Experimental Qualia

[Gadersd]

John Clark has expressed the sentiment that qualia research is not worth pursuing as it has historically failed to produce anything worthwhile. We all, I hope, believe that qualia is real and that understanding it, if we could, would be valuable. Therefore I would like to present an experimental method that at least theoretically should provide insight into the nature of qualia.

John Clark previously pointed out that evolution only cares about what behaviors we exhibit. Evolution would only care about qualia in so far as it has an impact on our behavior.

Suppose that some aspect of qualia has no effect on behavior in any scenario.

Then solely altering this aspect, perhaps through brain surgery, would produce no change in behavior.

The subject cannot notice any change because noticing implies a change in behavior in some scenario, if asked about it after surgery for example.

Therefore any aspect of qualia that isn’t detectable through behavior changes is not noticeable even subjectively.

One can conclude that all aspects of qualia, at least all relevant aspects, are fully dependent on behavior. Therefore qualia can be characterized by behavior, which falls within the domain of the scientific method. The problem now is to determine scientifically the connection between behavioral changes and qualia changes.

Imagine a species of vegetarian animal on some planet that has magma covering much of its surface. Evolution in this case has an incentive to engineer qualia in such as way that the animals associate a beautiful qualia with water, a disturbing qualia with magma, and an attractive appetizing qualia with the plant life. Then the animals would be further encouraged beyond their learned associations to pursue areas with water and plants while avoiding magma.

The animals could be studied by rewiring the infant brains to switch the qualias. Their behaviors as they grow up would change at least slightly after the procedure. Some might try eating magma as it appears tasty, others might initially avoid food because it appears frightening. If the animals are intelligent then many would eventually adapt, but at least slight behavior changes should be evident especially early in life. The scientists could conclude that there are at least three qualia that the animals can see: a beautiful qualia usually associated with water, a disturbing qualia usually associated with magma, and an attractive appetizing qualia usually associated with vegetation. A simple study such as this would not likely fully characterize the qualia, but perhaps it would do so well enough to determine if two of the animals have a similar qualia experience when they see magma.

There seems to be some evidence that something similar is occurring in humans. The chart below shows that the distribution of favorite colors is very uneven but consistent. Some of this is surely due to nurture such that some colors are favored because they are learned to be associated with certain objects. I suspect that there is a nature factor too such that some colors are biased to be preferred from birth. Qualia each provide unique experiences and it would be wasteful for evolution to not take advantage of this. It would be beneficial if humans were naturally attracted, via qualia, to large bodies of water, dark bloody meat, and plant life.

The components of behavior due solely to qualia may be very slight. It may prove very difficult to characterize qualia purely in terms of behavior. It may not be worth the investment for research. I argue, however, that it is at least theoretically possible to fully characterize qualia through sufficient behavioral analysis.

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 14, 2023 at 1:38 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Suppose that some aspect of qualia has no effect on behavior in any scenario.

I don't think such a qualia could exist.

> any aspect of qualia that isn’t detectable through behavior changes is not noticeable even subjectively.

If it's not noticed subjectively then it's not a qualia. 

> Imagine a species of vegetarian animal on some planet that has magma covering much of its surface. Evolution in this case has an incentive to engineer qualia in such as way that the animals associate a beautiful qualia with water, a disturbing qualia with magma, and an attractive appetizing qualia with the plant life.

Natural Selection produced animals that were attracted or repelled by those things because those that were had more offspring, but whether that behavior was produced by a change in qualia is an unproven hypothesis, and so is the very idea that somebody or something other than ourselves is able to experience qualia at all. A change in behavior might or might not be associated with a change in qualia, if you replace a gear in a cuckoo clock with a different one  the little birdie will come out faster than it did before,  but the clock may not have experienced a different qualia as a result, or maybe you did, there's no way to tell even in theory.

> The animals could be studied by rewiring the infant brains to switch the qualias.

If you already had an understanding of how the brain works deeply enough to know how the brain produced qualia and how to switch it around then there would be no need to do further experiments on it. 

John K Clark

[Gadersd]

My point is that behavior patterns must be isomorphic to conscious experience, because otherwise qualia would have metaphysical properties that are not noticeable even subjectively.

I am not saying that all preferential behavior is caused by qualia. I am suggesting that qualia has an impact on it that can be experimentally tested. If the only thing you vary in an experiment is color perception such as switching color receptors in the eyes of infants and that influences behavior later in life then that tells you what impacts on behavior qualia has. Qualia is characterized and determined by the impact on behavior patterns.

If behavior patterns are isomorphic to experience, then if you want to know what it is like to be a bat you can theoretically get brain surgery that modifies your brain and auditory system to be capable of detecting sonar and using it to pinpoint the precise locations of insects in the dark. Once you have developed the ability to use sonar as bats do then you would know at least part of what it is like to be a bat. If qualia is not isomorphic to behavior then you must say that there are metaphysical aspects to it, that the total experience of a bat is more than behaving just like a bat.

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[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 14, 2023 at 3:52 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> My point is that behavior patterns must be isomorphic to conscious experience, because otherwise qualia would have metaphysical properties that are not noticeable even subjectively.

Not always, some people are very skilled at hiding their emotional inner life from others, you hear stories about people who were always smiling and joking around who then go home and slit their throat, and a great movie actor can look absolutely terrified when a stunt man is chasing him with a rubber ax covered in fake blood, but in reality he's as calm as a cucumber.  

> I am not saying that all preferential behavior is caused by qualia. I am suggesting that qualia has an impact on it that can be experimentally tested.

There's not even an experiment that can determine if a qualia even exists in something other than yourself, much less figure out its inner workings.   

> Qualia is characterized and determined by the impact on behavior patterns.

That theory may very well be true but a proof of its correctness will never be found and no counterexample will ever be found to prove it incorrect. So there's not much science can say about it.

 

> If qualia is not isomorphic to behavior then you must say that there are metaphysical aspects to it,

I know there is at least one conscious being in the observable universe and if consciousness is not related to behavior then Darwinian evolution could not  have produced that conscious being and you'd have to resort to voodoo of some sort to explain it. However that doesn't necessarily mean every qualia corresponds to an action because sometimes people just don't want other people to know what sort of qualia they're experiencing so they lie, for example if their boss who they hate asks them "are you mad at me?" they may say "no sir not at all you're a fine fellow".  

John K Clark

[Gadersd]

That is why I stated all scenarios. More precisely, qualia is characterized and determined by all its impacts on behavior in all possible scenarios. Behavior in all possible scenarios is isomorphic to the information processing that goes on in the brain. Hence, qualia is isomorphic to conscious experience, otherwise qualia has metaphysical properties.

It is therefore a tautology that behavior in all scenarios is isomorhic to conscious experience. This isn’t what needs to be tested. What needs to be tested is precisely what aspects of behavior are influenced by the excitations of color receptors.

Similar behavior patterns under all scenarios imply a similarity in qualia. If you can detect ultrasonic sound and pinpoint the locations of mosquitos in the dark, then I say you have a good idea about how a bat feels when it hears its meals.

If two creatures behave the same under all scenarios that implies they have exact experiences. No human wants to be exactly a bat, but experiencing sound like a bat does is something interesting.

If qualia is characterized by behavior under all scenarios then switching color receptors in infants and observing the subtle differences in behavior tells you what variations of behavior are caused by qualia. Match up the behavioral variations and you have matched up the qualia. In this way it can be determined in two people have the same qualia experience when they see the same apple. I’m not saying this is easy, but that it can be done in principle.

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[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Sun, 15 Jan 2023 at 08:45, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Jan 14, 2023 at 3:52 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> My point is that behavior patterns must be isomorphic to conscious experience, because otherwise qualia would have metaphysical properties that are not noticeable even subjectively.

Not always, some people are very skilled at hiding their emotional inner life from others, you hear stories about people who were always smiling and joking around who then go home and slit their throat, and a great movie actor can look absolutely terrified when a stunt man is chasing him with a rubber ax covered in fake blood, but in reality he's as calm as a cucumber.  

It’s not identical behaviour unless it’s identical under all circumstances. The actor would stop running if the director asked him to, whereas if he really believed an ax murderer were after him he wouldn’t stop. Hence the claim: any change that does not change behaviour (in this broader sense) does not change qualia.

> I am not saying that all preferential behavior is caused by qualia. I am suggesting that qualia has an impact on it that can be experimentally tested.

There's not even an experiment that can determine if a qualia even exists in something other than yourself, much less figure out its inner workings.   

> Qualia is characterized and determined by the impact on behavior patterns.

That theory may very well be true but a proof of its correctness will never be found and no counterexample will ever be found to prove it incorrect. So there's not much science can say about it.

 

> If qualia is not isomorphic to behavior then you must say that there are metaphysical aspects to it,

I know there is at least one conscious being in the observable universe and if consciousness is not related to behavior then Darwinian evolution could not  have produced that conscious being and you'd have to resort to voodoo of some sort to explain it. However that doesn't necessarily mean every qualia corresponds to an action because sometimes people just don't want other people to know what sort of qualia they're experiencing so they lie, for example if their boss who they hate asks them "are you mad at me?" they may say "no sir not at all you're a fine fellow".  

John K Clark

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Stathis Papaioannou

[Gadersd]

"Hence, qualia is isomorphic to conscious experience, otherwise qualia has metaphysical properties.”

Typo. It should be:

Hence, behavior is isomorphic to conscious experience, otherwise aspects of consciousness such as qualia have metaphysical properties.

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 14, 2023 at 5:06 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> some people are very skilled at hiding their emotional inner life from others, you hear stories about people who were always smiling and joking around who then go home and slit their throat, and a great movie actor can look absolutely terrified when a stunt man is chasing him with a rubber ax covered in fake blood, but in reality he's as calm as a cucumber.

 

> That is why I stated all scenarios. More precisely, qualia is characterized and determined by all its impacts on behavior in all possible scenarios. Behavior in all possible scenarios is isomorphic to the information processing that goes on in the brain

 

All? As I said before, refusing to tell people or reveal through your actions what qualia  you're experiencing is a "possible scenario". 

> If two creatures behave the same under all scenarios that implies they have exact experiences.

Most soldiers who have received medals for exceptional bravery said they were terrified but they did it anyway, however there is a very small group of people who have a damaged amygdala who apparently are incapable of feeling fear. Needless to say this is a dangerous condition, if you or I were standing on railroad tracks and a train was about to hit we'd get an adrenaline rush and jump off reflexively, but they'd have to analyze the situation starting from the premise that continuing to live is desirable and then logically deduce that given its trajectory the train will almost certainly hit you and that impact will almost certainly kill you so it would be wise to get off. But by the time you finished your ruminations you'd probably be dead.

You can conclude from this that the amygdala is an important part in the brain's chain of events that produces the fear qualia, or at least you can if you make use of the axiom that consciousness is the way data feels when it is processed intelligently and thus other intelligent beings beside yourself are conscious, but it still doesn't give you a better fundamental understanding of consciousness or qualia.

The Human Amygdala and the Induction and Experience of Fear

 

Meet the people who literally feel no fear

 

> No human wants to be exactly a bat, but experiencing sound like a bat does is something interesting.

Sure, I'd love to be able to echolocate as well as a bat, and then I'd know what it's like for one human (me) to be able to echolocate, but I still wouldn't know what it's like for you to echolocate much less what it would be like for a bat.

> If qualia is characterized by behavior under all scenarios then switching color receptors in infants and [...]

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean just switching the positions of the cone cells in the retina of the eye that are sensitive to the red and green wavelengths of light? If that's all you mean then it's trivial and I don't see any way it could make a difference objectively or subjectively.  And even if by some miracle it did there is no control to compare it to.

John K Clark

 

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jan 14, 2023 at 5:20 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>> My point is that behavior patterns must be isomorphic to conscious experience, because otherwise qualia would have metaphysical properties that are not noticeable even subjectively.

>> Not always, some people are very skilled at hiding their emotional inner life from others, you hear stories about people who were always smiling and joking around who then go home and slit their throat, and a great movie actor can look absolutely terrified when a stunt man is chasing him with a rubber ax covered in fake blood, but in reality he's as calm as a cucumber.  

