memetherapy

Mr.Pinker, you've been a massive influence in my personal quest for knowledge and understanding. Loved your books. I'm presently at McGill in the Cog Sci program, so I'm fully immersed in the subject matter at hand.

Many different people in the field have influenced my approach to understanding consciousness...especially the "hard" problem of subjectivity. A couple of years ago, I read a book called Soul Dust by Nicholas Humphrey, whom you surely know of. I was taken aback by an approach he offers for understanding qualia.

In a nutshell

Though the road might be long and winding, bodily reflexes can be precursors to sensations. As he (Nicholas Humphrey) explains: “Both sensations and bodily actions (i) belong to the subject, (ii) implicate part of his body, (iii) are present tense, (iv) have a qualitative modality, and (v) have properties that are phenomenally immediate.” It could very well be that in the process of evolution, bodily reactions were highly informative cues for representing what’s out there beyond the confines of our selves. Monitoring our own bodily responses could have evolved into monitoring our responses “in secret”, meaning internally. In principle, natural selection could simply do some tidying up by eliminating the outward response. In a certain sense, responses became privatized within our brains. From this perspective, the subjective problem of sensation can be viewed as just another inappropriately named “easy problem”.

What's your take?

That does seem to undercut it.

Follow up...

Do you think a hetero-phenomenological approach to the "Hard" problem to be legitimate? If the intelligent robot in question happens to pass the Turing Test we all seem to pass on a daily basis (people don't generally question whether other people are conscious), wouldn't that be enough?

Aren't we holding models of the mind to a higher standard than ourselves and thus making the "hard" problem impossible?

By the way: I'm honored you answered my question! I have officially come in contact with one of my few idols. THANK YOU!

Shit. I gotta get me some more Hawke. This man is real. Of all AMAs, you're the one person who's humanity really comes through. Don't give up on your writing projects. Loved Gattaca, but, that's about all the Hawke I've seen. What do yall recommend?

Thanks for that...I'm curious to watch The Before trilogy and Reality Bites.

I forgot about Training Day...that was a great movie, and I agree Mr. Hawke's acting was top-notch in that movie. I haven't watched in years, but I can still remember the subjective conflicting emotions of his character. That role was made for him.

I tried watching Waking Life years ago after falling in love with A Scanner Darkly. Maybe I was too cynical, but I couldn't get into it and stopped watching within the first 5 minutes. If I remember correctly, it starts with explicit conversation about the nature of existence...which I remember seemed too forced....I was expecting deepities, so I stopped. Doubt i'll watch it unless someone really hypes it up.

How well did you know Mike Brown? Was he always buried in medical books aspiring to be a doctor?