[marginalium]
Do feelings have a ‘hard problem’
28 Aug 2023
Do feelings have a ‘hard problem’?
Author recaps the hard problem of consciousness:
There seems to be no need for consciousness. Physics wouldn’t care if we were all “zombies”. Why aren’t we?
I like to look at it this way:
- We are alive.
- We are conscious.
- We were created by evolution.
- But consciousness can’t “do” anything.
- Huh?
Then makes the same claim about feelings:
Well, why do we have feelings? Consider this variant of our earlier puzzle.
- We are alive.
- We have feelings.
- We were created by evolution.
- We feel good when we do stuff that would help propagate the genes of someone in a hunter/gatherer band.
- But feelings can’t “do” anything.
- The hell?
Interesting, but I think this is a category error. Feelings are the natural extension of a nervous system and the equivalent in non-nervous animals.
Anthologies: Gratification, Somatic Architecture, Animal Sentience, On Emotion, Psychologia, On (Un)happiness, On Thinking and Reasoning