> It’s not identical behaviour unless it’s identical under all circumstances.

It only takes one exception for the statement "behavior patterns must be isomorphic to conscious experience" to be untrue.  

> any change that does not change behaviour (in this broader sense) does not change qualia.

Any? Actions can be a good rule of thumb in deducing the nature of qualia that others are experiencing (provided of course that you accept the axiom that other people have qualia at all) but it is not a fundamental law there are exceptions, it's just a heuristic rule of thumb.

John K Clark

[Brent Allsop]

A thread on "experimental qualia" is the greatest!!  😍😍😍 Thanks!!

But why is everyone talking about experimenting on everything but the qualia, or at best something completely separated from the qualia, itself????

The calm as a cucumber acor could be programmed to not stop running (or behave any way programmable), even when the director tells him to stop.

These 3 systems could all be programmed to behave the same, in ALL circumstances, including when you ask: "What is redness like for you."

They could all say: "My redness is like glutamate".  (or for all you non materialists: "my redness is like your redness")  but of course two of the above systems would be lying in that case.

Oh, and I should include a bat, after the robot, echolocating a strawberry, also engineered to represent its conscious knowledge of the echolocated strawberry with glutamate/redness.

Why does nobody talk about the objectively/experimentally observable behavior of only redness, itself, of which consciousness is composed, so you can tell if they are lying or not?

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[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 15, 2023 at 9:31 AM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

> why is everyone talking about experimenting on everything but the qualia, or at best something completely separated from the qualia, itself????

Because there's no way even in theory to employ the scientific method in an investigation of the fundamental nature of qualia itself. So there's nothing to talk about.

John K Clark

 

[Brent Allsop]

Hi John,

We all know you never stop repeating this claim, that colorness is not approachable via objective science.  But this "there is no way" claim would be falsified If experimentalists demonstrated that computationally bound glutamate always produced the same redness experience, and that nobody could ever experience redness (i.e. no function could ever produce redness), without glutamate.  And nobody could ever demonstrate an exception to that.  That being the weakest form of 3 ways to falsify your "no way" claim.  You know, infallibly, that redness in your left brain hemisphere is the same as redness in your right hemisphere.

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[William Flynn Wallace]

You know, infallibly, that redness in your left brain hemisphere is the same as redness in your right hemisphere.

That is not necessarily true.  We know that the corpus callosum can inhibit input to the right hemisphere when the input is language.  The CC is not just a carrier.   bill w

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[Stathis Papaioannou]

A change in a part of the brain that leaves the behaviour of the rest of the brain unchanged must also leave the qualia unchanged. That’s not just a rule of thumb, if it were false, even if only in theory, it would make the concept of qualia meaningless, because you could have an arbitrarily large change in your qualia without noticing.

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Stathis Papaioannou

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 15, 2023 at 10:06 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

> A change in a part of the brain that leaves the behaviour of the rest of the brain unchanged must also leave the qualia unchanged. That’s not just a rule of thumb,

Not if the part of the brain that has been changed is the part that produces the qualia. And you have no way of proving that the brain you're investigating is even capable of producing qualia. For all we know rocks are capable of producing qualia but they are incapable of producing actions so we have no way of knowing or even suspecting that they're conscious. Personally I doubt that rocks are conscious because I have accepted the axiom that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed intelligently, and I see no evidence that rocks are capable of processing information.

John K Clark

[Brent Allsop]

Hi William,

We are both making different falsifiable claims.

Diniel Dennet's 4th property of qualia prediction:

    Qualia are 4: directly or immediately apprehensible by consciousness

You are completely correct, when you say "The CC is not just a carrier."  The corpus callosum is doing far more than communication carrying information.  It is computationally binding whatever is redness in one hemisphere with the same stuff in the other, so you can be directly or immediately aware of what both of them are like, at the same time, infallibly.  (same as "I think therefore I am") The prediction is that consciousness is computationally bound elemental intrinsic physical qualities, like redness and greenness.

If you really think differently, you should create a competing camp to "Representational Qualia Theory", making your different predictions.  And let's see how much consensus it can achieve in comparison, and more importantly, which one will hold up under all  future experimental demonstrations?

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Stathis,

On Sun, Jan 15, 2023 at 8:06 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

A change in a part of the brain that leaves the behaviour of the rest of the brain unchanged must also leave the qualia unchanged. That’s not just a rule of thumb, if it were false, even if only in theory, it would make the concept of qualia meaningless, because you could have an arbitrarily large change in your qualia without noticing.

Why are you always trying to misdirect us away from what the rest of us are talking about?  We are talking about whatever redness is.  And if redness changes to greenness, whatever that is must change.  Whatever that change is, is different from anything that doesn't change, which is all you ever talk about, I'm talking about something that does change, both objectively and subjectively.  Whatever does change, when redness does not change, is not what I'm talking about.  I'm talking about what does change.  There must be some objectively observable change, when redness changes to greenness. That change is what I'm talking about.

 

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 15, 2023 at 9:57 AM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi John, We all know you never stop repeating this claim, that colorness is not approachable via objective science. 

Yep.

> But this "there is no way" claim would be falsified If experimentalists demonstrated that computationally bound glutamate always produced the same redness experience, and that nobody could ever experience redness (i.e. no function could ever produce redness), without glutamate. 

You would certainly be correct about that IF you could do what you describe in the above, but even in theory you can't. You might be able to prove that glutamate is necessary for an animal to respond to red light, but there's no way you could prove it produced the redness qualia, or any other qualia, the only thing you can prove is that your own brain can produce qualia and unfortunately that proof is available only to yourself.

John K Clark

 

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 15, 2023 at 10:20 AM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

>If you really think differently, you should create a competing camp to "Representational Qualia Theory", making your different predictions.

I am unable to make any predictions about consciousness, however I can make a prediction about consciousness theories; none of them developed over the next century will be worth a damn, or over the next millennium, or over the time it takes for the Milky Way to make a complete rotation.

John K Clark

 

  

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[Brent Allsop]

Why do you just continue to bleat and tweet this noise, which doesn't convince anyone, and not explicitly join the minority people in the  "Not approachable Via Science" camp?  If they (and you) had more support, they wouldn't appear to be so faithless, crazy and lonely?

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[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 15, 2023 at 10:37 AM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

> Why do you just continue to bleat and tweet this noise, 

I may bleat but John Clark don't tweet. And why do you keep sending the same cartoon to the list over and over again?

John K Clark

 

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[Stathis Papaioannou]

Yes, even if the change is made in a part if the brain that is assumed to produce the qualia, such as Brent’s glutamate, the qualia must be preserved if the replacement part interacts with the rest of the brain in the same way as the original part. If not, then the qualia would change while the behaviour remained the same. That means the subject could go blind, but would continue functioning normally and declare that everything looked normal. Also, you don’t have to know that the subject has qualia in order to follow this reasoning, because the conclusion is just that whatever qualia there may be, they don’t change.

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Stathis Papaioannou

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 15, 2023 at 11:39 AM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>> A change in a part of the brain that leaves the behaviour of the rest of the brain unchanged must also leave the qualia unchanged. That’s not just a rule of thumb,

>> Not if the part of the brain that has been changed is the part that produces the qualia. And you have no way of proving that the brain you're investigating is even capable of producing qualia. For all we know rocks are capable of producing qualia but they are incapable of producing actions so we have no way of knowing or even suspecting that they're conscious. Personally I doubt that rocks are conscious because I have accepted the axiom that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed intelligently, and I see no evidence that rocks are capable of processing information.

> Yes, even if the change is made in a part if the brain that is assumed to produce the qualia, such as Brent’s glutamate, the qualia must be preserved if the replacement part interacts with the rest of the brain in the same way as the original part.

That would be a valid conclusion only if you made use of my axiom that consciousness (and thus qualia) is the way data feels when it is being processed intelligently because there are many ways to process information, so adding 2+2 remains being 4 regardless of if the calculation is made on a modern microprocessor or an old fashioned adding machine. But if you use a different fundamental axiom, such as consciousness and qualia can only be produced by a brain that is soft and squishy and not hard and dry, then your conclusion would be false. There's no way either axiom can be proved to be true or false, that's why they're axioms, but I still like mine better because with the alternative you'd need an additional axiom of some sort to explain why Evolution bothered to produce consciousness at all. With my axiom alone it's easy to explain why Evolution bothered to produce consciousness and that needs to be explained because everybody knows for certain that at least one conscious being exists in the universe.

John K Clark

[Gadersd]

My axiom is that no part of qualia or consciousness is metaphysical. I like my axiom better, even though I can’t prove it.

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[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 15, 2023 at 12:36 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> My axiom is that no part of qualia or consciousness is metaphysical.  I like my axiom better, even though I can’t prove it.

Mine is more specific but your axiom is perfectly consistent with my axiom, although some (but not me) would say claiming that something is true without being able to prove it is metaphysical even though the only alternative is to keep on asking iterative "why" questions forever. 

John K Clark

 

 

[Gadersd]

I agree that your axiom is more specific and that mine is more general.

Suppose there is some aspect of qualia that can be changed and this alteration is not experimentally testable even in principle. Then the change in qualia causes no change in behavior under any circumstance and it is not even subjectively noticeable. It is then clear that this aspect of qualia is metaphysical. My axiom rejects this as a possibility. Therefore any change in qualia must cause a corresponding change in behavior under some circumstance.

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[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 15, 2023 at 2:07 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I agree that your axiom is more specific and that mine is more general.

When picking axioms one should be super conservative,  the simpler an axiom is the better, and it should not cover more ground than is absolutely necessary.  

> Suppose there is some aspect of qualia that can be changed and this alteration is not experimentally testable even in principle.

It's not experimentally testable because there's no way to prove that some aspect of qualia has actually been changed or even show that the experimental subject is capable of feeling qualia.

 > and it is not even subjectively noticeable.

If something is not subjectively noticeable then it's not a qualia.

John K Clark

 

[Gadersd]

If you prefer more specific axioms that allow for metaphysical things to exist, well, that is your preference I suppose.

What I gave is an argument by contradiction. The absurdity of the supposition is the whole point of the proof method, otherwise there wouldn’t be a contradiction.

You agree that all qualia must be subjectively noticeable. It is possible to experimentally test if someone notices a subjective difference. An honest person could simply say that he or she noticed a difference. Qualia alteration experiments are easy to perform if the subjects are cooperative. More contrived experiments would be needed if the subjects are uncooperative, but are not impossible in principle.

Also, just because you are unable to think of an experiment that can fully characterize qualia doesn’t mean that such an experiment doesn’t exist.

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[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 15, 2023 at 2:47 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> If you prefer more specific axioms that allow for metaphysical things to exist, well, that is your preference I suppose.

I don't like metaphysical bullshit any better than you do but I didn't need to add that to my axiom to get it to do what I wanted it to do. 

> It is possible to experimentally test if someone notices a subjective difference. An honest person could simply say that he or she noticed a difference.

I don't know how you could ever be certain they were being honest, but let's assume for the sake of argument that everybody involved was acting in good faith and was being as honest as they knew how to be, it doesn't matter because when you and I are talking about consciousness or qualia how do we even know we're talking about the same thing? It could be that your experience of being conscious is so much larger and more magnificent than mine that it would be like comparing the brilliance of a supernova with a firefly. So when you ask me if I'm conscious I'd say "yes" and think I am telling the truth, but the word "conscious" does not mean the same for me as it does for you.  

> Qualia alteration experiments are easy to perform if the subjects are cooperative.

Correction, behavior alteration experiments are easy to perform and, although it would be a little more difficult, they can be performed even if the subjects are not cooperative. But qualia alteration experiments are a different matter entirely.

John K Clark

 

[Brent Allsop]

On Sun, Jan 15, 2023 at 3:03 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

But qualia alteration experiments are a different matter entirely.

