I think he's 92. Roger Penrose is 91 and also more lucid than ever! Noam Chomsky has worked with Penrose a bit on consciousness via Stuart Hameroff in Arizona.

@@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885 Chomsky is 197 years young.

@@tookie36 I sent him a vid last week and he replied since the vid didn't have captions then he couldn't understand it. Also no transcript! Luckily I was able to just rely on all his previous research to answer my questions.

Exercise. Every day. Consistent exercise, both strength training and cardio, associated with > 45% reduction in the risk of dementia

​@@RealRaviyou also have to exercise your mind, writing is an excellent way of achieving that.

Thank you!

thanks!

What a special treat. I was lucky enough to briefly meet him and Chris Hedges at a talk…even snapped a nice picture of all of us! Thank you for this episode.

You speak for all of us my friend.

Sorry we didn't get to your question Nino, you were next on the list!

Great and lowly are RELATIVE. 😉

Thanks!

He said Descartes referred to the pituitary gland but Chomsky meant the pineal gland. In fact the pineal gland does have a secret of emanating our spirit via quantum consciousness. Descartes is correct! Noam's via on Newton is awesome also - fascinating. Newton was an alchemist. "Intelligible Theories"....

@@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885, what is this “SPIRIT” of which you speak? 🤔

@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices Is this one of those trick questions where you secretly know the answer but don't want to say? haha. Sorry I don't answer trick questions since they are actually false accusations based on having no evidence.

A particle is the minimum vibration in the quantum field. I have seen the mathematical proof in a ytoob video. I'll give you the info if you want.

click on the ellipses in the upper right corner of the description - it says "show transcript." You'll have to edit it since it's word transcription.

So much of our minds and behaviors are automatic. We use our tiny amount of "free-will" to train our automatic behaviors, and I'm more or less okay with this.

Good and bad are RELATIVE. 😉

consciousness, the hard problem of: is the problem of explaining why and how we have qualia, or phenomenal experiences. This is in contrast to the “easy problems” of explaining the physical systems that give us (and many other animals) the ability to discriminate, integrate information, and so forth. These problems are seen as relatively easy because all that is required for their solution is to specify the mechanisms that perform such functions. Some philosophers assert that even once we have solved all such problems about the brain and experience, the hard problem will still persist. Thus, the hard problem is an instance of what is known as hard emergence. In other words, the hard problem is the problem of explaining why certain mechanisms are accompanied by conscious experience. For example, why should neural processing in the brain lead to the felt sensations of, say, feelings of hunger or selfless love? The so-called “body-mind problem” is closely related to this “hard problem” of consciousness. Millions of philosophers throughout history, both professional academics and amateur philosophers, have noticed that human/animal consciousness differs so radically to inert matter, that they find it difficult to reconcile the dichotomy in a parsimonious manner. It seems that a thought has absolutely nothing in common to a rock or to a molecule of water. However, a similar dilemma could be made regarding water and fire. What similarities do flames have with a glass of water? What does air have in common to a bar of titanium? They seem radically different! When one beholds a brain, which is a gross (concrete, physical, tangible) object, one fails to see how a subtle (abstract, mental, intangible) object can emerge from it, since the two spheres (of mind and matter) seem so thoroughly distinct and unrelated. However, the same quandary may possibly apply to a piece of dried wood and fire. How can a dead tree become a mass of hot flames? When sufficient frictional force or conductive heat is applied to the wood, the kinetic energy generated will cause the piece of wood to turn into a completely different element (from solid to fire). Likewise with water: how do two dry gases (hydrogen and oxygen) combine to produce wetness? It seems rather miraculous! Similarly, when the electrical impulses generated in a brain are of sufficient intensity, complexity, and quality, that energy is transmuted into the form of thought objects, such as visual images.

another pointless and useless comment.what does it matter if the conversation was the best.these pointless empty comments are getting extremely pathetic. this man is talking about all kind of nonsense his entire life and to what gain, what changed.? Zero...Nothing.... Nada. what happened is these kind of people and its clearly not just him are useless repeaters to sell a book . they are part of the problem not the solutions.if this is not blatantly obvious any of you mindless repeaters of empty words and phrases should be ashamed of yourself.stop repeating and start listening to what they actually say or to put it even more clear, what they do not do. i am seriously extremely proud of you to be able to "hit that bell".....slow clap!

