Up to a point. I would love to see more research designed to probe deep philosophical questions but I cannot pay for it. So the water is not so much troubled to me, as frustratingly out of reach. We want to understand the big questions better so we are better equipped to make life decisions, but the fact is that we are, to a fair extent, in the same position as all of our ancestors. They also didn't have enough information to make informed decisions, so they made poorly informed decisions instead.Angelo Cannata wrote: ↑April 11th, 2022, 7:08 amIt seems that for you philosophy of consciousness and science of consciousness are the same thing. In that case I can understand that for you there isn't troubled water.Sy Borg wrote: ↑April 11th, 2022, 5:24 amNot in the least. There's precious little funding for philosophical "blue skies" consciousness research. The research is aimed towards medical outcomes and there's definitely been progress.Angelo Cannata wrote: ↑April 11th, 2022, 3:12 am The problem is that they try to get "incremental increase in knowledge" on something (consciousness) that has highly ambiguous meanings, especially in philosophy, so that it is fishing in troubled water.
The closest research happening regarding deeper questions of consciousness is the study of brain activity in coma patients. The more researchers can determine the nature of brain activity during coma, the better the treatment. There's profundity in the studies but the aim is purely medical.
My own guess is that consciousness is an all-of-body phenomenon centred around the brain rather than being exclusively a product of the brain, and that the "brain in a vat" experiment would result in minimal consciousness due to a lack of connection to other major body systems. Orthodox neurologists and boffins disagree, holding entirely brain-centric views of consciousness. Some claim that the "hard question" is based on subjective impressions that lead to a misunderstanding of what consciousness is. Personally, I think that dismissing the most important aspect of life - a sense of being - as an illusion is about as credible as claiming that there was nothing before the Big Bang. It's a premature guess based on insufficiant evidence.
So, at this stage, there is simply not enough information to do any more than make informed guesses or, as is not uncommon on public forums, wild guesses.
I certainly do not follow the convention of siloing science and philosophy, on top of all the internal siloing within those fields. If one wants a broader overview, one cannot internalise that siloing, as so very many of us do.