Re: [ExI] Mental Phenomena

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 05:26, Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

>> With your robot example, you are proposing that we consider what qualia are, then change the system so that the qualia are inverted or disappear or are represented by a different, abstract method. The qualia would change, and the behaviour of the system would also change if it had a memory of what it was like before.

>Exactly.  The consensus Representational Qualia Theory says that consciousness is computationally bound elemental physical qualities, in the brain, like redness and grenness.  You can play all you want with thought experiments.  But if they do not include the minimum requirements to not be qualia blind thought experiments, you aren't really talking about the qualitative nature of consciousness or what it is like.  You are just talking about what computers can do and just quine or ignore qualia.

>>What I am proposing with the neural substitution is that you only attempt to reproduce the low level behaviour. So in a robot, if there is a LM741 op amp you can replace it with a TL071 op amp, which has a completely different internal circuit design but identical pins and similar performance.

>Yes, and all this is completely qualia blind.  You start with the assumption that whatever it is that has the redness quality we can directly experience can somehow "arise" in a disconnected or separate from reality "magic happens here" way.  If you could include anything in your thought experiment of things you are substituting that includes redness, and the ability to bind this with something physically different like grenness, this substitution thought experiment would be something more than absurd (i.e. only revealing of your ignorance of how consciousness is "computationally bound qualia.")  And also, I predict that no matter what you come up with as a prediction of what could be redness (whether functional, behavioral, physical, quantum, the right set of logic gates, the rite string of ones and zeros... or anything else, even including "magic happens here") you will find that this will be impossible, for the same reasons you don't think glutamate can be redness.  The way this thought experiment is designed qualia simply aren't possible, even magically.  It's just not logically possible in any way, without having the same problem you have with glutamate being redness.  To say nothing about the required neural ponytail binding system which can connect to brains so you can verify whether it has changed, or not, after the substitution.

You don’t think it’s possible the robot’s red qualia could be a property specific to the LM741 op amp? Neither do I. Here is why.

1. Suppose the red qualia are a specific property of the LM741 op amp, a component in the robot’s visual processing system.

2. The TL071 op amp has completely different internal circuitry to the LM741, but an identical pin configuration, and identical performance in the robot.

3. Therefore, if you replace the LM741 with TL071, the robot will behave the same in every way. You can observe it, test it, talk to it, connect it with a neural ponytail to your own brain: there can be no difference.

4. The conclusion is that red qualia cannot be a specific property of the LM741 op amp.

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Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruno Marchal]

On 21 Jan 2020, at 22:02, Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, 22 Jan 2020 at 05:26, Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

>> With your robot example, you are proposing that we consider what qualia are, then change the system so that the qualia are inverted or disappear or are represented by a different, abstract method. The qualia would change, and the behaviour of the system would also change if it had a memory of what it was like before.

>Exactly.  The consensus Representational Qualia Theory says that consciousness is computationally bound elemental physical qualities, in the brain, like redness and grenness.

How could a representational theory be related to (physical) qualities; What could be a physical qualities?

Above all, how could a anything (a physical universe, a god, whatever) select some computations in arithmetic?

  You can play all you want with thought experiments.  But if they do not include the minimum requirements to not be qualia blind thought experiments, you aren't really talking about the qualitative nature of consciousness or what it is like.  You are just talking about what computers can do and just quine or ignore qualia.

OK.

>>What I am proposing with the neural substitution is that you only attempt to reproduce the low level behaviour. So in a robot, if there is a LM741 op amp you can replace it with a TL071 op amp, which has a completely different internal circuit design but identical pins and similar performance.

>Yes, and all this is completely qualia blind.  You start with the assumption that whatever it is that has the redness quality we can directly experience can somehow "arise" in a disconnected or separate from reality "magic happens here" way.  If you could include anything in your thought experiment of things you are substituting that includes redness, and the ability to bind this with something physically different like grenness, this substitution thought experiment would be something more than absurd (i.e. only revealing of your ignorance of how consciousness is "computationally bound qualia.")  And also, I predict that no matter what you come up with as a prediction of what could be redness (whether functional, behavioral, physical, quantum, the right set of logic gates, the rite string of ones and zeros... or anything else, even including "magic happens here") you will find that this will be impossible, for the same reasons you don't think glutamate can be redness.  The way this thought experiment is designed qualia simply aren't possible, even magically.  It's just not logically possible in any way, without having the same problem you have with glutamate being redness.  To say nothing about the required neural ponytail binding system which can connect to brains so you can verify whether it has changed, or not, after the substitution.

You don’t think it’s possible the robot’s red qualia could be a property specific to the LM741 op amp? Neither do I. Here is why.

1. Suppose the red qualia are a specific property of the LM741 op amp, a component in the robot’s visual processing system.

2. The TL071 op amp has completely different internal circuitry to the LM741, but an identical pin configuration, and identical performance in the robot.

3. Therefore, if you replace the LM741 with TL071, the robot will behave the same in every way. You can observe it, test it, talk to it, connect it with a neural ponytail to your own brain: there can be no difference.

4. The conclusion is that red qualia cannot be a specific property of the LM741 op amp.

No, but it can still be the first person result of infinitely many computations structured by the logic of self-reference, which, as the rch (Löbian) machine already explain as something that can be felt immediately, can have shapes, is non rationally justifiable without invoking a notion of truth, cannot be communicated among subjects, etc.

Of course, the problem here is that if we follow this (computationalist) line, at some point we have to understand that there is no physical universe at all, except as a sort of consciousness selection of infinitely many histories in arithmetic.

Here the magic is still there, but is reduced into our unexplainable belief/understanding, if not consciousness, of the natural numbers. Here the advantage is that the machine can explain why this has to be unexplainable, unless assuming more unexplained objects.

The qualia red is what appears in those histories where machine develop vision together with “enough” self-reference abilities, and the Gödel-Löbian machine, which are just the machine believing in some induction axioms, can already explain why the qualia cannot have any representational theory. 

But there can be a theory, and the theory provided by the machine (X1*) is testable because it contains the whole theory of quanta (first person plural, the quanta are qualia at the start, they are the sharable part of the qualia). We cannot test it on the non sharable part, but we can test it on the sharable part: we can measure and communicate results to others, with the qualia, and the machine explains why there is an extension of quanta which is not communicable as such.

Bruno

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Stathis Papaioannou

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[Stathis Papaioannou]

I’m sorry, this thread is from another mailing list and seems to have been posted by mistake to the Everything List.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/039A6291-BA34-4BB3-ACCC-3728100B9E05%40ulb.ac.be.

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Stathis Papaioannou

[Bruno Marchal]

On 28 Jan 2020, at 17:58, Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

I’m sorry, this thread is from another mailing list and seems to have been posted by mistake to the Everything List.

I saw that, but those matters concerns anyone interested in unifying our (partial and plausibly wrong) conception of “everything". As the post is interesting I answered it, and ask question, also …

Bruno

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAH%3D2ypUGWg-aqyooepLu2Q2%2BLTDRSWYjj3sNjD%2BqsfNBzgw%2Bfw%40mail.gmail.com.