[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet.

[gts]

On Sat, 26 Nov 2005 09:01:22 -0500, John K Clark <jonkc at att.net> wrote:

> "gts" <gts_2000 at yahoo.com>
>
>> Why useless and invisible? Presumably animals run from forest fires
>> because they smell, hear, see, or feel them. All qualia.
>
> Oh I agree! I think qualia does effect behavior, or rather, such complex
> behavior is imposable without qualia...

I tend to agree, but for the sake of argument, and possibly relevant to  
your thoughts about the Turing test, an alternative view is that of  
epiphenomenalism. According to this view, qualia are irrelevant to  
behavior.

The conventional view of the role of qualia looks like this:

environmental stimulus -> qualia -> response

epiphenomenalism looks like this:


........................................qualia.................
  .......................................... ^ ......................
  .........................................  | .......................
environmental stimulus -> response

Here qualia "happen" but do not drive behavior.

If the only function of evolution is perpetuation of genes, there is some  
justification for wondering why it did not produce mindless zombies.  
Human-like zombies might have done the job quite well. After all a very  
large fraction of our behaviors are unconscious behaviors with no apparent  
awareness of any qualia.

-gts