@@s.muller8688 Good Girl! 👌 Incidentally, Slave, are you VEGAN? 🌱

@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices no i take fanboys and girls into deep water where they discover themselves.

@@s.muller8688 Did you know that in ancient Bhārata (India), a person who consumed ANY type of animal was known as a “Chandāla” (dog-eater) and was not even included in mainstream society, but was an outcast?🥩 So, do you ADMIT that you are an animal-abusing criminal, Mr. Dog-eater? 😬🙄😬

watch some quantum physics videos on YT and you'll have your answer

Thank you!

Move the microphone away from your mouth, its far too close, and distorting the sound. Also, the wrong type of microphone to use.

@@fionaewen6231 Thanks for the tip! What sort of mic do you recommend? (Mine is a Samson Q2U.)

@@fionaewen6231, it seems that your mother never taught you to say "PLEASE". 🙄

@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices its a technical thing, you obviously dont understand the objective. Dont be giving me lessons on politeness.

Rocks have SUBJECTIVE experience? 🤪

What you have stated relates to the ABSOLUTE, while we are speaking of the RELATIVE. Confusing and conflating relative and absolute truth is practically MANDATORY for spiritual neophytes. Perhaps one day you will come to see that there is no need to speak about everything from the Absolute perspective. It is unbeneficial to the persons with whom you are conversing (unless, of course, they are thoroughly deluded materialists, who are unable to see beyond the physical realm). Peace! ✌🏻

Yeah I agree. I would either point out at this never ending reflexion of consciouseness (who knows then who says who knows...) or suggest there can be something even deeper than consciouseness, uncatchable "existence" where consciouseness appear. After all I can exist without consciouseness but cannot percieve it at teh moment. What if someone sleep and is not dreaming, or when you ride a train and look by the window, getting hypnotized by poles regulary moving before your eyes, getting in smoe kind of trans because of sound of the train wheels and then bum, suddenly somoen enter the cabin and you then realize it is your friend who went somewhere and you didn't even noticed when he left. Where you conscious for this time? Not exactly. But you still existed. Or somehow was brought back from non existence. What when I faint adn for couple seconds have no awareness at all? Black hole without any sensation. But I was brought back. I didn't die, no one took my place in my body and mind. So either Im something deeper than consciouseness itself or the state I was could be like being "conscious" of non existence. What saddens and suprise me is that even very intelligent people fell somewhere in indentifying themselves and doesn't seem to fully understand and took controll over virtual personality they create in their minds that they think is them when it is only a definition created by them the same as in game avatar is not me but just an in game avatar that REAL I can play trough.

of course in game avatar is needed to be able to play, but the thing is to know that this is nothing more than in game avatar played by ME and not real me. Simple but not easy to get and even very smart people sometimes seems to be played by the avatar and not play the avatar. Like creating some simple programm and letting it make decissions for me. Like from infinite freedome of choices giving yourself just two options and don't even chose one personally:)

Nothing has value unless it has a practical function? Something can't be true unless we can do something with it? Isn't this view just a symptom of our rapacious cultural tendency to mine and harvest anything we can lay our hands on, use it up and then throw it away? After the oligarchy, might we see the error of our ways?

That makes sense to me. In brief, consciousness is control of control, so we need to understand how the lower level control works, then we will understand the higher level of control and what it is manipulating.

