The Hard Problem

“Moreover, it must be confessed that perception and that which depends upon it are inexplicable on mechanical grounds, that is to say, by means of figures and motions. And supposing there were a machine, so constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, it might be conceived as increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill. That being so, (we should, on examining its interior, find only parts which work one upon another, and never anything by which to explain a perception.”

-Leibniz

I’m not necessarily implying that I find the “hard problem” of consciousness a necessary problem (like our contemporary, Chalmers), but there are aspects of it that are certainly valuable to ask in any reasonable context. Nobody can wave away real problems such as describing the experiencer of wood without resorting to only-semantic (or ill-advised physics) arguments about the difference between a brain, or a living thing. Not that I’m claiming I can tell you the answer; but I’ll write more about this in the coming weeks, namely a way to resolve how experiences can incorporate information between different distances in a spacetime manifold (as well as, if necessary, suggest a way without manifolds) in a manner that, from both a greedily-reductionist and irrationally-holistic sense, prescribe a way that matter of one definition can exchange and assimilate the experiences of other matter.