The Hard Problem of Consciousness
学神经科学sex and behavior真是把我学到巴甫洛夫条件反射阳痿了。学完我脑子里只有一句话：欲望不是天生的，而是后天被塑造的。然后飘过物化，建构主义，第二性。请问学meta内容把自己学到条件反射到厌恶怎么不算是一种成功入侵进交感神经的学习过程呢，俨然是课本内容的显现。我只感觉虚无，学动机的时候已然感受到的虚无再次冲击，让我产生aversion。
知识有点恐怖地告诉我：没有什么是发自内心的，或者，什么是内心呢，连内心都是被后天构建和学习的，那什么才是内心？事实上我发现让我感到恐惧的一点是，既然所有都可以被构建出来，那么反过来逆向工程，你也可以控制一个人性癖的产生，所谓的性癖都是后天的学习。
有点反胃有点恶心，恶心的是本来就恶心这个社会的性文化构建，结果实验再次证明性癖由此构建而成。是的，行为纠正失败了，但是你怎么能推测这种失败是一种失败的二次抹去还是失败的首次构建？你怎么能证明这种首次构建的产生是否本身就是一次构建。
让我感觉更恐惧的一点是学完动机之后发现人类本质上可以被逆向工程这件事。逆向工程不止是这些商业化的行为，我很早就了解到相关的哲学理论了，景观社会也好，资本主义拜物教也罢，这些当然是逆向工程的一部分，但是最核心的恐惧是在学完神经科学之后生物层面上发现人类可以被构建，突然就很难说清这种恐惧感，但是是一种本质的缺失。
我是谁？
神经科学期末考试最后的bonus question是动机是什么，可我学完之后脑子的里的问题是——我是谁。动机是我做事的原因，可构建我的动机的产生的也是学习，那我到底是谁，被什么构建，随机性？环境？让我产生动机的前置条件到底是什么？
“如果性癖可以像训练老鼠穿马甲一样被刷进去，如果多巴胺的释放曲线可以被一个中性气味（杏仁味）完全劫持，那“我”到底是什么？我是这台机器的驾驶员，还是仅仅是这台机器运行代码时产生的一个幻觉（副产品）？“内心”不是一个装着灵魂的容器，它只是你大脑皮层（特别是前额叶）对过去所有经验数据进行整合后，产生的一种连贯的叙事感（Narrative）。你觉得有一个核心的“我”在做决定，但那其实是大脑为了让你更好地生存，而强行编织出的一个自圆其说的故事。 如果一切都只是突触的连接和电化学信号，那么： 那个此刻正在感到虚无、正在感到恐惧、正在反思自己为什么会有这种性癖、正在试图理解这一切的“主观体验者（You）”，到底在哪儿？ “
Chalmers 1995年把它命名为the hard problem of consciousness，没有人知道解。看到这里我想起来，也许intelligent的突破可以给出一个答案，又或许，这个答案本身才是intelligent出现的前提。
Studying sex and behavior in neuroscience has Pavlov-conditioned me into impotence. After finishing, only one sentence remains in my head: desire is not innate, it is shaped. Then objectification drifts past, constructivism, The Second Sex. How is it that studying meta-content until you develop a conditioned aversion doesn't count as a learning process that has successfully invaded your sympathetic nervous system? It is practically a live demonstration of the textbook. All I feel is nihility. The same nihility I already felt when studying motivation crashes into me again, producing aversion.
Knowledge tells me, somewhat terrifyingly: nothing comes from the heart. Or rather, what is the heart? If even the heart is constructed and learned after birth, then what is the heart? What I find truly frightening is this: if everything can be constructed, then reverse-engineering works just as well. You can control the formation of a person's sexual preferences. All so-called kinks are products of postnatal learning.
A wave of nausea. What disgusts me is that I was already disgusted by how society constructs sexual culture, and now experiments confirm that sexual preferences are indeed constructed by it. Yes, behavioral correction failed. But how can you infer that this failure is a failed second erasure rather than a failed first inscription? How can you prove that the emergence of the first inscription was not itself already an inscription?
What frightens me even more is discovering, after studying motivation, that human beings can fundamentally be reverse-engineered. This reverse-engineering goes far beyond commercialized behavior. I became acquainted with the relevant philosophical theories long ago: the society of the spectacle, commodity fetishism under capitalism. These are certainly part of the reverse-engineering. But the core of my fear is discovering, at the biological level after studying neuroscience, that human beings can be constructed. It is hard to articulate this fear precisely, but it is a sense of essential absence.
Who am I?
The bonus question on the neuroscience final exam was what is motivation? But the question left in my head after finishing the course is: who am I? Motivation is the reason I do things, yet what constructs the emergence of my motivation is also learning. Then who am I, really? Constructed by what? Randomness? Environment? What are the preconditions that give rise to my motivation in the first place?
"If sexual preferences can be flashed in like training a rat to wear a vest, if the dopamine release curve can be completely hijacked by a neutral odor (almond), then what exactly is 'I'? Am I the driver of this machine, or merely a hallucination, a byproduct, generated when the machine runs its code? The 'heart' is not a vessel containing a soul; it is merely the coherent sense of narrative produced when your cerebral cortex (the prefrontal cortex in particular) integrates all past experiential data. You believe there is a core 'I' making decisions, but that is really just a self-consistent story the brain forcibly weaves together so you can survive more effectively. If everything is nothing but synaptic connections and electrochemical signals, then: the subjective experiencer (You) who is, at this very moment, feeling nihility, feeling fear, reflecting on why they have these desires, trying to understand all of this. Where exactly are they?"
Chalmers named it the hard problem of consciousness in 1995. No one knows the answer. Reading this, something occurs to me: perhaps a breakthrough in intelligence can provide an answer. Or perhaps that answer is itself the prerequisite for intelligence to emerge.