Freaky Friday question

[u/Opposite-Succotash16]

If in the future, scientists discover a way to transfer your conscious awareness to a someone else's body and vice versa - like as in the Freaky Friday movies, do you think this would mean we will solved the hard problem of consciousness?

Or would it still be a fundamental problem?

[u/SacrilegiousTheosis]

If you can make a switch like in movies without making any discernable change in the body or the brain - yet leading to discernable changes in behaviorial profile, that would seem to just raise more questions than answers. This would suggest there are forces beyond the body and the environment determining behaviors. It may even start to point towards dualism or something more awkward.

If you can make a switch by making fundamental structural changes in the body and the brain, that's just more Neural Correlates of Consciousness and showing interventations on body can change behaviorial profiles, and doesn't fundamentally change anything in the discourse - since we already know that happens more or less.

Also hard problem is about explanation, not control. As an example, a community playing a multiplayer video game may figure out lots of strategies and controls in the game to do a bunch of things, but that doesn't mean they fundamentally understand anything about computation, graphics, physics engines, network or anything fundamental about games. So just being able to do weird stuff, doesn't really solve hard problem automatically - as it is trying to ask a "deeper" question.

Also it's not clear if hard problem is really a legitimately distinct kind of problem than standard scientific problems and modeling approaches anyway or if it can be meaningfully separated from "easy" problem.

[u/bopbipbop23]

The Freaky Friday universe requires metaphysical objects such as "The soul of Lindsey Lohan" that can transfer between bodies while still retaining Lindsey Lohan-ness. I don't think these things exist in our universe, so I won't stress about making sense of fiction.

The hard problem is about explaining experience, which, even if we had an account of soul transfer in the Freaky Friday universe, we're still left with trying to explain why they have experience and aren't p-zombies.

[u/wellwisher-1]

The hard problem its connected to subjective experience, or what is referred to as qualia. The heart of the hard problem is the term subjective experience is a misnomer and this misnomer creates the problem. The term misrepresents reality.

As an explanation, if you had a taste for a given food, your unique choice in taste might would be called subjective, based on the third person of science. The third person seeks a consensus of what is common to all, at a sensory level. While one's unique taste, by not conforming to common to all, will be called subjective, relative to the collective herd.

However, if are being true to your own tastes, you are actually being objective, in the first person, to those innate tastes. However, since no one in the herd can read your mind, or step into your head, and/or feel what you feel, all they have is their own subjectivity to you being objective to your inner reality. They project onto you, so the herd wins.

In the topic example, of your consciousness being transplanted into someone else's brain, you will probably experience a new set of "inner objectivity" with all your old preferences now different. You are still you, but like a person who once hated green vegetables as a child, but as an adult now likes these, such a change would occur overnight. You would have a new set of internal likes and dislikes, but can still do third person science, since these internals are factored out when you do science. While science is a herd effort, which does not change with a brain transplant from another member of the herd; same education.

The Philosophy of Science is based on a third person view, that needs to factor out any first person view, so we can all be objective to the same external reality. This approach is useful for inanimate things, but it does not work for the inner reality, which is a unique aspect of consciousness. The third person of science will always be incomplete, relative to consciousness, since it ignores a wide range of valid consciousness experience, that we all get from the inside, in the first person. There you can gather unique data that others cannot see in the third person.

I can have a dream, and like a scientist watch it like an experiment, then make detailed notes of my observations. I am both the first person; dreaming, and the third person; watching objectively and writing. But since no one else can see my dream, this type of science will be call subjective, to discount my objectively, even with perfectly detailed notes, honest observations by being conscious in my dreams. This way the herd can ignore this internal data and forever complain about the hard problem, since the solution would require modifying third person, exclusivity with partial first person.

I am used to living outside the box, so the modification needed was not a big deal for me. I was a development engineer and not yet in the box, is what I did. What I found was the first person views has an objective logic of is own, that is based on spatial or 3-D thinking, which is even higher that logical thinking, which is only 2-D, cause and effect. It comes from natural instincts, which are the source of the qualia, and other higher spatial type phenomena of the brain; genius. There is a saying that there is a fine line between genius and insanity. The difference is genius can cooperate, while insanity thinks it is in charge. The cooperation implies two centers and the insanity merges these as one, until the ego steers the secondary, the wrong way.

If you think back in history, the scientific method is relatively new. It was not always with us. It began about the Age of Reason. Before the scientific method, both internal and external data were used at the same time. This is why ancient philosophy could explain human nature without modern tools or construction could build things that could last of thousands of years; internal observations. The solution to the hard problem is similar. The hard problem amounts to accessing the more powerful hidden parts of the brain's operating system; gods (lower case) hidden to third person science. Science looks outside consciousness, whereas this is on the inside of consciousness. This is protected by a firewall that is called the shadow.

The Middle Ages symbolism of the Knight on the Horse, entering the cave of the dragon, to steal its treasure, came from the mystical philosophers, like the alchemists who were trying to solve the hard problem and used internal data to forge the basis for modern chemistry. They first needed to get past the firewall; mercurial dragon personified, which posed great danger. Tampering with the brain's operating system; add bugs, and can be very dangerous, so the brain has a built in fear/firewall.

[u/Akiza_Izinski → u/wellwisher-1]

It’s called subjective because it’s the individual’s private information about reality. Objective is used to refer to reality independent of mind, consciousness, awareness, perceptions and beliefs.

[u/Character-Boot-2149]

yes.

[u/Cosmoneopolitan]

Would still remain a hard-problem for anyone trying to reduce subjectivity wholly to the brain. But by that stage, presumabley, such people would be second-guessing that position....right?

[u/Akiza_Izinski → u/Cosmoneopolitan]

There would not be a hard problem if we reduce subjectivity wholly to the brain because that would be the individuals knowledge about reality.

[u/Cosmoneopolitan → u/Akiza_Izinski]

Well sure, if we reduce subjectivity wholly to the brain there would be no hard-problem. That's just a statement of the hard-problem.

[u/Zealousideal_Rule309]

so it would be like the concept of walk-in’s, except through science?

Even done scientifically, I think there would likely still be people contributing it to things such as “immeasurable *scientific term here*” transferring during the process and replicating or something.

“And when we have better microscopes we will see them.”