I think maybe these are both the same problem. What if feelings are just an internal representation of the reward circuitry, a way of our consciousness trying to "make sense" of what just happened that made us prefer eating more pizza in the future. Using that thinking, one can also perfectly rationalize himself into eating meat - animal…
I think maybe these are both the same problem. What if feelings are just an internal representation of the reward circuitry, a way of our consciousness trying to "make sense" of what just happened that made us prefer eating more pizza in the future. Using that thinking, one can also perfectly rationalize himself into eating meat - animals have outward expressions (with some evolutionary purpose, sometimes even explicitly deceiving humans) that we mistake for feelings, but since they are "zombies" we don't have to care. Or maybe everything is conscious, just with varying degrees. But I think consciousness and feelings are fundamentally interlinked
Oh, definitely, I think they are very close, and arguably the same. I just find that personally, the "feelings" phrasing sharpens the "hardness" of the problem, as it makes the alignment between the reward function programmed into my brain and my subjective experiences more puzzling. (Why should those things be so similar?)
I think maybe these are both the same problem. What if feelings are just an internal representation of the reward circuitry, a way of our consciousness trying to "make sense" of what just happened that made us prefer eating more pizza in the future. Using that thinking, one can also perfectly rationalize himself into eating meat - animals have outward expressions (with some evolutionary purpose, sometimes even explicitly deceiving humans) that we mistake for feelings, but since they are "zombies" we don't have to care. Or maybe everything is conscious, just with varying degrees. But I think consciousness and feelings are fundamentally interlinked
Oh, definitely, I think they are very close, and arguably the same. I just find that personally, the "feelings" phrasing sharpens the "hardness" of the problem, as it makes the alignment between the reward function programmed into my brain and my subjective experiences more puzzling. (Why should those things be so similar?)