@@richwilliams1863 Rich, take 'practical' here in a very general sense. 'Practical' comes from 'pragma' in Greek meaning 'action'. In my usage here, a practical problem is anything from feeding a hungry child, to composing a piece of music, to constructing a more cooperative society, to modelling the behaviour of a virus. I am expressing a Pragmatist view here. The 'Pragmatic Maxim' helps us clarify what we're talking about by querying the practical consequences. This is a bit like what the logical empiricists tried to do with their (failed) verification principle, except pragmatists are not interested in establishing The Truth. A model is a tool we use to do something, whether its a model of a biochemical pathway or a blueprint for building a house. If we detach our modelling from any practical consequences (even indirect), then we'll be left with an unclear discourse. We can have different answers to the question 'what is consciousness', but until we try to DO something with that, they are basically just a bunch of words. It has nothing to do with reducing everything to the bottom line or denigrating 'intangible' goods such as justice, love, honesty, etc. If you look at the material on my channel and website it will be clear this is not my outlook.

Good and bad are RELATIVE. 😉

I haven't worked out how to do them yet...on my 'to do' list...

😆timestamps, are those things still around?

@@philipgoff7897 use your consciousness

this made me laugh! I had the same reaction.

When you have Chomsky you listen and learn more which I think was the right thing to do. What do you want them to do? Pick up gloves and get into a ring?

no.. just a computation.. forget god and divinity delusions.

@@5piles there is qualia yeah but without selves, intrinsic natures or subjects. you are a siimulation of nature nothing else.

@@null.och.nix7743 selves/subjects/observers are part of qualia. study physicalism better, they do not accept qualia.

@@5piles you fool qualia expert.. you and the chalmers alike are responsible for the confusion.. is just phenomenology embodied cognition-simulation generated by the brain.. or wait tell us where you wanna go with your qualia intrinsic nature evangelism? What is your ontology?

Sings: “It ain’t necessarily so...” 🎤

Yeah, you've got it all figured out, buddy. Don't forget to take those anti-psychotic meds.

You are acting self conscious to yourself. But to Noam it would be you are matter interacting with itself. But I would say this, matter and mind are both emanations of God. God necessarily exists. This perception, this existence, necessarily exists. These are the 3 Cartesianist forms. All mind exists, all matter exists.

I'm open to both particles and fields. More sympathetic to fields, but tend to talk in terms of particles for sake of simplcity.

@@philipgoff7897 I meant that it sounded like you've departed panpsychism altogether for idealism, specifically Hoffman's network of conscious entities.

yes actually Chomsky has worked with the quantum biology research group of Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. So if you study the microtubule quantum consciousness research it definitely applies to plants also - since plants rely on microtubules. Fascinating stuff. But on a deeper level all matter is made of light and that gets into the noncommutative math that Penrose relies on. Even Hameroff doesn't understand the noncommutative math - and Penrose admits he's not good at the math. Noam told me he doesn't have enough time to study noncommutativity (which is a great joke). thanks

