[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet

[gts]

On Sun, 25 Dec 2005 23:28:14 -0500, Jef Allbright <jef at jefallbright.net>  
wrote:

> 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?"

I want to agree with you here but I think this is not a correct  
characterization of Chalmers' hard problem. Though it is true that  
immediate subjective experience seems obviously different in a strong  
qualitative sense from other forms of knowledge, there is still the  
question of the subjective experience of those other forms of knowledge.  
Those experiences are qualia.

Mathematicians for example are famous for 'seeing' solutions to  
non-existent problems, problems that have no bearing on known physical  
reality. I would submit that their seeing constitutes a type of subjective  
experience, and that these subjective experiences are qualia. I think  
Chalmers would agree.

I will however agree with you if it's your contention that immediate sense  
perception is not a form of knowledge separate from other forms of  
knowledge. In fact this is my reason for wanting to agree with you. The  
idea is consistent with one I encountered today, and thought quite  
profound, while reading a book about evolutionary epistemology:

"For the 'blindness' of an eyeless animal there has been substituted [via  
evolution] a process so efficient that we use it naively as a model for  
direct, unmediated knowing. But the process is still one of blind search  
and selective retention, in the sense employed in this paper."

Donald T. Campbell, "Blind Variation and Selective Retention in Creative  
Thought as in Other Knowledge Processes", The Psychological Review 67, 1960

The idea here is that visual knowledge is not fundamentally different from  
any other type of knowledge about the external world, all of which comes  
to us via an evolutionary process of trial and error. The blind man's cane  
is no different from an eye, except in its efficiency. We're all  
essentially blind. :)

> 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.

I wonder if this is true. Seems to me that experience precedes any concept  
of self,  that we form concepts of self to help us make sense of  
experience, that the concept of self arose as part of the evolution of  
intelligence.

If you've been following my arguments here, you know that I think even  
presumably unconscious organisms like insects have experience, even with  
no self-concept. I could be wrong but I wonder on what grounds Dennett  
thinks he is right to think Chalmers' hard problem assumes the existence  
of a self to report about experience.  The view that experience exists  
only where it can be reported is behaviorist, which as I've written  
elsewhere seems to me only to sweep the problem under the rug. I have  
little doubt that my cat experiences qualia, but the poor creature can't  
report about it, probably not even to herself.

You've convinced me however that Dennett deserves my attention. Thanks.

-gts