Yup, and it's only a matter of time before a company directly interfacing with the brain like neuralink is able to produce more than just white 'sprites" (like a white star or a pixel) in a blind person's conscious visual field by stimulating the primary visual cortex.  They'll discover what it is that has a redness quality, then they eventually will be able to stimulate causing colored sprites, and say:  "That is John's redness" and there is a chance the subject will say: "Oh my that is my greenness."  or more likely than not, John, who seems to care less about what redness is actually like will say something more like: "Oh my I've never experienced redness like that before.  No wonder people want to know what that redness is like and I haven't cared as much!  Thank you for finally enabling me to experience that."

 

[Stathis Papaioannou]

And companies like Neuralink will extend to replacing brain parts, initially in brain damaged patients, with electronic parts, which would only be acceptable to recipients if the qualia are preserved.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Stathis,

Yup, and they won't be able to get anyone to experience redness, without something like physical glutamate.

 

[Stathis Papaioannou]

Which would mean, if it is true in theory rather than just due to technical difficulties, that qualia are meaningless, because it would be possible to alter people so that they behave the same but have completely different or absent qualia.

 

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Brent Allsop]

I'm sure looking forward to when they start hacking brains, and finally proving  who needs to jump camps to THE ONE camp that is correct.

Would anyone be interested in placing  any bets on who will be the first one to jump camps, me or Stathis?

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[Gadersd]

>Correction, behavior alteration experiments are easy to perform

Would rewiring the light receptors in the eyes not alter what qualia someone experiences when he or she sees a red apple? I strongly suspect it would. Perhaps the person would then see a green apple. The person would call it a green apple while most others would call it a red apple. In this case an alteration of qualia leads to an alteration of behavior.

I don’t claim that the above experiment yields any profound insights, but it demonstrates my point that changes in what qualia someone experiences is detectable through a change in behavior.

>when you and I are talking about consciousness or qualia how do we even know we're talking about the same thing?

There has to be some grounding for comparison. The basis of comparison in this case is behavior. If two entities behave in identical ways in all scenarios that is strong evidence that the same information processing is going on in their heads and that they have the same experiences.

I know you believe that information processing is isomorphic to conscious experience. Behavior under all scenarios is isomorphic to information processing. Therefore behavior under all scenarios is isomorphic to conscious experience.

I should emphasize that neuron firing counts as behavior, just internal as opposed to external behavior such as speaking. However, it is easier to use external behavior as a basis of comparison rather than internal behavior as neurons can be arranged in various different ways while maintaining the same information processing. If you like, we can couch all this in the terminology of information processing since that seems to be your preference.

The experience of qualia is isomorphic to some kind of information processing. We do not know the exact information processing that corresponds to particular qualia but this can be observed through experiment. Take a large group of people. Show each person a number of different objects, each reflecting a different wavelength of light. Record the information processing that goes in each brain with each different colored object. Take the intersections of the information processing of each person with respect to a single color of light. This is the common information processing corresponding to that color. It can then be said that this particular subset of information processing corresponds to whatever qualia is associated with each color. Do the same for all the colors. Now one has a characterization of what information processing corresponds to the perception of each color qualia initiated by light.

The above experiment assumes that each person perceives the same qualia if the wavelength of light is the same. This is reasonable as human brains work in very similar ways. However, it is not necessary to assume this, but relaxing this assumption increases the complexity of the experiments needed.

For example, take the correspondence between light wavelength and qualia to be unknown for each person. Then the experimental procedure may be altered as follows.

For each subject, duplicate his or her brain precisely so that you have a number of identical subjects. The duplication provides a baseline for comparison. Create a set of models in number equal to the number of distinct color qualia that humans are capable of distinguishing, that each describes an information processing distribution. Show each object of different color to each duplicated subject and each original subject.

Now define an arbitrary baseline for matching color labels to qualia. Choose one subject. The red qualia shall be defined to be equivalent to what this person experiences when seeing red light and for green, orange, etc.

Now the maximum likelihood method is used to fit the model distributions and to assign color labels to the qualia. The likelihood function to be used is P(qualia label matches and model distributions | experimental data). This probability is equivalent to 

P(experimental data | qualia label matches and model distributions) * P(qualia label matches and model distributions) / P(experimental data). 

P(experimental data) is a constant and can be thrown away. For P(qualia label matches and model distributions) the qualia label matches are taken to be uniform so the term can be taken to just be the a priori distribution of model distributions which is simply a regularization term which can be chosen rather arbitrarily. The last piece P(experimental data | qualia label matches and model distributions) is simply the probability of the experimental data given that the models are correct.

The parameters of the models are moved in the direction of the gradient of the likelihood function. The wavelength to qualia matching for each original subject, except for the baseline defined by the one arbitrarily chosen subject, is enumerated to maximize the likelihood function.

At the end of the process one has a set of models that describe a distribution of information processing that each correspond to each qualia and a wavelength to qualia matching function for each set of distinct subjects.

Take a new subject. Acquire information processing data for each wavelength of light. Use the likelihood function and maximize it only this time only enumerating the qualia labeling function while keeping the models constant. After the maximization one now has a labeling of which wavelength of light corresponds to which qualia using the previously defined qualia labeling baseline.

In this way the question of whether two people experience the same color qualia when seeing the sample apple can be answered.

Outward behavior may provide a better basis of comparison than information processing as information processing may be difficult to compare. In this case the models would describe distributions of behavior instead.

I am done. If this is not clear, then I am sorry. My job is to create machine learning models, not explain them. I hope this gives at least someone some insight into the matter. This is a difficult problem and hard to explain in plain English.

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[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Mon, 16 Jan 2023 at 10:54, Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm sure looking forward to when they start hacking brains, and finally proving  who needs to jump camps to THE ONE camp that is correct.

Would anyone be interested in placing  any bets on who will be the first one to jump camps, me or Stathis?

We have already started hacking brains. Cochlear implants have been available for years, and some recipients claim that their auditory qualia are similar to before.

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Stathis Papaioannou

[Gadersd]

I made a mistake in the case of the second experiment description. Duplicating the brain of each of subject is unnecessary.

I will try to give a more lucid explanation, this time with a picture.

Three subjects are considered here. For simplicity it is assumed that humans only possess three kinds of color qualia. There are three models, one for each color qualia, and these three models are shared for each subject. The qualia experience of the first subject is used as a reference such that red qualia is defined to be the color qualia the first subject experiences when he or she sees red light, and so on for the other two color qualia and colors. Each model predicts a distribution of time sequences of brain states that corresponds with the model’s associated qualia. For example, one model, redq, predicts a distribution of brain states that correspond with the experience of red qualia.

rc^n is the brain state sequence data that corresponds with subject number n experiencing the color qualia he or she experiences for red light and so on for gc^n and bc^n. The data is collected by shining light of a certain wavelength into the eyes of each subject and recording a time sequence of brain states.

Once the data is collected the likelihood function is formulated. This is the probability of the prediction models generating brain state sequences that match the recorded data given a particular order of prediction models for each subject. The likelihood function is maximized by permuting the prediction models and altering the parameters of the prediction models until the maximum likelihood is reached. Notice that the predictions models are not permuted for the first subject since the first subject is used as the reference for labeling color qualia.

Once the likelihood function is maximized the resulting prediction models reflect the distribution of brain state sequences that correspond to the experience of each color qualia. The prediction models have been permuted for each subject such that the color qualia (using subject 1 as a reference) is matched to the light wavelength for each subject. Then the association between light wavelength and qualia is established and the question of whether two subjects experience the same color qualia when they see light of the same wavelength is solved.

The resulting prediction models can be theoretically tested in the following manner. Acquire a new subject and duplicate the subject’s brain precisely. Rewire the color receptors in the duplicate. Acquire data of the new subject and the duplicate in the same manner as before. Then permute the predictions models for both subjects to maximize the likelihood function. If the duplicate’s color receptors are modified such that he/she now experiences green light as the original experiences red light then the order of the prediction models should reflect this. In other words, if the original perceived red light as qualia x, then the duplicate should perceive green light as qualia x. Then the prediction models should have matched red light with qualia x for the original and green light with qualia x for the duplicate. If this isn’t the case, then the prediction models have failed. In this way this method can be falsified.

Intuitively, this method utilizes the principle that conscious experience is isomorphic to the information processing that goes on in the brain. Similar information processing implies similar brain state sequences. Similar brain state sequences imply similar experiences. This method partitions the information processing characteristics of the human brain into discrete distributions, each corresponding to a particular color qualia experience. A similar method that uses outward behavioral distribution predictions could also be used, although it would likely require significantly more data for similar performance.

In summary, through the fundamental principle of the isomorphism between information processing and conscious experience, the connection among brain states, light wavelength, and color qualia can be established.

I think I’ll go to sleep now.

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 15, 2023 at 6:00 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

 > it's only a matter of time before a company directly interfacing with the brain like neuralink is able to produce more than just white 'sprites" (like a white star or a pixel) in a blind person's conscious visual field by stimulating the primary visual cortex.  They'll discover what it is that has a redness quality, then they eventually will be able to stimulate causing colored sprites,

We don't have to wait for that to happen, we could do it right now. As I mentioned before, applying mild pressure to the eye in a dark room will cause most people to say they see colors. and when a person receives a sharp blow to the head they often report seeing red stars, but those observations have not helped one bit in obtaining a further understanding of qualia, or let us know what redness seems like to others.

> and say:  "That is John's redness"

 

What exactly is the referent to the pronoun "that" in the above? Is it that my redness is a blow on the head?  Is it that my redness is pressure on my eyeball? And why would you be unsatisfied with saying "my redness is electromagnetic waves with a wavelength of 700 nanometers" but be perfectly satisfied with saying "my redness is an electrical probe placed in a particular spot in my brain"? How does that enable you to jump over the astronomically huge objective/subjective canyon?

 John K Clark

[John Clark]

On Sun, Jan 15, 2023 at 7:12 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Would rewiring the light receptors in the eyes not alter what qualia someone experiences when he or she sees a red apple?

If you exchanged the nerves that are connected to the cone cells in the eye that are sensitive to red light with cone cells in the eye that are sensitive to green light they would certainly report that they see a difference, provided you didn't also mess around with their memories about what red apples used to look like. However you could produce the same results far more easily by simply requiring your test subject to wear colored glasses. Both experiments would give you exactly the same amount of new information about the fundamental nature of qualia and consciousness, ZERO.

> I don’t claim that the above experiment yields any profound insights, but it demonstrates my point that changes in what qualia someone experiences is detectable through a change in behavior.

That doesn't say a thing about qualia, it says if you rewire the nerve connections to the eye or have the subject wear colored glasses then the test subject will make noises with his mouth that sound like "I see a color change".  

>when you and I are talking about consciousness or qualia how do we even know we're talking about the same thing?

> There has to be some grounding for comparison. The basis of comparison in this case is behavior. If two entities behave in identical ways in all scenarios that is strong evidence that the same information processing is going on in their heads and that they have the same experiences.

I think that's probably correct, that's why I believe that when a computer behaves as if it's conscious, that is to say when it behaves intelligently, it really is conscious despite the fact that its silicon-based brain is dry and hard and not wet and squishy like my carbon-based brain.  However I can't prove that my hunch is true and will never be able to. 

> I know you believe that information processing is isomorphic to conscious experience. Behavior under all scenarios is isomorphic to information processing. Therefore behavior under all scenarios is isomorphic to conscious experience.

No. For a computer to be useful there needs to be more than just an information processor in it, there also has to be an input and output mechanism. Stephen Hawking remained brilliant till the day he died but near the end of his life the only way he could communicate to the outside world is by the only voluntary action he could still perform, a slight twitch to a muscle in his cheek, if he had lived a few more years he wouldn't have been able to do even that, and yet I believe Stephen Hawking was as conscious as you are. For all we know rocks are both brilliant and conscious but lack any input output mechanism.

> I should emphasize that neuron firing counts as behavior, just internal as opposed to external behavior such as speaking.

I agree, and that's why nobody will ever be able to jump over the objective/subjective gap, and that's why my axiom is necessary.  

> The experience of qualia is isomorphic to some kind of information processing. We do not know the exact information processing that corresponds to particular qualia but this can be observed through experiment.

Impossible.  