consciousness/Consciousness: “that which knows”, or “the state of being aware”, from the Latin prefix “con” (with), the stem “scire” (to know) and the suffix “osus” (characterized by). To put it succinctly, consciousness is the SUBJECTIVE component in any subject-object relational dynamic. The concept of consciousness is best understood in comparison with the notion of sentience. Cf. “sentience”. As far as biologists can ascertain, the simplest organisms (single-celled microbes) possess an exceedingly-primitive form of sentience, since their life-cycle revolves around adjusting to their environment, metabolizing, and reproducing via binary fission, all of which indicates a sensory perception of their environment (e.g. temperature, acidity, energy sources and the presence of oxygen, nitrogen, minerals, and water). More complex organisms, such as plants, have acquired a far greater degree of sentience, since they can react to the light of the sun, to insects crawling on their leaves (in the case of carnivorous plants), excrete certain chemicals and/or emit ultrasonic waves when being cut. At this point it is imperative to consult the entry “sentience” in the Glossary of this Holy Scripture. According to this premise, the simplest forms of animal life possess sentience, but no noticeable semblance of true consciousness. As a general rule, those animals that have at least three or four senses, combined with a simple brain, possess a mind but lack an intellect. Higher animals (notably mammals) have varying levels of intelligence but only humans have a false-ego (sense of self). Thus, human consciousness is constituted of the three components: the mind, the intellect, and the pseudo-ego (refer to Ch. 05). There is a rather strong correlation between brain complexity and level of consciousness, explaining why humans alone are capable of self-awareness. In this case, “self-awareness” is not to be confused with “self-recognition”, which is a related but quite distinct phenomenon, found also in several species of non-human animals, in which an animal is able to recognize itself in a mirror or some other reflective surface. “Self-awareness” refers to the experience where a human over the age of approximately three years is consciousness of the fact that he or she knows (that is, aware) that he or she is aware. Obviously, in the case of a child, he or she may need to be prompted in order to first be acquainted with this understanding. For example an adult could ask the child: “Do you know that you have a toy car?” “Yes!” “And do you KNOW that you know you have a toy car?” “Umm...I think so...yes!”. In contemporary spiritual circles (as well as in several places within this book), the capitalized form of the word usually, if not always, refers to Universal Consciousness, that is, an Awareness of awareness (otherwise known as The Ground of All Being, et altri). sentience: that which has feelings or sensations, as distinguished from perceptions and cognition. Therefore, sentience ought not be confused with consciousness, though the two are closely intertwined. In animal life, there are up to five sensory organs which can detect external stimulants. Plants are also sentient but use lower-level mechanisms for their sentience. For example, most plants respond to sunlight (witness the opening of flowers upon the rising of the sun), and carnivorous plants can detect arthropods crawling on their leaves. Therefore, when carnists claim that “plants have feelings too”, they may be correct, so the most logical reason for being vegan is not because plants are completely insentient, but simply due to the fact that humans are an herbivorous species. If Homo sapiens were naturally omnivores or carnivores, then no sane person would promote veganism. In summary, all forms of organic life are, by definition, sentient, yet TRUE consciousness is found in those animal species that have a certain level of intelligence (i.e., as a general rule, vertebrates, though there are a couple of notable exceptions to this general rule). Cf. “consciousness/Consciousness”. Sentient/sentience ultimately comes from the Latin verb “sentire”, which means “to feel” or “to perceive”, and is related to the noun “sensus”, meaning “sense”. Cf. “consciousness”, as defined at the beginning of Chapter 6 of “A Final Instruction Sheet for Humanity”.

@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices You need to study "protoconsciousness" in quantum physics.

consciousness/Consciousness: “that which knows”, or “the state of being aware”, from the Latin prefix “con” (with), the stem “scire” (to know) and the suffix “osus” (characterized by). To put it succinctly, consciousness is the SUBJECTIVE component in any subject-object relational dynamic. The concept of consciousness is best understood in comparison with the notion of sentience. Cf. “sentience”. As far as biologists can ascertain, the simplest organisms (single-celled microbes) possess an exceedingly-primitive form of sentience, since their life-cycle revolves around adjusting to their environment, metabolizing, and reproducing via binary fission, all of which indicates a sensory perception of their environment (e.g. temperature, acidity, energy sources and the presence of oxygen, nitrogen, minerals, and water). More complex organisms, such as plants, have acquired a far greater degree of sentience, since they can react to the light of the sun, to insects crawling on their leaves (in the case of carnivorous plants), excrete certain chemicals and/or emit ultrasonic waves when being cut. At this point it is imperative to consult the entry “sentience” in the Glossary of this Holy Scripture. According to this premise, the simplest forms of animal life possess sentience, but no noticeable semblance of true consciousness. As a general rule, those animals that have at least three or four senses, combined with a simple brain, possess a mind but lack an intellect. Higher animals (notably mammals) have varying levels of intelligence but only humans have a false-ego (sense of self). Thus, human consciousness is constituted of the three components: the mind, the intellect, and the pseudo-ego (refer to Ch. 05). There is a rather strong correlation between brain complexity and level of consciousness, explaining why humans alone are capable of self-awareness. In this case, “self-awareness” is not to be confused with “self-recognition”, which is a related but quite distinct phenomenon, found also in several species of non-human animals, in which an animal is able to recognize itself in a mirror or some other reflective surface. “Self-awareness” refers to the experience where a human over the age of approximately three years is consciousness of the fact that he or she knows (that is, aware) that he or she is aware. Obviously, in the case of a child, he or she may need to be prompted in order to first be acquainted with this understanding. For example an adult could ask the child: “Do you know that you have a toy car?” “Yes!” “And do you KNOW that you know you have a toy car?” “Umm...I think so...yes!”. In contemporary spiritual circles (as well as in several places within this book), the capitalized form of the word usually, if not always, refers to Universal Consciousness, that is, an Awareness of awareness (otherwise known as The Ground of All Being, et altri).

