[extropy-chat] qualia

[Jef Allbright]

On 11/22/05, Brent Allsop <allsop at extropy.org> wrote:
> How does matter have causal properties?  We don't know how - we just know
> that they do.  The same can also be said of phenomenal properties.  Our
> conscious knowledge is made of phenomenal properties - so we know they
> exist.  Just like causal properties - we don't really know why they exist.
>
> > To quote Chalmers, "At the end of the day, the same criticism applies to
> > any purely physical account of consciousness. For any physical process we
> > specify there will be an unanswered question: Why should this process give
> > rise to experience?"

Brent, have you considered turning the question around--and assuming a
universe that has no "phenomenal properties"--what it might be like
for organisms that evolved the capability to model their surroundings
as many primitive organisms do, and then took the next step and began
to include themselves in the model for the additional fitness this
enhanced model provided?

If such a theory accounted for all the observations, including an
organism that would know and feel an immediate and indisputable sense
of itself within its surroundings, then wouldn't that theory be
preferable to one that requires some additional and mysterious
"phenomenal properties"?

Taking it up a level, could you also imagine how in this purely
physical model, that a self-aware organism, evolved to protect its
"self" at all cost, may find it nearly impossible to expand its
concept of its world such that its "self" --its own special
viewpoint--really isn't anything special in any measurable, objective
sense?

I realize that the foregoing is rife with loopholes and tempting
distractions.  If you're up to it, I suggest only that you might play
with such an impersonal and heartlessly objective scenario for a while
and see where it takes you.  Some people have, and have found it
similar to going into the void and emerging on the other side with all
as it was before, only more so.

- Jef