> Take a large group of people. Show each person a number of different objects, each reflecting a different wavelength of light. Record the information processing that goes in each brain with each different colored object. Take the intersections of the information processing of each person with respect to a single color of light. This is the common information processing corresponding to that color. It can then be said that this particular subset of information processing corresponds to whatever qualia is associated with each color

 

You said "neuron firing counts as behavior" and you were quite correct, therefore more information about neuron firinging will give us more information about behavior, but it will not give us more information about consciousness. 

> The above experiment assumes that each person perceives the same qualia if the wavelength of light is the same.

I thought that was the sort of thing we were trying to prove, but now you're just assuming it.  

> For each subject, duplicate his or her brain precisely so that you have a number of identical subjects. The duplication provides a baseline for comparison. Create a set of models in number equal to the number of distinct color qualia that humans are capable of distinguishing,

Before you do any of that you need to establish that humans other than yourself are capable of experiencing any qualia at all, and you have not done that.

> Now define an arbitrary baseline for matching color labels to qualia.

Whoa! You can't just slip that in, you haven't even established that qualia is in any way involved, much less found a way to calibrate it.

John K Clark

[Gadersd]

I’m sorry that you are unable to grasp the concepts. I believe that I have sufficiently explained the concepts involved for those who are interested and have a desire to understand so I’ll lay this one to rest for now.

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[Stuart LaForge]

On Saturday, January 14, 2023 at 12:52:31 PM UTC-8 Hermes Trismegistus wrote:

My point is that behavior patterns must be isomorphic to conscious experience, because otherwise qualia would have metaphysical properties that are not noticeable even subjectively.

While there is a tendency for behavior patterns to correlate with conscious experience, it is not absolute and certainly not isomorphic. For one thing, while some behaviors are evolutionary hardwired into sentient creatures to respond to specific stimuli, such as reflexes, the vast majority of behaviors in sapient beings is learned. For example, it is known from the literature that chili peppers evolved capsaicin to prevent herbivorous insects and mammals from eating them while allowing birds, who don't have the receptors to "feel the burn", to eat them, fly miles away and disperse the seeds in their droppings. Yet at least in human primates, it was learned that the burning sensation, while uncomfortable to some, is ultimately harmless and added flavor to bland or stale foods. We know this because any first experience by a child eating chili peppers is likely to be somewhat traumatic for the child. Despite this many adults go out of their way to pay premium prices for extremely piquant hot sauces. Clearly the relationship between qualia and behavior in this instance is not absolute or isomorphic.

Another clear cut empirical example between the disconnect between conscious experience and behavior is with dreams. If  a person is asleep and dreaming, their external behavior appears to be REM sleep, regardless if they are consciously (unconsciously?) experiencing a terrifying nightmare, asexual dream, or a euphoric dream. Three very different experiences correlated with identical behaviors.

Does these observations imply that qualia have metaphysical properties? Perhaps, but I don't have time to go into that right now.

Stuart LaForge 

 not saying that all preferential behavior is caused by qualia. I am suggesting that qualia has an impact on it that can be experimentally tested. If the only thing you vary in an experiment is color perception such as switching color receptors in the eyes of infants and that influences behavior later in life then that tells you what impacts on behavior qualia has. Qualia is characterized and determined by the impact on behavior patterns.

If behavior patterns are isomorphic to experience, then if you want to know what it is like to be a bat you can theoretically get brain surgery that modifies your brain and auditory system to be capable of detecting sonar and using it to pinpoint the precise locations of insects in the dark. Once you have developed the ability to use sonar as bats do then you would know at least part of what it is like to be a bat. If qualia is not isomorphic to behavior then you must say that there are metaphysical aspects to it, that the total experience of a bat is more than behaving just like a bat.

On Jan 14, 2023, at 3:28 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Jan 14, 2023 at 1:38 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Suppose that some aspect of qualia has no effect on behavior in any scenario.

I don't think such a qualia could exist.

> any aspect of qualia that isn’t detectable through behavior changes is not noticeable even subjectively.

If it's not noticed subjectively then it's not a qualia. 

> Imagine a species of vegetarian animal on some planet that has magma covering much of its surface. Evolution in this case has an incentive to engineer qualia in such as way that the animals associate a beautiful qualia with water, a disturbing qualia with magma, and an attractive appetizing qualia with the plant life.

Natural Selection produced animals that were attracted or repelled by those things because those that were had more offspring, but whether that behavior was produced by a change in qualia is an unproven hypothesis, and so is the very idea that somebody or something other than ourselves is able to experience qualia at all. A change in behavior might or might not be associated with a change in qualia, if you replace a gear in a cuckoo clock with a different one  the little birdie will come out faster than it did before,  but the clock may not have experienced a different qualia as a result, or maybe you did, there's no way to tell even in theory.

> The animals could be studied by rewiring the infant brains to switch the qualias.

If you already had an understanding of how the brain works deeply enough to know how the brain produced qualia and how to switch it around then there would be no need to do further experiments on it. 

John K Clark

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[Gadersd]

It seems we are using different internal definitions here. I don’t mean to imply that unpleasant experiences must be correlated with behavior that avoids the cause of the unpleasant experience.

When I say that behavior and experience are isomorphic I am referring to information. If one has all the information detailing all the behavior someone would exhibit under all scenarios then that is equivalent to knowing how information is taken in through the senses and processed through the brain to yield behavioral outputs.

As an analogy, it is like knowing the output of a computer for each possible input. If one knows this then one knows what kind of information processing is happening inside the computer to produce the outputs.

The idea I am trying to convey is that consciousness is just information processing so that if one knows all the input/output characteristics of a human then one knows what relevant information processing must be going on inside the head.

It may be that there is some information processing going on in the head that doesn’t affect behavioral outputs. If this particular information processing cannot ever have any behavioral effect under any circumstance, then I reason that such information processing doesn’t contribute to conscious experience because if something is consciously noticeable then it can have an effect on behavior as the person could say it out loud that he or she noticed something.

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[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 10:41 AM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I’m sorry that you are unable to grasp the concepts.

Are you sure there's anything there to grasp? I brought up some pretty significant points that remain unanswered. 

John K Clark 

 

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[Gadersd]

We have both tried to answer each other’s points, but it seems that something is lost in translation. Perhaps I should have been absolutely rigorous and defined every term I used but I suspect that would isolate some of the audience and would be tedious for me as well. I loathe philosophy for its imprecise terminology.

I don’t see many logical errors around here but I do see a lot of misinterpretation. We might as well be speaking broken Chinese. I think agreeing to disagree is all that can be done to end this civilly at this point.

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[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 11:43 AM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> When I say that behavior and experience are isomorphic I am referring to information. If one has all the information detailing all the behavior someone would exhibit under all scenarios then that is equivalent to knowing how information is taken in through the senses and processed through the brain to yield behavioral outputs. As an analogy, it is like knowing the output of a computer for each possible input. If one knows this then one knows what kind of information processing is happening inside the computer to produce the outputs. The idea I am trying to convey is that consciousness is just information processing so that if one knows all the input/output characteristics of a human then one knows what relevant information processing must be going on inside the head.

 

That's not necessarily true. If I program a computer to find the first even number greater than 2 that is not the sum of two primes and then stop, will it ever stop? Nobody knows, all you can do is watch it and see what it does, and you might be watching forever.  

> If this particular information processing cannot ever have any behavioral effect under any circumstance, then I reason that such information processing doesn’t contribute to conscious experience because if something is consciously noticeable then it can have an effect on behavior as the person could say it out loud that he or she noticed something.

Stephen Hawking was incapable of saying anything and dictated his last scientific paper by twitching a muscle in his cheek, if he had lost control of his cheek muscle would he no longer be a conscious being?  

John K Clark  

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 12:33 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

 >Perhaps I should have been absolutely rigorous and defined every term I used 

There is no way you can jump over the enormous objective/subjective canyon with a definition, any definition. 

John K Clark  

[Gadersd]

>Nobody knows, all you can do is watch it and see what it does, and you might be watching forever.

That is an irreverent detail. What I gave was meant to be a simple analogy to help understanding. All the computers we practically use have limitations. Besides, the human brain isn’t even Turing complete without a scratchpad.

>Stephen Hawking was incapable of saying anything

His brain still had behavior. If his brain wasn’t doing anything he wouldn’t be alive or conscious at all. Outward and inward behavior are both behavior. In most scenarios outward behavior alone is enough to know if someone has noticed something.

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[Gadersd]

Not knowing how something can be achieved is not the same as knowing that something is impossible.

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[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 12:48 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>Nobody knows, all you can do is watch it and see what it does, and you might be watching forever. 

 

   > That is an irreverent detail. [...] Not knowing how something can be achieved is not the same as knowing that something is impossible.

Sometimes it is. Kurt Godel proved in 1930 that some statements are true but have no proof, that is to say there's no finite number of steps that enable you to go from fundamental axioms to the statement, and in 1936 Alan Turing proved that there is no general method for determining which statements are provable and which ones are not. If Goldbach's conjecture is one of these (and if it isn't there are an infinite number of similar conjectures that are) then 10 billion years from now our descendants will still be looking, unsuccessfully, for a proof that Goldbach is correct, and they will still be grinding through huge numbers looking, unsuccessfully, for a counterexample to prove it wrong. I don't believe this is just a detail, I think it's one of the most profound ideas the human race has ever come up with.

John K Clark

[Gadersd]

You are simply admitting that there are some statements that are true but can’t be known (proven) to be true and some statements that are false but can’t be known (proven) to be false. Yet you make the leap and assert to know the statement “The bridge between subject/objective divide can be made” is false. I would love to see a proof of that claim. Please provide all the axioms used and demonstrate how you derive the theorem that “The bridge between the subjective/objective is impossible.” Otherwise, asserting the validity of that claim is just as dishonest as if you asserted that you know that Goldbach's conjecture is false.

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[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 1:32 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> You are simply admitting that there are some statements that are true but can’t be known (proven) to be true and some statements that are false but can’t be known (proven) to be false.

Yes.

> Yet you make the leap and assert to know the statement “The bridge between subject/objective divide can be made” is false. I would love to see a proof of that claim.

I also would love to see a mathematically rigorous proof of my claim, but of course I don't have one, however I am sufficiently convinced that my statement is true that I am not worried about you coming up with a counterexample to prove me wrong.  

> Please provide all the axioms used and demonstrate how you derive the theorem that “The bridge between the subjective/objective is impossible.” Otherwise, asserting the validity of that claim is just as dishonest as if you asserted that you know that Goldbach's conjecture is false.

I have zero intuition about Goldbach, I have no idea if it's right or wrong, but I have a very powerful intuition that nobody will ever be able to jump over the objective/subjective gap because nobody has even come close to directly detecting consciousness in anything other than themselves and it is inconceivable to me that anybody ever will without producing a logical contradiction; certainly all the attempts you have made to do so have failed.

John K Clark

 

On Jan 16, 2023, at 1:13 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 12:48 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>Nobody knows, all you can do is watch it and see what it does, and you might be watching forever. 

 

   > That is an irreverent detail. [...] Not knowing how something can be achieved is not the same as knowing that something is impossible.

Sometimes it is. Kurt Godel proved in 1930 that some statements are true but have no proof, that is to say there's no finite number of steps that enable you to go from fundamental axioms to the statement, and in 1936 Alan Turing proved that there is no general method for determining which statements are provable and which ones are not. If Goldbach's conjecture is one of these (and if it isn't there are an infinite number of similar conjectures that are) then 10 billion years from now our descendants will still be looking, unsuccessfully, for a proof that Goldbach is correct, and they will still be grinding through huge numbers looking, unsuccessfully, for a counterexample to prove it wrong. I don't believe this is just a detail, I think it's one of the most profound ideas the human race has ever come up with.