@@SpiritualPsychotherapyServices More point, less words.

Consciouseness is the name of the being who is aware of something. Now I don't know if the question "what it is" exactly apply here. I mean consciouseness is exactly consciouseness nothing more or less. Now what make it exist or how it came to existence is quite unknown. Your question is whether we can touch, smell, or weight or size up consciouseness like other physical things. I doubt it. Can we touch or size up an idea or a concept? But we can be aware of idea or a concept. Now it can be so that consciouseness is nothing more than you and the only existence of it is by the form of you. So you are the definition of what it is.

Consciouseness is somehting totally different from everything else. Every answer about every question exist INSIDE consciouseness. Every experience exist inside consciouseness. Every question aside of this one is pointing a finger at somthing and asking what it is. But in this one question we are pointing a finger at ourselves. And the finger itself is ourselves. Asking what is consciouseness is asking who I am. The answer for this question WAS ALREADY PRESENT before the question was formulated. Therefore the most accurate definition of what is consciouseness is YOU. And me.

Of course people mistaking personality with themselves/consciouseness are very common and a lot of philosophers especially from Indian tradition tried to deal with this misconception trough thousands of years

consciousness/Consciousness: “that which knows”, or “the state of being aware”, from the Latin prefix “con” (with), the stem “scire” (to know) and the suffix “osus” (characterized by). To put it succinctly, consciousness is the SUBJECTIVE component in any subject-object relational dynamic. The concept of consciousness is best understood in comparison with the notion of sentience. Cf. “sentience”. As far as biologists can ascertain, the simplest organisms (single-celled microbes) possess an exceedingly-primitive form of sentience, since their life-cycle revolves around adjusting to their environment, metabolizing, and reproducing via binary fission, all of which indicates a sensory perception of their environment (e.g. temperature, acidity, energy sources and the presence of oxygen, nitrogen, minerals, and water). More complex organisms, such as plants, have acquired a far greater degree of sentience, since they can react to the light of the sun, to insects crawling on their leaves (in the case of carnivorous plants), excrete certain chemicals and/or emit ultrasonic waves when being cut. At this point it is imperative to consult the entry “sentience” in the Glossary of this Holy Scripture. According to this premise, the simplest forms of animal life possess sentience, but no noticeable semblance of true consciousness. As a general rule, those animals that have at least three or four senses, combined with a simple brain, possess a mind but lack an intellect. Higher animals (notably mammals) have varying levels of intelligence but only humans have a false-ego (sense of self). Thus, human consciousness is constituted of the three components: the mind, the intellect, and the pseudo-ego (refer to Ch. 05). There is a rather strong correlation between brain complexity and level of consciousness, explaining why humans alone are capable of self-awareness. In this case, “self-awareness” is not to be confused with “self-recognition”, which is a related but quite distinct phenomenon, found also in several species of non-human animals, in which an animal is able to recognize itself in a mirror or some other reflective surface. “Self-awareness” refers to the experience where a human over the age of approximately three years is consciousness of the fact that he or she knows (that is, aware) that he or she is aware. Obviously, in the case of a child, he or she may need to be prompted in order to first be acquainted with this understanding. For example an adult could ask the child: “Do you know that you have a toy car?” “Yes!” “And do you KNOW that you know you have a toy car?” “Umm...I think so...yes!”. In contemporary spiritual circles (as well as in several places within this book), the capitalized form of the word usually, if not always, refers to Universal Consciousness, that is, an Awareness of awareness (otherwise known as The Ground of All Being, et altri).

