[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet.

[John K Clark]

"gts" <gts_2000 at yahoo.com>

>  an alternative view is that of epiphenomenalism. According
>  to this view,  qualia are irrelevant to behavior.

I think epiphenomenalism is just playing with words, it's one of those ideas
that's so bad it's not even wrong. It would be like saying the toy balloon
did not burst because the pressure inside it was too great, it burst because
there were too many molecules inside it colliding with the fabric of the
balloon. Yes it's true that when I saw Big Foot the neural network in my
head sent a signal to the muscles in my legs causing me to move in a
trajectory that diverged 180 degrees from Big Foot's advance; but it is
equally true to say that when I saw Big Foot I got afraid and ran away.

> epiphenomenalism looks like this:

> ........................................qualia..............
> .......................................... ^ ..................
>  .........................................  | ...................
> environmental stimulus -> response
>Here qualia "happen" but do not drive behavior.

But if it ALWAYS happened that way then I could state that the response was
caused by the qualia and have absolutely positively 100% no fear of ever
being proven wrong.

> If the only function of evolution is perpetuation of genes, there is some
> justification for wondering why it did not produce mindless zombies.

Some justification?  I know with complete certainty that Evolution did
manage to produce at least one entity that was conscious, so I'd say that is
one hell of a lot more than "some justification", it completely closes the
book on the possibility of intelligent but unconscious zombies. Because of
this I am as certain as anything I know that if you detect intelligence
you're detecting consciousness too.

If you somehow manage to convinced me that I'm wrong about that
then my entire world view is dead wrong and the only logical thing
for me to do is burn all my Science books and become a scientologist,
or a moslem fundamentalist, or a born again christian, or something
equally wacky.

   John K Clark