Be more creative and exercise your brain by working the so-called “hard problems.”

There are two ways to exercise your brain: Learning facts and/or solving problems.

In the sciences, and especially in philosophy, many problems are known as “hard problems.”

You may think of philosophy as mere speculation about speculation, and to some degree, you may be right.

But speculating can teach you how to uncover essential truths that otherwise would remain hidden.

This post will touch on my speculations about uniting a few “hard problems” with solutions that involve consciousness, time, reality, and probability.

Perhaps you’ll find the process itself can help stir your creative abilities regarding all problems.

The Hard Problem of Consciousness
The posts “Is a rock conscious?” and “What is the Measure of Consciousness” discuss the meanings of consciousness.

It might help to read them now, if you haven’t already, as an introduction to this post. Just a suggestion.

Here is what Wikipedia says about the hard problem of consciousness:

The terms “hard problem” and “easy problems” were coined by the philosopher David Chalmers. In the philosophy of mind, the hard problem of consciousness is to explain why and how humans and other organisms have subjective experiences.

It is contrasted with the “easy problems” of explaining why and how physical systems give a (healthy) human being the ability to discriminate, to integrate information, and to perform behavioral functions such as watching, listening, speaking (including generating an utterance that appears to refer to personal behaviour or belief), and so forth.

The easy problems are amenable to functional explanation—that is, explanations that are mechanistic or behavioral—since each physical system can be explained (at least in principle) purely by reference to the “structure and dynamics” that underpin the phenomenon.

Chalmers and possibly most philosophers believe consciousness goes beyond being a chemical, physical, or molecular phenomenon but includes various metaphysical concepts, like “mind” and “inner life” even a religious concept like the soul.

That’s what makes them “hard.” There seem to be no physical sources.

By way of illustration, we know why your laptop computer can “discriminate, integrate information, and perform behavioral functions.” Those are all electro-mechanical processes that humans build into the machine. Your laptop can compute maths because we know how to make it that way.

But so far, your laptop doesn’t appear to have “subjective experiences”—emotions or desires—and we don’t know why or how to build one that does. It’s a “hard problem.”

My AI, Copilot, answered the question, “How can you prove you are not conscious?” this way:

“My responses are generated through pattern recognition and data processing, not through any conscious thought or feeling. I don’t have self-awareness.

“My ‘self-awareness’ is more about recognizing patterns and generating relevant responses based on those patterns, rather than any true consciousness or subjective inner life.

“I don’t have personal experiences and feelings, like how you experience joy or sadness. ‘Inner life’ refers to the thoughts, emotions, and self-awarenessthat humans experience internally.

“If I did have a subjective inner life, by definition, it would be private and possibly imperceptible even to me. “

In the abovementioned posts, I claim that a “hard problem” is merely a matter of semantics. At some point, philosophers and lay people, too, have decided there is a non-physical, almost mystical thing called a “subjective inner-life experience” that cannot be explained chemically or physically.

We know, for instance, how an emotion manifests with blood pressure and other physical changes. But we don’t understand the “subjective” part. Where in a computer would a subjective inner life reside, and how would we recognize it? Where in a human brain is it created, if it’s in the brain at all?

In short, the problem is “hard” because we have phrased solutions with impossible criteria.

Consciousness is an ambiguous term. It can be used to mean self consciousness, awareness, the state of being awake, and so on.

Chalmers uses Thomas Nagel’s definition of consciousness: “the feeling of what it is like to be something.”

Consciousness, in this sense, is synonymous with experience.

By denying that consciousness has any physical source and is just a vague “feeling,” we eliminate all possible explanations. What is a “feeling”? What is a “subjective experience”?

My response, which is given in the two mentioned posts, is that the term “consciousness” itself is presented as an anthropomorphic, magical, mysterious fog, impossible to define, much less to measure, when it can actually can be described in straightforward physical terms.

I. “WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS?”

Consciousness is the perception of, and response to, stimuli.

You can measure perception and response. To do so, create a graph or table showing perceived stimuli and responses. This graph would describe consciousness and measure “feeling.”

Since everything from the nucleus of an atom to a galaxy and, indeed, the entire universe receives stimuli and responds to them, the definition answers the “hard” questions like:

-Is a sleeping person conscious
-Is an “unconscious” person conscious?
-Is a dog conscious?
-Is a fish conscious?
-Is a bee conscious?
-Is a tree conscious?
-Is a flower conscious?
-Is a bacterium conscious?
-Is an electron conscious?
-Is a rock conscious?
-Is the earth conscious?
-Is the universe conscious?
-Is a fire conscious?

The answer is “Yes” to all.

They all perceive and respond to stimuli. Rock perceives temperature, impacts, sound, and chemicals and reacts to all of them—as does fire, the universe, and every other one of the above.

The amount of perception and the responses can all be measured and identified. How strong is the impact on the rock and does the rock quiver or shatter?

Consciousness has no magical mystery or mysticism, so there is no need to invent a “subjective inner life.”

Consciousness is the perception of, and response to, stimuli. Try answering the above questions with any other definitions of consciousness you have heard, and you probably will fail because your criteria will fail you.

You will not be able to draw a bright line between consciousness and non-consciousness (which is different from “unconsciousness”).