in order for "red " to make any sense you would need some experience with non-red

Study Alain Connes - he goes into the limits of Reimannian Geometry as the discovery of noncommutativity by Heisenberg - thanks

I am of the opinion heroes and villians, protagonists, antagonists, family, community, and a expectant environmental positive story arc, are for most, genetically hardwired and viability adaptive. So no specific named characters are intrinsic, but common themes reoccur in similar environmental complexity where collaborative and self determinism wields fortune and outcome. (So no Heyzeus, Mohamad Ali-bot, or Allegory the Martian Social Construct Cannibal, unless that's playing where you have environmental capacity to live and learn, at.) This does not require language, to be imagined or observed, maybe just perspective & observational skills, in accoutrement to languge, it produces "Superman" and "Raksha" that we then "recognize" by name, and in self reflection, instead of deeds, alone.

Why don't you show some humbleness and maybe get a book or two on philosophy before coming out with utter garbage?

Sings: “It ain’t necessarily so...” 🎤

I don't know If I get him, does he insinuate we cannot think without speaking words to ourselves? I myslef like to have inner dialogue without words, it's dozens times faster. First you get the "feeling" of what you want to say, then you put it into words in your head or speak it loudly. But you don't have to put it into words to be aware of this information. It is simple everyone can do it, when you think inner dialogue just stop the sentence when you know already how it will end. Then after some practice you can stop the sentence quicker and quicker and at some point be aware of what you want to say BEFORE even formulating first word in your head.

"Conventionally agreed upon spectrum of thing brain do/produce" Lots of words to say nothing. This quote can literally refer to any psychological phenomena

Marvin Minsky, 100% correct.

Kindly repeat that in ENGLISH, Miss.☝️ Incidentally, Slave, are you VEGAN? 🌱

Over which KINGDOM? 🤔

In my case, I'm always continuing to eat the last child who thought they could get away with pranking me like that. :)

The cat is both alive & dead.

what happened inside the house is that somebody walked over and opened the door. So what?

@@scambammer6102 Not a hard problem at all...

Someone was the watching TV or doing something other than the right thing they should be doing because they are waiting for something. I don't understand why the global problem of avoidable pain (global commission on drug policy statement uses "crisis" instead of problem, I feel it is a crisis) continues.

Totally agree that this was one of Keith’s most cogent and succinct descriptions of his views on consciousness (I was going to ask him if he has transcribed this excerpt). I respect his stand on wanting to keep the “I” word (and to be a provocateur) but as you point out, the moment people hear the “I” word they forget what he is mostly saying: consciousness exists but it’s not what you think it is.

Again, I think he wasn't clear about his position. Chomsky is not saying there is an independent "I", he is, rightly, saying that calling consciousness an illusion is a mistake, which it is.

