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RobinZ comments on Book Review: The Root of Thought - Less Wrong
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I imagine Lord Kelvin felt similarly when he thought of the elan vital. It didn't work for that, and it didn't work for a very good reason: your ignorance of the realm of possibilities is not good evidence. An inability to come up with alternatives may be better support for a claim than showing that you have not yet been compelled to admit defeat, but it's still nearly worthless.
I didn't mean my question as a Kelvinian declaration that we will never understand. I was only curious whether WrongBot has some more specific idea what sort of answer can destroy the feeling of confusion when thinking about qualia. I am even not sure whether there is a question to be answered.
Right. I apologize, I didn't read your comment very clearly. The Kelvin case offers some hope, though - after all, the New Age life-is-energy meme is a lot weaker than elan vital was.
I haven't yet encountered a sufficiently precise definition of qualia (or consciousness, for that matter) to be able to say what exactly the confusion is, much less where it's coming from or how it can be destroyed. The hard problem of consciousness is a wrong question, and I suspect that for any given untangling of it, the answer will be trivial.