John K Clark

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[William Flynn Wallace]

John, do you dismiss the eeg recordings of different brain waves when awake,drowsy, asleep (all four stages) as indications of consciousness? Please explain.  bill w

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[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 2:01 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> John, do you dismiss the eeg recordings of different brain waves when awake,drowsy, asleep (all four stages) as indications of consciousness? Please explain.  bill w

How did somebody come up with the idea there was a relationship between a squiggle on a graph made by an EEG machine and consciousness? A scientist put electrodes on a subject and observed that when he was acting in an alert intelligent manor he assumed that meant the subject was conscious and noticed that the machine then produced one sort of squiggle, but when the subject was sleeping and not behaving intelligently he assumed he was not conscious and noticed that the machine then produced a different sort of squiggle. So the EEG machine can never be a fundamental test of consciousness because the EEG test is entirely dependent on the assumption that intelligent activity is necessary for consciousness, something I strongly believe is true but will never be able to prove. So I say forget the machine and just look for intelligent activity.

John K Clark

 

[Gadersd]

>So I say forget the machine and just look for intelligent activity.

Yet you’ve been going on and on rejecting my assertion that certain behavior is isomorphic to consciousness. I’ve been saying all this time that if something acts like a human mind then it is a human mind.

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[Gadersd]

>nobody will ever be able to jump over the objective/subjective gap because nobody has even come close to directly detecting consciousness in anything other than themselves

If consciousness is just information processing then why do you not believe that finding two systems (such as yourself and another human) with similar information processing implies that the experiences are similar, that the other person is conscious too?

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[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 3:08 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> If consciousness is just information processing then why do you not believe that finding two systems (such as yourself and another human) with similar information processing implies that the experiences are similar, that the other person is conscious too?

I do believe it, I just can't prove it. And neither can you. 

John K Clark

 

 

[Gadersd]

Neither can we prove that there is a world outside our heads, but assuming that there is has been very beneficial I am sure.

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[Stathis Papaioannou]

The proof is that it is impossible to replicate the functional behaviour of a component of a system without also replicating whatever consciousness it might have.

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[William Flynn Wallace]

John, do you agree that a person asleep is unconscious?  He cannot make any intelligent actions so he is not conscious. bill w

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[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 5:06 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> John, do you agree that a person asleep is unconscious?  He cannot make any intelligent actions so he is not conscious. bill w

I believe a sleeping person is not conscious for the same reason I believe a cadaver is not conscious, neither is behaving very intelligently.

John K Clark

 

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[William Flynn Wallace]

Then do you believe that the differences in the eeg patterns reflect level of consciousness?   A person half awake has different eeg readings than a person concentrating.  Meditation is different too.  All of these questionable?Spurious?  bill w

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[Brent Allsop]

Hi Stathis,

I have a question for you.  Do you believe it would be possible to create a real glutamate detector?

It would be something that would only produce a "that is real glutamate" if there was real physical glutamate in the detector.

Nothing else could spoof it, only real glutamate would work.

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[Stuart LaForge]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 2:34 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 5:06 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> John, do you agree that a person asleep is unconscious?  He cannot make any intelligent actions so he is not conscious. bill w

I believe a sleeping person is not conscious for the same reason I believe a cadaver is not conscious, neither is behaving very intelligently.

John K Clark

Then why do alarm clocks work on one but not the other? Why would Stephen Hawking after he lost control of cheek still be conscious, while a sleeper not?

I think your hypothesis that consciousness derives from intelligent  behavior hypothesis is flawed. There are too many exceptions, some of which you yourself have pointed out. 

Instead, I would venture it was the other way around. Indeed a very logical case could be made that intelligent behavior derives from consciousness and sometimes that causal chain is broken, like in Hawking's case.

If consciousness were merely a side effect of intelligent behavior, then breaking that causal chain would result in a philosophical zombies that I see no evidence of.

The presence of conscious individuals with paralysis, but not any philosophical zombies logically implies that consciousness is causally upstream of intelligent behavior. Which is also why it is so difficult to directly detect, since causal chains can be broken.

Another line of evidence comes from evolutionary biology, where it is known that eyes evolved before brains. Therefore intelligent behavior must ultimately derive from some sensory stimulus of some sort. Intelligent behavior is always in response to something.

Stuart LaForge

 

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 1:22 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 2:01 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> John, do you dismiss the eeg recordings of different brain waves when awake,drowsy, asleep (all four stages) as indications of consciousness? Please explain.  bill w

How did somebody come up with the idea there was a relationship between a squiggle on a graph made by an EEG machine and consciousness? A scientist put electrodes on a subject and observed that when he was acting in an alert intelligent manor he assumed that meant the subject was conscious and noticed that the machine then produced one sort of squiggle, but when the subject was sleeping and not behaving intelligently he assumed he was not conscious and noticed that the machine then produced a different sort of squiggle. So the EEG machine can never be a fundamental test of consciousness because the EEG test is entirely dependent on the assumption that intelligent activity is necessary for consciousness, something I strongly believe is true but will never be able to prove. So I say forget the machine and just look for intelligent activity.

John K Clark

 

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[Brent Allsop]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 4:16 PM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 2:34 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 5:06 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> John, do you agree that a person asleep is unconscious?  He cannot make any intelligent actions so he is not conscious. bill w

I believe a sleeping person is not conscious for the same reason I believe a cadaver is not conscious, neither is behaving very intelligently.

John K Clark

Then why do alarm clocks work on one but not the other? Why would Stephen Hawking after he lost control of cheek still be conscious, while a sleeper not?

I think your hypothesis that consciousness derives from intelligent  behavior hypothesis is flawed. There are too many exceptions, some of which you yourself have pointed out. 

Instead, I would venture it was the other way around. Indeed a very logical case could be made that intelligent behavior derives from consciousness and sometimes that causal chain is broken, like in Hawking's case.

If consciousness were merely a side effect of intelligent behavior, then breaking that causal chain would result in a philosophical zombies that I see no evidence of.

The presence of conscious individuals with paralysis, but not any philosophical zombies logically implies that consciousness is causally upstream of intelligent behavior. Which is also why it is so difficult to directly detect, since causal chains can be broken.

Stuart, thanks for pointing this out.

 

Another line of evidence comes from evolutionary biology, where it is known that eyes evolved before brains. Therefore intelligent behavior must ultimately derive from some sensory stimulus of some sort. Intelligent behavior is always in response to something.

But causal chains can be broken here, also.  For example, say you engineer a conscious system, like a 100% paralyzed "shut in" brain, with no external signs of anything going on inside.  You engineer it with creativity, or the ability to create artificial imagined worlds (like dreams) in which it can consciously play.  In other words, since you engineered it, it didn't require evolution.

If consciousness is real, why does nobody ever talk about discovering and observing the real thing?  If some consciousness is playing in a dream world, why would we not be able to discover and objectively observe every attribute of whatever that dream world is made of?  Why does everyone only talk about the causal correlates, which can be broken, or aren't necessary to real consciousness?

It's as if most everyone here are substance dualists, thinking the real thing is in some separate reality which is not objectively observable and not approachable via science, as if the closest we can get to it are its causal correlates?

 

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Tue, 17 Jan 2023 at 10:10, Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Stathis,

I have a question for you.  Do you believe it would be possible to create a real glutamate detector?

It would be something that would only produce a "that is real glutamate" if there was real physical glutamate in the detector.

Nothing else could spoof it, only real glutamate would work.

That's a good question. A detector works by detecting certain physical properties. It might be mass, reflectance, pH in solution, migration in a chromatography substrate, or a combination. A perfect detector would detect all the physical properties of glutamate, and therefore could not be fooled by something that was not real glutamate. But the role of glutamate in the brain is quite well-understood and it is not dependent on all the physical properties: it is only dependent on some of the properties, such as the shape of the molecule and the distribution of electrostatic charge. This could be replicated by glutamate comprising C-14 rather than C-12, for example. A detector that measures mass would be able to tell that it was not real glutamate, but the brain could not, so the glutamate in the brain could be replaced with C-14 glutamate without any change in behaviour or change in qualia.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Stuart LaForge]

On Monday, January 16, 2023 at 3:45:20 PM UTC-8 brent....@gmail.com wrote:

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 4:16 PM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023, 2:34 PM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 5:06 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz...@gmail.com> wrote:

> John, do you agree that a person asleep is unconscious?  He cannot make any intelligent actions so he is not conscious. bill w

I believe a sleeping person is not conscious for the same reason I believe a cadaver is not conscious, neither is behaving very intelligently.

John K Clark

Then why do alarm clocks work on one but not the other? Why would Stephen Hawking after he lost control of cheek still be conscious, while a sleeper not?

I think your hypothesis that consciousness derives from intelligent  behavior hypothesis is flawed. There are too many exceptions, some of which you yourself have pointed out. 

Instead, I would venture it was the other way around. Indeed a very logical case could be made that intelligent behavior derives from consciousness and sometimes that causal chain is broken, like in Hawking's case.

If consciousness were merely a side effect of intelligent behavior, then breaking that causal chain would result in a philosophical zombies that I see no evidence of.

The presence of conscious individuals with paralysis, but not any philosophical zombies logically implies that consciousness is causally upstream of intelligent behavior. Which is also why it is so difficult to directly detect, since causal chains can be broken.

Stuart, thanks for pointing this out.

You are welcome, Brett. If you can think of what of camp to put it in, you are welcome to add it to your website. 

 

 

Another line of evidence comes from evolutionary biology, where it is known that eyes evolved before brains. Therefore intelligent behavior must ultimately derive from some sensory stimulus of some sort. Intelligent behavior is always in response to something.

But causal chains can be broken here, also.  For example, say you engineer a conscious system, like a 100% paralyzed "shut in" brain, with no external signs of anything going on inside.  You engineer it with creativity, or the ability to create artificial imagined worlds (like dreams) in which it can consciously play.  In other words, since you engineered it, it didn't require evolution.

Hardly. Engineering consciousness, or anything really, takes a lot of experimentation and tweaking. Trial and error is nothing but sped-up evolution enabled by your intelligence. Ultimately that is why intelligence was evolution's killer app and it  evolved so that we were not generations learning how to screw in light bulbs. All intelligent design by a human does is speed up the evolution of whatever it is that he is engineering. So we can comfortably talk about the evolution of knives, automobiles, and now AI. So too your engineered dreaming brain in a box.  Read Dawkin's "The Extended Phenotype" for more on why our technologies are a part of us and evolve with us.

If consciousness is real, why does nobody ever talk about discovering and observing the real thing?

Well for one one thing, it is not made of visible baryonic matter. And I hate it to break it you but glutamate is visible baryonic matter. Directly observing consciousness is like observing the number 8 without any atoms involved or radiowaves in the absence of a radio. It might not be possible. I think all we can do is infer its existence like we do dark matter, dark energy, or the multiverse(s).

 

  If some consciousness is playing in a dream world, why would we not be able to discover and objectively observe every attribute of whatever that dream world is made of?  Why does everyone only talk about the causal correlates, which can be broken, or aren't necessary to real consciousness?

Because causal correlates are how one performs science on things that one cannot see. It enabled a bunch guys in funny wigs riding in horse drawn carriage to study and mathematically describe electrons that they could not see. And it is the way we are studying consciousness.

 

It's as if most everyone here are substance dualists, thinking the real thing is in some separate reality which is not objectively observable and not approachable via science, as if the closest we can get to it are its causal correlates?

I might be something of a dualist but not a substance dualist. I am instead an "it from bit" dualist. Something like property dualist with allowances made for quantum immortality somewhere in the vast multiverse and possibly uploading.

Stuart LaForge

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Stuart,

Here is the "it from" bit camp.  And if you're in that camp, it sounds like you also belong with Stathis, in a functionalist camp, right?

I'm sure both of those camps could use your support.

You mentioned the inability to see atoms, other than through their causal effects.  But it seems to me that consciousness is not like this at all.

When we have conscious knowledge of a strawberry, and one point on the surface of the strawberry is changing from redness to greenness, we can be directly aware of that pixel of knowledge, and what the redness and greenness are qualitatively like unmistakably, right?  And the same is true for every other pixel on the surface of our knowledge of the strawberry.  So, for each pixel of our conscious awarenss, there must be something in the brain, that is that pixel of knowledge right?  Once we objectively discover what that subjective knowledge for each of those subjective pixels are, then we'd likely be able to "see" them, along with directly apprehending them, wouldn't we?  Very much unlike atoms.

