[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet

[Jef Allbright]

On 12/25/05, gts <gts_2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:

<snip>

> Ultimately, however, it is a theory of cognitive accessibility, explaining
> how it is that certain information contents are widely accessible within a
> system, as well as a theory of informational integration and
> reportability. The theory shows promise as a theory of awareness, the
> functional correlate of conscious experience, but an explanation of
> experience itself is not on offer.
>
> One might suppose that according to this theory, the contents of
> experience are precisely the contents of the workspace. But even if this
> is so, nothing internal to the theory explains why the information within
> the global workspace is experienced. The best the theory can do is to say
> that the information is experienced because it is globally accessible. But
> now the question arises in a different form: why should global
> accessibility give rise to conscious experience? As always, this bridging
> question is unanswered.

We're making progress in cognitive science, but we don't yet
understand all the physical mechanisms involved in the brain's
functioning.  But the "hard problem" is not asking about the specific
mechanism, it's asking the more general question of "how, in
principle, can any physical processing of information cross the great
divide and produce the sense of immediate subjective experience which
is so obviously different in a strong qualitative sense from other
forms of knowledge?"

The "hard problem" appears so hard because it's asking the wrong
question.  It assumes the existence of some coherent self that is able
to judge and report on the immediacy and vibrancy of the subjective
experience.  But there is no such privileged point of view.  The
absolute and infallible reference point of view assumed by Descartes
doesn't exist.  The sense of self is a construct of the system,
modeling its environment and itself in terms of its goals, evolved
because a system with such an advanced model is able to do "what if"
planning providing strong advantages in a competitive environment.

When this self-aware system arrives at the point of asking itself
about its subjective experience, the query and the response are
processed within that same system.  Of course (for practical reasons
of survival advantage) present experience seems immediate (when the
system has reason to query it, and despite that much of the relevant
processing may precede awareness or be entirely outside awareness),
and other times, as when driving a car while thinking about something
else, the sense of immediate experience is completely absent.

The only way to know about the subjective experience of any system,
including the system you know as yourself, is by querying that system
and then noticing its (your) response.  Can you see how this leads to
profound, creative attempts by the system to fill the gaps in its
model of reality, the only model of reality it can report on, but
which is only an imperfect and partial model within a system
functioning within a larger objective reality?

Understanding this model opens the door to further understanding that
builds upon it in a coherent way as I've described earlier. The
illusion of "self", "free will" and "morality" as popularly conceived
are strongly inter-related with this key concept.  Achieving more
popular understanding of this will lead to practical advances in
social decision-making about "right" and "wrong" and how to develop
and implement principles of what works (on which we can increasingly
agree) that overcome the evolved biases and short-sighted cultural
artifacts that drive much of our present decision-making.

Refusing the model, because it just doesn't feel right intuitively, or
because it seems to suck the life out of obviously vibrant human
experience, or because thinking in such terms brings one into conflict
with cultural and linguistic convention, or because deep down it
incites the existential fear of not having an eternal soul, is to
accept mystery and paradox when a more coherent and more comprehensive
model has been made available.

- Jef
http://www.jefallbright.net