[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet.

Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu
Fri Dec 2 09:47:14 UTC 2005


At 03:46 AM 12/2/2005, John Clark wrote:
>>If you can see your qualia, then if we could watch your brain closely
>>enough we could see whatever you see.
>
>You know what my brain is doing and you can predict what I will do in any
>given situation, but do you also know what I feel like when I'm sad? You
>know my brain is in state X and I will soon perform action Y, so now do you
>know what it's like to walk in my shoes? I don't think so. ...
>
>>But assuming something is different from having evidence of it.
>
>I have no need to supply evidence of direct experience as it is the one
>thing in the universe that takes priority over the scientific method.

How does one part of your brain know what the other parts of your brain
feel.  How do you today know what you felt yesterday?  You may draw
conclusions about such things, and they may feel direct, but that directness
is an illusion.  Either you are doing unconscious inference, or you are just
making assumptions.  To draw reasonable inferences, you would have to depend
on signals sent between parts of your brain, and recordings stored in your
brain.  But then if we can watch those signals and look at those recordings,
we will have all the data that you have to make those inferences.



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323 





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