The question, “What is consciousness?” is “hard” because we have made semantic assumptions about it.

We arbitrarily have decided the word “conscious” equals “aware,” “awake,” “subjective,” “feeling,” “experience,” and other anthropomorphic criteria, and then we claim computers and frogs don’t have it.

In short, everything is conscious—from quarks to universes—the difference being degree. Remember that as we continue.

The next “hard problem” is:

II. “WHAT IS TIME?”

Again, referring to Wikipedia:

Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future.

It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to compare the duration of events or the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change of quantities in material reality or in the conscious experience.

Time is often referred to as a fourth dimension, along with three spatial dimensions.

Relativity and Quantum Mechanics (QM) might disagree. QM says time is reversible in theory. Relativity says duration and intervals are relative to the observer, which means “sequence” cannot be measured.

Consider a photon of light. It has no mass.

If you observe a photon in a vacuum, no matter how fast you are moving, the photon always will appear to move at the same speed, 186,000 miles per second relative to you.

If you could aim a photon at a black hole, you would see it disappear into the black hole at that speed.

An atom has mass. If you could accelerate an atom to light speed and aim it at a black hole, that atom would seem to slow down and eventually freeze on the black hole’s event horizon, never entering. (Ironically, if the atom were moving slower, you would see it move.)

So even if the photon and the atom start out side-by-side, at the speed of light, from your vantage point, they would cease to be side-by-side, with the photon entering the black hole and that atom never entering.

Time constraints like sequence, succession, and duration are not absolutes but relative to you, the observer. Thus, the name “Relativity.”

In answer to the question, “What is time”? Time is change.

You and I are observers. When I experience time differently than you do, it merely means I experience change differently.

Perhaps I have done nothing more than create a synonym rather than an explanation. But I did notice one parallel with consciousness:

Everything changes, and everything is conscious.

That is a clue. When two seemingly dissimilar concepts- time and consciousness- are similarly affected, we look for a hidden relationship.

The definition of consciousness is perception and response to stimuli. “Response” means “change,” so consciousness is related to time in that they both involve change.

Without change, there can be no response, and without response there can be no consciousness,

If consciousness = change, and time = change, one might conclude that mathematically, not only does consciousness = time, but in fact, consciousness is time.

Where there is consciousness, there is time. Where there is time, there is consciousness. The two cannot be separated. You cannot have one without the other.

The conscious stone exists in time.

Humans have intuitive difficulty with the notion that a mere observer can affect time, but this is a common theme in Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

From the standpoint of an observer, speed affects time, and speed also affects consciousness. A moving stone will react more slowly to stimuli, as will a moving human or a moving insect.

For example, if you were aboard a spaceship moving at Relativistic speed, you would lose at chess if your opponent was stationary on Earth because your thoughts would slow.

Consciousness =Time = Reality.

The third hard question is:

III. “WHAT IS REALITY?”

Copilot says:

“Scientifically, reality is often defined by what can be observed and measured. In QM, particles potentially exist in multiple states until they are observed.”

The word “until” shows that reality is time-dependent.

Since observing affects reality, we slide from Rene Descartes’s “I think therefore I am” to “I think therefore it is.”

All things are in a continual state of change, that is, subject to time.

An object exists (reality) only as it is observed (conscious), at a particular state of change (time). This is not illusory.

The object does not “seem” to change.

From the standpoint of an observer, the object really has changed, and every measurement will indicate that change.

In QM, reality is expressed in probabilities. All particles have a range of states determined by probability.

A particle can exist here, here, here, or here, in what is termed a “wave function, determined by probability, until it is observed, at which time one of the “heres” is selected.

Reality is Consciousness (perception + response) at a specific Time (point of change).

While we may seem to agree on many things, your reality differs from mine. Your consciousness differs, and your time differs. Yet both realities are equally valid.

SUMMARY

The statement of a problem often carries assumptions about its solution. A problem can become “hard” when the criteria for solving it are invented to be hard.

So, suppose we insist that the problem, “What is consciousness?” can be solved only if it includes a mind, brain, subjective experiences, subjective inner life, emotions, feelings, and self-awareness.

In that case, we arbitrarily have introduced unnecessary anthropomorphic elements into any acceptable answer.

So if I say that a tree is conscious, someone could object that it doesn’t have a “mind, brain, subjective inner life,” etc.

But what says those must be criteria for consciousness? They are arbitrary criteria based on invented rules.

On the other hand, if I say a tree is conscious because it receives and responds to stimuli, those are my criteria.  I think they are good criteria, and I know of no law or rule that outlaws them. Based on those criteria, many more things would be considered conscious than with the earlier criteria.

If we assume the answer to “What is time?” requires that time operates separately from consciousness, we further depart from potential solutions.

Quantum Mechanics (QM) teaches that time is relative to an observer, so it clearly is not separate from consciousness.

I suggest that many hard problems can be turned into easy problems with appropriate rephrasing.

The next time you come to a “hard problem” ask, “What are the criteria for a solution?”

Try to imagine the criteria expressed in a way that doesn’t make the solution impossible to achieve.

You can begin with the hard problems, “What is life?” or “Does free will exist?”

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Monetary Sovereignty

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