prase comments on Book Review: The Root of Thought - Less Wrong

47 Post author: Yvain 22 July 2010 08:58AM

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Comment author: prase 24 July 2010 03:04:12PM 1 point [-]

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.

Comment author: RobinZ 24 July 2010 03:52:24PM 2 points [-]

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.

Comment author: WrongBot 24 July 2010 08:49:16PM 0 points [-]

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.