete understanding of human consciousness, from their own point of view, they could not understand themselves with the same completeness, and would have to 'project' their own incompleteness of self-understanding onto us to fully understand us in our incomplete understanding of ourselves.
Shimples!
I'm assuming ontological monism is foundational to most conceptions of idealism? Any thoughts on how apparent separate instantiations of consciousness arise out of 'the one'?
In a sentence or two, what's your objection?
You've lost me ...
Humans are animals.
If someone could show that they enabled the gorilla, for example, but it could be any animal, to understand the American political system through a series of yes and no questions, then I would agree that a superior intellect could enable the human to understand the hard problem of consciousness also through a series of yes and no questions.
The gorilla's understanding is limited by the physical structure of its brain, as is the human's.