Stephen Deiss

First, you were told that there was a really HARD PROBLEM. By contrast, there were also supposed to be some comparatively EASY problems. Someone else took issue and said that this was really all a SPURIOUS NONPROBLEM. Then it was recently argued that focus on more useful REAL problems might allow progress toward the hard problem. If you have been keeping track of all this over the last 30 years, you probably realize after around 400 documented hair-splitting theories there is little consensus other than agreement on a vague notion that there is something it is like to exist. Were it not for tacit agreement on that notion conferences like this one would have little, if any, common ground for discussion. Furthermore, it remains questionable if people are actually talking past each other much of the time from different perspectives on how conscious experience should be conceived, or even if it is worth trying to define. That is pretty sad if you think about it. What if no one is focused on the right question? The HARD QUESTION, christened herewith, is how and where are feelings present in an objective physical universe? Science construes that universe to be governed by quantitative laws that can be characterized mathematically for prediction and control, the bedrock of science and technology, without any mention of feelings. If we can predict and control nature with these cherished laws, whether Platonic or otherwise, what more is needed? Nevertheless, our human concepts and metaphors are known to be grounded in our embodiment which is the nexus of all our feelings in the form of the various sensations we all experience. Both consciousness and cognition are empty without feelings. At what physical level in nature do feelings arise. If we knew that, we could start talking about the evolution of consciousness and cognition from there on up. I will propose an answer to this hard question that challenges the most ingrained assumptions people use in most all approaches to explain consciousness, and I will also make my own definition of consciousness explicit. I will argue that these biased assumptions are byproducts of our evolutionary success. In preview, I will present the claim that feelings are an elementary part of physical reality and it cannot evolve without them. In other words, both physical laws and consciousness supervene on feelings.

BA in Philosophy and Psychology (Mind and Cognition), U Michigan. MS in CS (Neural Models and AI), Purdue.  50 year career as faculty, software engineer, hardware designer, and neuromorphic engineer. Senior Member of the IEEE. Researched spiking neural network models and their scalability with my recent build of an emulator for 160 million neurons and 40 billion synapses now offered through the Neuroscience Gateway at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (UCSD). Presented multiple talks and posters at TSC, SfN, ASSC, Mensa and others on Conscious Systems. I continue as an Associate of the Institute for Neural Computation and support further emulator development.  My full time now is devoted to writing about consciousness and plans for publication as a book or a series of journal submissions.