Have you seen our video, specifically the "Computational Binding" chapter?  Where we talk abou actual voxels, laid out in the brain, being our computationally bound pixels of conscious knowledge of a strawberry?  The only reason we can't see the colorness qualities of those pixels in the brain, is because objective descriptions of their behavior tells us nothing of what they are like.  We just need to bind, what we can now only abstractly  "see", so we can directly apprehend their true colorness qualities.  Once we make that connection between the subjective and the objective, we will know all that, absolutely, and directly.  Again, very different than our knowledge of stuff like atoms and dark matter.

We can doubt that the strawberry, and that atoms it is made of are out there (we may be in a matrix or the causal connection broken in a gazillion different ways).  But we can't doubt the existence, or the quality of our knowledge of the strawberry (and all the pixel elements that knowledge is composed of).  As in "I think therefore I am."

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[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 6:16 PM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

>> I believe a sleeping person is not conscious for the same reason I believe a cadaver is not conscious, neither is behaving very intelligently.

> Then why do alarm clocks work on one but not the other?

Things have more than one characteristic, a Black Hole is the simplest object in existence because it can be characterized by just 3 things, mass, spin and electrical charge, but most things have far more characteristics. A sleeping person and a cadaver are similar in that neither is conscious, but they are dissimilar in other ways, such as one can change its conscious state far more easily than the other, perhaps infinitely easier.  But if the cadaver had been carefully preserved at liquid nitrogen temperatures maybe just maybe it wouldn't be infinitely hard, just very hard to reawaken it. It's a very long shot but it's the only game in town, and if it doesn't work the cadaver won't become any deader.

> I think your hypothesis that consciousness derives from intelligent  behavior hypothesis is flawed. There are too many exceptions, some of which you yourself have pointed out. Instead, I would venture it was the other way around. Indeed a very logical case could be made that intelligent behavior derives from consciousness

The trouble is you still haven't explained what consciousness is because intelligent behavior is certainly not a brute fact because we can figure out its inner workings starting from the simplest thing imaginable, an on off switch, or rather lots of on off switches. So our axioms are not symmetrical. What causes consciousness?  I say it's a brute fact but you remain silent on the question. And yet they do have one thing in common, starting from either your or my axiom they both reached the same conclusion; in just the last 3 years or so computers have started to become conscious.

> Another line of evidence comes from evolutionary biology, where it is known that eyes evolved before brains.

Yes, and another example of that would be that our human ancestors started to walk upright (for reasons that still remain unclear) freeing their hands to have the ability to intricately manipulate objects, while their brains were still small; only after that did hominid brains start to grow at an extremely rapid rate, evolutionarily speaking.

> any philosophical zombies logically implies that consciousness is causally upstream of intelligent behavior.

The existence of a philosophical zombie would also imply that Darwin's Theory Of Evolution is dead wrong.  And I don't think Darwin was wrong.

>  Intelligent behavior is always in response to something.

Perhaps in response to some previous thought but not always in response to something external to the organism.  Evolution produced intelligent behavior because it helped get an organism's genes into the next generation, but it turned out that intelligent behavior can be used for other things too, such as a pure mathematician studying abstract infinite sets.  

John K Clark  

 

[John Clark]

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 10:25 PM Stuart LaForge <stuart....@gmail.com> wrote:

>  Read Dawkin's "The Extended Phenotype" for more on why our technologies are a part of us and evolve with us.

YES! Richard Dawkins is one of my favorite authors and "The Extended Phenotype" is one of the best books I've ever read in my life, and I read a lot. 

John K Clark

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Stathis,

All that is true, but you are missing the point.

It is a fact that the brain is a redness detector.  If redness in consciousness changes to anything but redness, the brain must reliably detect that difference, and be able to report such.

You can't do a substitution on a redness detector, because if anything but redness produces a "that is redness output", it is failing to detect redness.

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[Gadersd]

>starting from either your or my axiom they both reached the same conclusion; in just the last 3 years or so computers have started to become conscious.

If I am not mistaken your axioms are as follows:

1. Consciousness is some subset of information processes

2. John Clark is conscious

How are you reaching the conclusion that intelligent behavior implies that there is consciousness? You are conscious by your axioms and your behavior is correlated with intelligent behavior by observation. How do you jump from this one instance of observed correlation to believing that all intelligent behavior must imply a consciousness? It seems that there is some unstated axiom involved.

>The existence of a philosophical zombie would also imply that Darwin's Theory Of Evolution is dead wrong.  And I don't think Darwin was wrong.

How do you know that there aren’t human-like creatures on some distant planet that have intelligent behavior but no consciousness? They would not be able to consciously ask questions about consciousness as you do but they may behave as you do. There could theoretically be some anthropic selection going on. Perhaps consciousness was a genetic accident and you are the only conscious being on Earth.

I am not saying that I disagree with your conclusions, but rather that your axioms and definitions lack the specificity to reach such conclusions.

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 12:32 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> If I am not mistaken your axioms are as follows:

1. Consciousness is some subset of information processes

2. John Clark is conscious

How are you reaching the conclusion that intelligent behavior implies that there is consciousness? You are conscious by your axioms and your behavior is correlated with intelligent behavior by observation. How do you jump from this one instance of observed correlation to believing that all intelligent behavior must imply a consciousness?

In addition to the above 2 axioms there is something that comes as close to being declared a fact by science as science ever does; Darwin's Theory Of Evolution is correct. But Evolution can't detect external consciousness any better than you or I can, and Natural Selection can't select for something it can't see. Nevertheless Evolution somehow managed to produce me and I am a conscious being. The only logical explanation is that Evolution must have selected for something that it can see, and consciousness must be the inevitable byproduct of that thing. And natural selection can certainly see intelligent activity.

> How do you know that there aren’t human-like creatures on some distant planet that have intelligent behavior but no consciousness?

The above argument is not restricted to a specific location.  

> They would not be able to consciously ask questions about consciousness as you do but they may behave as you do.

Forget ET, I can't even prove that my fellow humans on Earth are not philosophical zombies or that I'm not the only conscious being in the Multiverse, however I don't believe that anybody on this side of a loony bin really believes that solipsism is true.  Actually I have to believe it's false because I simply could not function if I deeply believed that solipsism was true. Could you? 

John K Clark

[Gadersd]

>Evolution must have selected for something that it can see

That or your consciousness is just a lucky accident. Evolution selecting for intelligent behavior does not logically imply that intelligent behavior is an indicator of consciousness. Correlation does not imply causation and you only know one instance of this correlation, namely yourself.

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 1:14 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Evolution must have selected for something that it can see

> That or your consciousness is just a lucky accident. Evolution selecting for intelligent behavior does not logically imply that intelligent behavior is an indicator of consciousness. Correlation does not imply causation and you only know one instance of this correlation, namely yourself.

Even if we got super mega ultra lucky and Evolution just happened to produce a mutated gene that gave a being consciousness, it would be lost in just a few generations due to genetic drift because however much we may value consciousness Natural Selection can't see it or hear it or touch it or detect it or be affected by it in any way. Genetic Drift is the reason cave animals have no eyes, their ancestors had eyes but once they got trapped in pitch dark caves the gene that produced eyes no longer had any survival value. Outside the cave a mutation that stopped the eye producing gene from working would be fatal to an animal, but inside the cave it would be an advantage, expensive resources used to make that eye could be used for other more productive things, like having more offspring.

But unlike consciousness, Natural Selection can see and detect and be affected by behavior, and animals with intelligent behavior get more of their genes into the next generation than animals with less intelligent behavior. And it is beyond dispute that random mutation and natural selection managed to produce a conscious being at least once, and although unproven it probably has done so more than once, perhaps many billions of times; therefore it is logical for me to conclude that consciousness and intelligence are probably linked and consciousness is probably an unavoidable byproduct of intelligence, it's just the way data feels like when it is being processed intelligently.

John K Clark

[Gadersd]

>produce a mutated gene that gave a being consciousness, it would be lost in just a few generations due to genetic drift

Do you pity your progeny?

>and although unproven it probably has done so more than once, perhaps many billions of times

Your axioms only demonstrate one instance.

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 1:47 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>produce a mutated gene that gave a being consciousness, it would be lost in just a few generations due to genetic drift

> Do you pity your progeny?

Huh?

>>and although unproven it probably has done so more than once, perhaps many billions of times

> Your axioms only demonstrate one instance.

I know, that's why I said it's unproven.  

John K Clark

[Gadersd]

>Huh?

If your consciousness is a lucky accident then your progeny may or may not inherit whatever special gene you have. Your axioms cannot demonstrate that you are not a lucky accident. You still seem to be holding on to something beyond your axioms if you assert that this is unlikely.

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 1:57 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>Huh?

> If your consciousness is a lucky accident then your progeny may or may not inherit whatever special gene you have. Your axioms cannot demonstrate that you are not a lucky accident.

That is certainly possible, and it's certainly possible that I'm the only conscious being that ever was or ever will be, but just between you and me I don't think it's very likely. Do you?

 

> You still seem to be holding on to something beyond your axioms if you assert that this is unlikely.

There is indeed something beyond my axioms and I've already mentioned it and discussed it at some length.  

John K Clark

 

[Gadersd]

>I don't think it's very likely. Do you?

I cannot come to such a conclusion by your axioms.

>There is indeed something beyond my axioms

Please explicitly state what principle you are referring to.

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 2:09 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I don't think it's very likely. Do you?

I cannot come to such a conclusion by your axioms.

>There is indeed something beyond my axioms

Please explicitly state what principle you are referring to.

Evolution!

John K Clark

 

On Jan 17, 2023, at 2:05 PM, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 1:57 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>Huh?

> If your consciousness is a lucky accident then your progeny may or may not inherit whatever special gene you have. Your axioms cannot demonstrate that you are not a lucky accident.

That is certainly possible, and it's certainly possible that I'm the only conscious being that ever was or ever will be, but just between you and me I don't think it's very likely. Do you?

 

> You still seem to be holding on to something beyond your axioms if you assert that this is unlikely.

There is indeed something beyond my axioms and I've already mentioned it and discussed it at some length.  

John K Clark

 

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[Gadersd]

>Evolution!

It still does not logically follow. If your axioms are the following:

1. Consciousness is a subset of information processes

2. John Clark is conscious

3. Evolution tends to produce intelligent behavior

4. John Clark has intelligent behavior

There is still no way to derive the statement that intelligent behavior likely implies that consciousness is present. You cannot derive a statement of the form X is likely from these axioms. There is still a something missing.

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 2:32 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Evolution!

> It still does not logically follow. If your axioms are the following:

1. Consciousness is a subset of information processes

2. John Clark is conscious

3. Evolution tends to produce intelligent behavior

4. John Clark has intelligent behavior

There is still no way to derive the statement that intelligent behavior likely implies that consciousness is present. You cannot derive a statement of the form X is likely from these axioms. 

Why did evolution bother to make me conscious? You claim there was no fundamental reason it was just random chance; maybe so but "random chance" can be invoked to explain ANYTHING, however that is usually not a good thing to do , especially if a non-random explanation is available. And in this case there is.  Historically, following the policy of using random luck only as a last resort has certainly advanced science so I'm rather fond of it, but if you're right and my consciousness is just the result of random chance then logically I would have to conclude that I am almost certainly debating with a philosophical zombie right now.

John K Clark

 

[Gadersd]

>but "random chance" can be invoked to explain ANYTHING

You are saying that you are using some principle that guides you to avoid arbitrariness in your theories. Would you disagree if I amended your axioms as follows?:

1. Consciousness is a subset of information processes

2. John Clark is conscious

3. Evolution tends to produce intelligent behavior

4. John Clark has intelligent behavior

5. Occam’s Razor

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[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Wed, 18 Jan 2023 at 04:05, Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Stathis,

All that is true, but you are missing the point.

It is a fact that the brain is a redness detector.  If redness in consciousness changes to anything but redness, the brain must reliably detect that difference, and be able to report such.

You can't do a substitution on a redness detector, because if anything but redness produces a "that is redness output", it is failing to detect redness.

