[extropy-chat] Qualia should be blatantly obvious, very simple, and crystal clear.

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 09:43:32AM -0700, Brent Allsop wrote:
 
> Of course there is a "neuronal activity pattern" - this is part of the
> theory (I prefer to call this a "neural correlate").  But what I am talking

It is not a correlate. It's the thing itself. The map is the country, in
this case.

> about here is the view of things from our subjective perspective.  I am
> talking about how we have been architected to know what this information is

How do you know how the robot has been architected? I could very easily
grown that robot by darwin in machina (in fact, this is exactly how I would
do it, and how it's being done).

> like - at least from a subjective point of view.  If you understood this
> concept properly you would not say something like "the robot has no more

Trying to be condescending is still not an argument.

> internal view of its hardware layer than you have of your pink and squishy
> wetware."
> 
> If you ask the robot what his representation of red is like, and if it was
> architected to be honest and aware of it, it will say something like "Duu, I
> represent red with FF0000."  We are most definitely architected such that we

The robot has no effing idea what its representation at the physical layer
is any more than you do about yours (you don't actually know when neurons are firing
and which, and you could actually never resolve the details while they're
occuring anyway). You're not The One.
If it has evolved a code to produce "FF0000" when it means red it would
say "FF0000". It could also say "it's gleu, with a tinge of prink", or 
"44c1725b6b306726e6ee5bcd90428aef2bf80efb!". 

> know what our representations are "like" at least from a subjective point of
> view.  Our knowledge of the difference between red and green is what enables

Of course a robot has a subjective point of view, orelse you wouldn't be
able to ask it a question it could answer.

> us to be consciously or subjectively aware of the red strawberry amongst the
> green leaves.  When you ask a person a question like - "if you assumed this
> qualia theory of perception is like reality - what would you say your brain
> represents red with in your consciousness awareness?"  And if this person
> did indeed correctly understand this theory (and or if this theory turned
> out to be true and this person was well experienced in effing new qualities
> he had never experienced before) - he would say something more like: "If

I presume you're not color-blind. I'm sorry you never 
44c1725b6b306726e6ee5bcd90428aef2bf80efb, it's really quite 
3721c61b39e52b74a8f4d9f2042de6f2aec3ca0a in f3611039fb19d37233538bd10679c9090cd25afc.

> this qualia theory of perception is right (or as effing has demonstrably
> proved to me), the quale red, due to its ineffable nature, cannot be
> adequately described to you through abstract communication.  You must
> experience it yourself, so that your subjective architecture can know about
> such things, to know what it is phenomenally like."

Somebody made a common-coded statement about a measurement to another instance
of a system which has also made statements in the past. If it didn't,
the code transmitted didn't glork frappingly.
 
> Are we making progress?  Does this help?

Nope.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.leitl.org
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