Microsoft Word - ConversationWithAdinaRoskiesMindBodyProblem.doc - ConversationWithAdinaRoskiesMindBodyProblem.pdf
MARCELO GLEISER: Yeah, I always have a problem
with the idea of the supernatural interacting with the natural.
Because from a physicist's perspective, I mean if something's supernatural,
it by definition is beyond the laws of nature, so to speak.
But once you interact, you are exchanging energy.
You're exchanging information somehow.
So you're clearly being very physical about it.
So as soon as the supernatural interacts with the natural, it becomes natural.
But what I can't seem to give you a story about
is why something experiences things visually
or why it is like anything to be the object that does these things.
So we can create computers that do various tasks,
but we don't think that computer has some experience of what it's doing.
It's just crunching numbers.
And so that's what people think of as the hard problem of consciousness.
So we can explain various kinds of cognitive abilities,
at least conceptually, without too much problem.
But really we have no idea how to explain
why it's like anything to be a cognitive agent
or which things have those properties of having consciousness.