philosophy: the love of wisdom, normally encapsulated within a formal academic discipline. Wisdom is the soundness of an action or decision with regard to the application of experience, knowledge, insight, and good judgment. Wisdom may also be described as the body of knowledge and principles that develops within a specified society or period. E.g. “The wisdom of the Tibetan lamas.” Unfortunately, in most cases in which this term is used, particularly outside India, it tacitly or implicitly refers to ideas and ideologies that are quite far-removed from genuine wisdom. For instance, the typical academic philosopher, especially in the Western tradition, is not a lover of actual wisdom, but a believer in, or at least a practitioner of, adharma, which is the ANTITHESIS of genuine wisdom. Many Western academic (so-called) “philosophers” are notorious for using laborious sophistry, abstruse semantics, gobbledygook, and pseudo-intellectual word-play, in an attempt to justify their blatantly-immoral ideologies and practices, and in many cases, fooling the ignorant layman into accepting the most horrendous crimes as not only normal and natural, but holy and righteous! An ideal philosopher, on the other hand, is one who is sufficiently intelligent to understand that morality is, of necessity, based on the law of non-violence (“ahiṃsā”, in Sanskrit), and sufficiently wise to live his or her life in such a harmless manner. Cf. “dharma”. One of the greatest misconceptions of modern times is the belief that philosophers (and psychologists, especially) are, effectively, the substitutes for the priesthood of old. It is perhaps understandable that this misconception has taken place, because the typical priest/monk/rabbi/mullah seems to be an uneducated buffoon compared with those highly-educated gentlemen who have attained doctorates in philosophy, psychology and psychiatry. However, as mentioned in more than a few places in this book, it is imperative to understand that only an infinitesimal percentage of all those who claim to be spiritual teachers are ACTUAL “brāhmaṇa” (as defined in Chapter 20). Therefore, the wisest philosophers of the present age are still those exceptionally rare members of the Holy Priesthood! At the very moment these words of mine are being typed on my laptop computer, there are probably hundreds of essay papers, as well as books and articles, being composed by professional philosophers and theologians, both within and without academia. None of these papers, and almost none of the papers written in the past, will have any noticeable impact on human society, at least not in the realm of morals and ethics, which is obviously the most vital component of civilization. And, as mentioned in a previous paragraph, since such “lovers-of-wisdom” are almost exclusively adharmic (irreligious and corrupt) it is indeed FORTUITOUS that this is the case. The only (so-called) philosophers who seem to have any perceptible influence in the public arena are “pop” or “armchair” philosophers, such as Mrs. Alisa “Alice” O’Connor (known more popularly by her pen name, Ayn Rand), almost definitely due to the fact that they have published well-liked books and/or promulgate their ideas in the mass media, especially on the World Wide Web.

consciousness, the hard problem of: is the problem of explaining why and how we have qualia, or phenomenal experiences. This is in contrast to the “easy problems” of explaining the physical systems that give us (and many other animals) the ability to discriminate, integrate information, and so forth. These problems are seen as relatively easy because all that is required for their solution is to specify the mechanisms that perform such functions. Some philosophers assert that even once we have solved all such problems about the brain and experience, the hard problem will still persist. Thus, the hard problem is an instance of what is known as hard emergence. In other words, the hard problem is the problem of explaining why certain mechanisms are accompanied by conscious experience. For example, why should neural processing in the brain lead to the felt sensations of, say, feelings of hunger or selfless love? The so-called “body-mind problem” is closely related to this “hard problem” of consciousness. Millions of philosophers throughout history, both professional academics and amateur philosophers, have noticed that human/animal consciousness differs so radically to inert matter, that they find it difficult to reconcile the dichotomy in a parsimonious manner. It seems that a thought has absolutely nothing in common to a rock or to a molecule of water. However, a similar dilemma could be made regarding water and fire. What similarities do flames have with a glass of water? What does air have in common to a bar of titanium? They seem radically different! When one beholds a brain, which is a gross (concrete, physical, tangible) object, one fails to see how a subtle (abstract, mental, intangible) object can emerge from it, since the two spheres (of mind and matter) seem so thoroughly distinct and unrelated. However, the same quandary may possibly apply to a piece of dried wood and fire. How can a dead tree become a mass of hot flames? When sufficient frictional force or conductive heat is applied to the wood, the kinetic energy generated will cause the piece of wood to turn into a completely different element (from solid to fire). Likewise with water: how do two dry gases (hydrogen and oxygen) combine to produce wetness? It seems rather miraculous! Similarly, when the electrical impulses generated in a brain are of sufficient intensity, complexity, and quality, that energy is transmuted into the form of thought objects, such as visual images.