Prediction without understanding qualia
I grant that the hard problem of consciousness (HPC)1 is interesting, but it may be unsolvable. It might even be a malformed question. I would bet a considerable amount that we won’t solve the HPC in the next eight years.2 So, for now at least, I recommend we redirect conversations away from HPC towards a different question:
By agent, I mean Stuart Russell’s definition:
An agent is anything that can be viewed as perceiving its environment through sensors and acting upon that environment through effectors.3
Claim
One doesn’t need to know about qualia4 to make predictions about what an agent will do.
Support: If one accepts physicalism (a.k.a. materialism), an agent’s behavior is governed by the laws of physics. This means qualia is not a driver.
Example: Imagine a future where we succeed at whole-brain emulation (WBE)5, but we don’t know if it has qualia or not. Either way, we can reason and make predictions about how the WBE’s behavior.
Making progress
If the claim is true – and I think it is – then we (as a society) must not wait for progress on the HPC. It seems probable that the HPC is an ensnaring distraction. We can and must continue to improve our understanding of agents based on their structure and behavior.
I would suggest we redirect our attention to a more pressing and practical question:
This question is preferable because it remains fascinating and difficult while also being tractable. Probably.
Endnotes
Per Wikipedia, “In the philosophy of mind, the hard problem of consciousness is to explain why and how humans and other organisms have qualia, phenomenal consciousness, or subjective experience. It is contrasted with the “easy problems” of explaining why and how physical systems give a (healthy) human being the ability to discriminate, to integrate information, and to perform behavioral functions such as watching, listening, speaking (including generating an utterance that appears to refer to personal behaviour or belief), and so forth. The easy problems are amenable to functional explanation—that is, explanations that are mechanistic or behavioral—since each physical system can be explained (at least in principle) purely by reference to the “structure and dynamics” that underpin the phenomenon.“
I would place bets $b_1, b_2, b_4, b_8$ that the HPC won’t be solved over {1, 2, 4, 8} year time horizons.
As defined in Chapter 2: Intelligent Agents from Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach.
Per Wikipedia, “In philosophy of mind, qualia […] are defined as instances of subjective, conscious experience.”
Whole brain emulation (WBE) is “the possible future one‐to‐one modelling of the function of the human brain” according to Whole Brain Emulation: A Roadmap by the Future of Humanity Institute (closed as of 2024-04-16).