 No, the brain is not a redness detector, because redness is not a physical quality that can be detected. Glutamate has many physical qualities, and some of these qualities are detected by other parts of the brain. Most obviously, glutamate has a certain shape and charge distribution, which causes the shape of the glutamate receptor to change when it binds to it, which sets off a sequence of events causing the neuron to fire. Glutamate has other physical properties, such as mass and gravitational field, but these have no effect in the brain that we know of. But redness is not a physical property of glutamate at all. If you disagree, explain how redness could be detected and how it could have a physical effect in the brain. 

On Mon, Jan 16, 2023 at 6:52 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Jan 2023 at 10:10, Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Stathis,

I have a question for you.  Do you believe it would be possible to create a real glutamate detector?

It would be something that would only produce a "that is real glutamate" if there was real physical glutamate in the detector.

Nothing else could spoof it, only real glutamate would work.

That's a good question. A detector works by detecting certain physical properties. It might be mass, reflectance, pH in solution, migration in a chromatography substrate, or a combination. A perfect detector would detect all the physical properties of glutamate, and therefore could not be fooled by something that was not real glutamate. But the role of glutamate in the brain is quite well-understood and it is not dependent on all the physical properties: it is only dependent on some of the properties, such as the shape of the molecule and the distribution of electrostatic charge. This could be replicated by glutamate comprising C-14 rather than C-12, for example. A detector that measures mass would be able to tell that it was not real glutamate, but the brain could not, so the glutamate in the brain could be replaced with C-14 glutamate without any change in behaviour or change in qualia.

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Stathis Papaioannou

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 2:57 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> You are saying that you are using some principle that guides you to avoid arbitrariness in your theories. Would you disagree if I amended your axioms as follows?:

1. Consciousness is a subset of information processes

2. John Clark is conscious

3. Evolution tends to produce intelligent behavior

4. John Clark has intelligent behavior

5. Occam’s Razor

That sounds reasonable, except that # 5 is not an axiom, it's just an extremely useful rule of thumb. Induction is an even more useful rule of thumb, the idea that things usually continue. And thanks for putting in #4.

John K Clark

[Gadersd]

> Induction is an even more useful rule of thumb, the idea that things usually continue.

I should have been more precise. What I meant by Occam’s Razor is not the original formulation but rather the modern that lower complexity theories are preferred over higher complexity theories, which fully encapsulates the idea of induction from individual instances. Let me call it Occam’s Razor 2.0. Are we on the same page?

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 3:12 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>  Induction is an even more useful rule of thumb, the idea that things usually continue.

> I should have been more precise. What I meant by Occam’s Razor is not the original formulation but rather the modern that lower complexity theories are preferred over higher complexity theories, which fully encapsulates the idea of induction from individual instances. Let me call it Occam’s Razor 2.0. Are we on the same page?

More or less, although I don't think the theory that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow is less complex than the theory the sun will not rise in the east tomorrow; but never mind, if you stick induction into Occam’s Razor 1.0 it would still just be a rule of thumb and not an axiom.

John K Clark

[Gadersd]

>I don't think the theory that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow is less complex than the theory the sun will not rise in the east tomorrow

The latter theory is a break in consistency at a particular time. Fully specifying that theory requires an arbitrary specification of the date that the break in consistency occurs, which leads to a more complex theory with more parameters.

>rule of thumb and not an axiom.

That’s besides the point since you seem to be relying on that “rule of thumb” just as much as you are relying on your “axioms.”

Anyway, suppose that you detect a particular neuron firing pattern in person A’s brain whenever A is looking at a cow or thinking about a cow, but is not present otherwise. Further suppose that you detect that person B has the same neuron firing pattern whenever B is looking at or thinking about a cow, but is not present otherwise. Disregard the difficulty of knowing if they are thinking about a cow; just assume they are not pathological liars about it. By Occam’s Razor, is it unreasonable to conclude that it is likely that the detected neuron firing pattern indicates that a human is thinking in some way about a cow?

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[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 3:35 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> you seem to be relying on that “rule of thumb” just as much as you are relying on your “axioms.”

You are understating things, I rely on the induction and Occam rules of thumb far more than I rely on my axiom, I need it only when I'm debating somebody about philosophy on the Internet, and although you wouldn't guess it from today's activities that's not that often, but I have used induction almost every minute of my life since the day I was born. Induction is even more important than logic and logic is pretty damn important.

> suppose that you detect a particular neuron firing pattern in person A’s brain whenever A is looking at a cow or thinking about a cow, but is not present otherwise. Further suppose that you detect that person B has the same neuron firing pattern whenever B is looking at or thinking about a cow, but is not present otherwise. Disregard the difficulty of knowing if they are thinking about a cow...

Besides that Mrs. Lincoln how did you like the play?  

> just assume they are not pathological liars about it. By Occam’s Razor, is it unreasonable to conclude that it is likely that the detected neuron firing pattern indicates that a human is thinking in some way about a cow?

It would be reasonable to conclude that the other person will make a noise with his mouth that sounds like "I am thinking about a cow", but unless you make use of my axiom there would be no reason to conclude that they are consciously thinking about anything.  

John K Clark

[Gadersd]

>It would be reasonable to conclude that the other person will make a noise with his mouth that sounds like "I am thinking about a cow”

Scientists use working definitions all the time. We never see electrons directly, but we detect things we call electrons and we say that if another thing behaves just like an electron then it is an electron too.

This isn’t about proving something of some abstract definition 100% by some perfect divine proof standard. Only mathematicians do that and the rest of us must be content with our working definitions.

If a particular pattern is evident in the brain of all observed people who are looking at cows or say they are thinking of cows but never observed otherwise, then it is meaningful and useful to say that this pattern corresponds to the experience of cows. This isolated pattern would be a useful tool to check if any given person is thinking about a cow. Maybe it could be used in milk marketing, who knows?

Maybe this definition of “cow experience” doesn’t match your philosophical terminology, but it is at least perfectly useful for the rest of us who want to use definitions that have actual use in the real world.

I never wanted this to turn in to a philosophical discussion. When I use the term color qualia I mean the intersection of the patterns in the human brain that are present when people look at or imagine light of particular wavelengths and not present otherwise. Maybe a particular pattern is only present in myself when I see red light and the same pattern is only present in you when you see blue light. It would be useful to say that my red is like your blue because similar brain patterns imply greater likelihood of similar behavior or at least similarity by some metric. The tendency to have similar behavior or similar whatever means we would be more likely to be on the same page so to speak and this is what matters.

You can use your own definitions of consciousness or qualia, no matter how philosophical or vague, but unless a term is well defined enough to be testable then it really isn’t very useful, regardless of its philosophical seductiveness.

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[Brent Allsop]

Hi Stathis,

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 1:05 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stat...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, 18 Jan 2023 at 04:05, Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Stathis,

All that is true, but you are missing the point.

It is a fact that the brain is a redness detector.  If redness in consciousness changes to anything but redness, the brain must reliably detect that difference, and be able to report such.

You can't do a substitution on a redness detector, because if anything but redness produces a "that is redness output", it is failing to detect redness.

 No, the brain is not a redness detector, because redness is not a physical quality that can be detected.

Nice falsifiable assumption.  I chose to make a more hopeful, falsifiable assumption, that redness is a physical quality of something like glutamate, and that qualia are approachable via science, and I don't like to resort to majical operations you can't define like "supervenes", which result in all kinds of so called "hard problems" and contradictions.

 

Glutamate has many physical qualities, and some of these qualities are detected by other parts of the brain. Most obviously, glutamate has a certain shape and charge distribution, which causes the shape of the glutamate receptor to change when it binds to it, which sets off a sequence of events causing the neuron to fire. Glutamate has other physical properties, such as mass and gravitational field, but these have no effect in the brain that we know of. But redness is not a physical property of glutamate at all. If you disagree, explain how redness could be detected and how it could have a physical effect in the brain. 

The same way glutamate can.  But you need an additional binding mechanism to achieve the ability for the entire system to be aware of the qualities of glutamate to achieve the situational awareness of the relationship of that pixel of redness, and all the other pixels, at the same time.  Something like standing waves of redness qualities in neural tissue, or quantum mechanics.  Something a mere set discrete logic gates can't do.  And that is what you always leave out of your neuro substitution.  So getting to the end, having substituted everything, and proving that nothing can be dependent on redness/glutamate, just proves that you've done neuro substitution on something that isn't conscious, in the first place.

I chose to make the assumption that the neuro substitution will fail.  That both redness and glutamate detectors are possible.  I choose to assume that when you get to the first pixel of whatever it is that has redness/glutamate, NOTHING will be able to reproduce that physical quality, but redness/glutamate.

Either way, it is now up to the experimentalists to prove which assumption is the right one.  If they'd only just start observing the brain in a non quali blind way, already.  And you, and everyone that continues to bleat and tweet all this stuff, are not helping.

 

[Stathis Papaioannou]

But you haven't said how a redness detector might work. Every other physical property can be detected by some physical means. Some physical phenomena such as gravitational waves are very difficult to detect, but we can still do it, or say how it might be done given what we theorise about gravitational waves. "Standing waves of redness qualities" is not good enough. It is like saying that glutamate contains fairy dust, and when I ask how this may be detected, you say with a fairy dust detector.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[Brent Allsop]

Yea, I admit I don't YET know how that would be done.  I'm surprised you haven't called me out on that yet.  All I know is that we can be aware of redness and greenness at the same time, as one composite experience.  I just know, if you can replace something, and redness doesn't change, then it must be something else responsible for redness, than what you are neuro substituting.

One possibility would be a very large single neuron (as I've mentioned a gazillion times in our discussions) that achieves the unified awareness of what is going on in all of its upstream individual synapses.  Or it could be a set of neurons doing this.)  But of course, if you can replace redness in any of those synapses in that set, and the behavior of the neuron doesn't change, then it can't be that, it must be something else.  Other candidates are Orch OR's quantum entanglement or something.  And of course the glutamate example is purposely overly simplistic, for explanatory purposes only.  The fact that it is so easily falsified is the purpose of using this example.

So, can you describe any possible mechanism which achieves your required "supervenience"  than that?  And what the heck kind of "function" might redness supervene on, other than pure magic?

Anyway, as I always say, we'll just need to wait till the experimentalists resolve this impasse.

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[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Wed, 18 Jan 2023 at 11:58, Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

Yea, I admit I don't YET know how that would be done.  I'm surprised you haven't called me out on that yet.  All I know is that we can be aware of redness and greenness at the same time, as one composite experience.  I just know, if you can replace something, and redness doesn't change, then it must be something else responsible for redness, than what you are neuro substituting.

One possibility would be a very large single neuron (as I've mentioned a gazillion times in our discussions) that achieves the unified awareness of what is going on in all of its upstream individual synapses.  Or it could be a set of neurons doing this.)  But of course, if you can replace redness in any of those synapses in that set, and the behavior of the neuron doesn't change, then it can't be that, it must be something else.  Other candidates are Orch OR's quantum entanglement or something.  And of course the glutamate example is purposely overly simplistic, for explanatory purposes only.  The fact that it is so easily falsified is the purpose of using this example.

So, can you describe any possible mechanism which achieves your required "supervenience"  than that?  And what the heck kind of "function" might redness supervene on, other than pure magic?

Anyway, as I always say, we'll just need to wait till the experimentalists resolve this impasse.

Redness is not a physical property and has no separate causal efficacy of its own. That's why it is called supervenient, emergent or epiphenomenal. I have tried to give analogous examples. Running was one, software is another one. Software exists but software does not have any causal efficacy over and above that of the hardware on which it is implemented. A software detector would work by detecting the physical processeses on which the the software are implemented. There is no reason to speculate that the software has its own physical existence and could be detected directly by an as yet undiscovered software detector.

--

Stathis Papaioannou

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 5:26 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I never wanted this to turn in to a philosophical discussion

If the discussion is about the fundamental nature of consciousness then it's going to be a philosophical discussion, it can't be a scientific discussion because the scientific method cannot be employed to investigate it.  

> If a particular pattern is evident in the brain of all observed people who are looking at cows or say they are thinking of cows but never observed otherwise, then it is meaningful and useful to say that this pattern corresponds to the experience of cows. 

Yeah it's meaningful and useful to say that this pattern corresponds to the experience of seeing a cow, but the word "experience" implies consciousness and you were just assuming a pattern corresponds with that; so you can't claim it provides any sort of proof that they are experiencing cows, or experiencing anything.  And it's not at all clear what "the same pattern" even means given that you're dealing with different people that have brains that are different from each other, that's why they're different people. You certainly can't say that one particular neuron in one person's brain corresponds to another particular neuron in a different person's brain.

> This isolated pattern would be a useful tool to check if any given person is thinking about a cow. Maybe it could be used in milk marketing, who knows?

Sure, if the marketing people like it then go for it, but don't expect to gain any philosophical insight from it. 

> Maybe this definition of “cow experience” doesn’t match your philosophical terminology, but it is at least perfectly useful for the rest of us who want to use definitions that have actual use in the real world.

In the real world I use words such as "experience" as you do every day, but this is not the real world, this is a philosophical discussion. Most people, even very very smart people, never bothered to think about stuff like this for two seconds, and they get along just fine.

 

> When I use the term color qualia I mean the intersection of the patterns in the human brain that are present when people look at or imagine light of particular wavelengths and not present otherwise.

Then all you've done is redefined the word  "qualia" in a way that is entirely different from what Brent and I and just about everybody else means by the word. That is not progress and can only lead to confusion, and this topic already has enough of that.  

> Maybe a particular pattern is only present in myself when I see red light and the same pattern is only present in you when you see blue light. It would be useful to say that my red is like your blue because similar brain patterns imply greater likelihood of similar behavior.

 

If red and blue qualias were exchanged then it would not lead to similar behavior, it would lead to IDENTICAL behavior, so there would be no way to even determine that a change had actually been made.

> unless a term is well defined enough to be testable then it really isn’t very useful,

All definitions ultimately come from examples, and nothing is more poorly defined than "consciousness", except perhaps "free will". 

John K Clark  

[Gadersd]

>Then all you've done is redefined the word  "qualia" in a way that is entirely different from what Brent and I

Then we’ve been talking about different things this entire time. I have no interest and never had any interest in non-testable philosophical concepts. Every term that I used has a corresponding scientific working definition in my head. Perhaps I should have explicitly stated this from the start to avoid another useless philosophical discussion.

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[John Clark]

On Wed, Jan 18, 2023 at 12:16 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Then all you've done is redefined the word  "qualia" in a way that is entirely different from what Brent and I

> Then we’ve been talking about different things this entire time.

Apparently so. But that's your fault not mine because you invented your own private language and didn't send anybody a Gadersd/English translation dictionary. 

> I have no interest and never had any interest in non-testable philosophical concepts.

 

Then why have you been talking so much about consciousness and qualia as both are non-testable philosophical concepts? I guess in the Gadersd language "consciousness" just means intelligent activity, but I can't be certain because like most Americans (and unlike most Europeans) I'm only fluent in English. By the way, "free will" is also untestable but for an entirely different reason, there's nothing to test. The free will idea is so bad it's not even wrong, it's just gibberish.

 John K Clark 

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 5:33 PM Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

 >> explain how redness could be detected and how it could have a physical effect in the brain. 

> The same way glutamate can.  But you need an additional binding mechanism to achieve the ability for the entire system to be aware of the qualities of glutamate to achieve the situational awareness of the relationship of that pixel of redness, and all the other pixels, at the same time.  Something like standing waves of redness qualities in neural tissue, or quantum mechanics. 

Nobody has ever detected such a standing wave in the brain, and even if they had there would be no way to prove or even provide evidence that it had anything to do with consciousness, not unless the standing wave had an effect on behavior or the brain's information processing ability, and not unless you made use of my axiom that says consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed intelligently. And the brain is far too hot for anything in it to become quantum entangled, I think the only thing Quantum Mechanics and consciousness have in common is that both of them are a bit mysterious.

> Something a mere set discrete logic gates can't do. 

Mere?! Computers and our entire modern world exists because of "mere" logic gates; and I refuse to believe that the element carbon is more conscious than the element silicon, nor do I believe that soft squishy brains can be conscious but hard dry ones cannot.

 

> So getting to the end, having substituted everything, and proving that nothing can be dependent on redness/glutamate, just proves that you've done neuro substitution on something that isn't conscious, in the first place.

If you found that the presence or lack of glutamate had no effect on an organism's ability to detect red light that would of course prove that glutamate had nothing to do with an organism's ability to detect red light; and if you had the magic ability to tell if the presence or lack of glutamate had an affect on an organism's ability to experience the redness qualia then there would be no need to perform the experiment at all because you'd already know exactly how qualia works and was manufactured.

> One possibility would be a very large single neuron (as I've mentioned a gazillion times in our discussions) that achieves the unified awareness of what is going on

Given that you don't think intelligence always comes with consciousness so no purely behavioral test will ever be able to detect it please explain how in the world random mutation and natural selection could have produced this " very large single neuron" when evolution can't directly detect consciousness any better than we can!

John K Clark

[Brent Allsop]

On Wed, Jan 18, 2023 at 3:00 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 5:26 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I never wanted this to turn in to a philosophical discussion

If the discussion is about the fundamental nature of consciousness then it's going to be a philosophical discussion, it can't be a scientific discussion because the scientific method cannot be employed to investigate it.

To me, the difference between philosophy and theoretical science is falsifiability.  Can your claims be demonstrated or falsified?  Any: "you can't do that" claim is very falsifiable.  Of the current participants, a clear consensus is supporting "Representational Qualia Theory"  which is describing an experimental method (observing the brain in a non qualia blind way) to falsify all the competing sub camps making diverse falsifiable predictions about the nature of qualia.  John, if you ever get tired of making this "the scientific method cannot be employed" claim over and over again, you should just communicate to everyone this is what you believe.

> Maybe this definition of “cow experience” doesn’t match your philosophical terminology, but it is at least perfectly useful for the rest of us who want to use definitions that have actual use in the real world.

In the real world I use words such as "experience" as you do every day, but this is not the real world, this is a philosophical discussion. Most people, even very very smart people, never bothered to think about stuff like this for two seconds, and they get along just fine.

To me, it's a religious thing.  Do people want to understand what uploading could be like?  Currently people fear it, and fight against it.  THAT is the problem.  We want to show people what it will be like to be uploaded to an avatar body in a way that has continuity experience (being aware of their knowledge of their spirit as it moves between knowledge of bodies, all in the computationally bound brains of the two bodies, and how they will know they are the same person, in that new body, and all that.  We want to religiously inspire people to change their lives, and seek after that stuff, instead of fearing and fighting it.

 

> When I use the term color qualia I mean the intersection of the patterns in the human brain that are present when people look at or imagine light of particular wavelengths and not present otherwise.

Then all you've done is redefined the word  "qualia" in a way that is entirely different from what Brent and I and just about everybody else means by the word. That is not progress and can only lead to confusion, and this topic already has enough of that.

Yea, I'm with John on this one.  I just don't get the functionalists, or "it from bit" views.  It seems to me they are just redefining things so that it makes no sense to me.  The quality of your knowledge of red is just a physical fact.  That physical fact, like any physical fact, can represent information like the sugar content of a ripe strawberry (if you have a transducing dictionary, to get that piece of information from that particular physical fact).  If you just redefine the word information to be something physical, and redefine physical redness to be information, that just makes it impossible to communicate.

 

> Maybe a particular pattern is only present in myself when I see red light and the same pattern is only present in you when you see blue light. It would be useful to say that my red is like your blue because similar brain patterns imply greater likelihood of similar behavior.

 

If red and blue qualias were exchanged then it would not lead to similar behavior, it would lead to IDENTICAL behavior, so there would be no way to even determine that a change had actually been made.

Why does everyone talk about everything but the topic of discussion?  A physical redness quality will always be the same, no matter where it is, no matter what time it is, no matter what brain it is in, no matter what you call it.  How hard it is to prove something like that doesn't change those facts.

> unless a term is well defined enough to be testable then it really isn’t very useful,

All definitions ultimately come from examples, and nothing is more poorly defined than "consciousness", except perhaps "free will". 

Again, there is a majority of consensus supporting the "Representational Qualai Theory" camp.  All those supporters agree on this definition of consciousness as specified in that camp:

"Computationally bound elemental intrinsic qualities like redness, greenness, warmth..."

If you wouldn't ignore that fact, we wouldn't have to bleat this kind of stuff back and forth, over and over and over, forever.

 

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Fri, 20 Jan 2023 at 06:40, Brent Allsop <brent....@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Jan 18, 2023 at 3:00 AM John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 5:26 PM Gadersd <gad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I never wanted this to turn in to a philosophical discussion

If the discussion is about the fundamental nature of consciousness then it's going to be a philosophical discussion, it can't be a scientific discussion because the scientific method cannot be employed to investigate it.

To me, the difference between philosophy and theoretical science is falsifiability.  Can your claims be demonstrated or falsified?  Any: "you can't do that" claim is very falsifiable.  Of the current participants, a clear consensus is supporting "Representational Qualia Theory"  which is describing an experimental method (observing the brain in a non qualia blind way) to falsify all the competing sub camps making diverse falsifiable predictions about the nature of qualia.  John, if you ever get tired of making this "the scientific method cannot be employed" claim over and over again, you should just communicate to everyone this is what you believe.

> Maybe this definition of “cow experience” doesn’t match your philosophical terminology, but it is at least perfectly useful for the rest of us who want to use definitions that have actual use in the real world.

In the real world I use words such as "experience" as you do every day, but this is not the real world, this is a philosophical discussion. Most people, even very very smart people, never bothered to think about stuff like this for two seconds, and they get along just fine.

To me, it's a religious thing.  Do people want to understand what uploading could be like?  Currently people fear it, and fight against it.  THAT is the problem.  We want to show people what it will be like to be uploaded to an avatar body in a way that has continuity experience (being aware of their knowledge of their spirit as it moves between knowledge of bodies, all in the computationally bound brains of the two bodies, and how they will know they are the same person, in that new body, and all that.  We want to religiously inspire people to change their lives, and seek after that stuff, instead of fearing and fighting it.

 

> When I use the term color qualia I mean the intersection of the patterns in the human brain that are present when people look at or imagine light of particular wavelengths and not present otherwise.

Then all you've done is redefined the word  "qualia" in a way that is entirely different from what Brent and I and just about everybody else means by the word. That is not progress and can only lead to confusion, and this topic already has enough of that.

Yea, I'm with John on this one.  I just don't get the functionalists, or "it from bit" views.  It seems to me they are just redefining things so that it makes no sense to me.  The quality of your knowledge of red is just a physical fact.  That physical fact, like any physical fact, can represent information like the sugar content of a ripe strawberry (if you have a transducing dictionary, to get that piece of information from that particular physical fact).  If you just redefine the word information to be something physical, and redefine physical redness to be information, that just makes it impossible to communicate.

 

> Maybe a particular pattern is only present in myself when I see red light and the same pattern is only present in you when you see blue light. It would be useful to say that my red is like your blue because similar brain patterns imply greater likelihood of similar behavior.

 

If red and blue qualias were exchanged then it would not lead to similar behavior, it would lead to IDENTICAL behavior, so there would be no way to even determine that a change had actually been made.

Why does everyone talk about everything but the topic of discussion?  A physical redness quality will always be the same, no matter where it is, no matter what time it is, no matter what brain it is in, no matter what you call it.  How hard it is to prove something like that doesn't change those facts.

But if it is objectively the same and subjectively the same, that covers everything, and it’s just the same.

> unless a term is well defined enough to be testable then it really isn’t very useful,

All definitions ultimately come from examples, and nothing is more poorly defined than "consciousness", except perhaps "free will". 

Again, there is a majority of consensus supporting the "Representational Qualai Theory" camp.  All those supporters agree on this definition of consciousness as specified in that camp:

"Computationally bound elemental intrinsic qualities like redness, greenness, warmth..."

If you wouldn't ignore that fact, we wouldn't have to bleat this kind of stuff back and forth, over and over and over, forever.

 

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Stathis Papaioannou