[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet

[gts]

On Mon, 28 Nov 2005 09:28:22 -0500, Dirk Bruere <dirk.bruere at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> Intelligence, awareness, consciousness and qualia *may* be connected via
> information processing but there are significant differences between the
> meanings of each word.

Here is how I would like to define them:

Awareness: The capacity to be affected by the environment. Everything is  
aware, but only higher organisms know they are aware.

Qualia: The experience(s) of being aware. Qualia are the answer to the  
question "What is it like to experience X?" e.g, what is it like to be a  
bat? Lower organisms experience qualia but don't reflect on their  
experience. Higher organisms do reflect on experience, and ask questions  
like "What are qualia?"

Consciousness: The capacity to reflect on experience, to be aware of one's  
awareness. A defining characteristic of higher organisms. Probably  
requires an advanced nervous system and a concept of self.

Intelligence: The ability to respond to experience in a manner that  
promotes survival. Does not require consciousness. Bacteria and even  
viruses are intelligent.

One might ask seemingly absurd questions like, "What is it like to be  
molecule of phosphorus?" (I can already hear Eugen and Damien scoffing)  
but this question is no less absurd than the much more reasonable question  
"What is it like to be an insect?" Neither molecules nor (presumably)  
insects have the ability to reflect on experience (neither have  
consciousness) but it seems reasonable to me that insects nevertheless  
*have* experience. They have eyes, presumably to see, but as I define  
consciousness they are probably no more conscious than a single molecule.  
If insects see and experience their environment, and are fundamentally no  
different from less complex structures like bacteria and viruses and  
single molecules, then we are forced to conclude that everything is aware.

An important point is that consciousness is *not* in my view a so-called  
"emergent property" of matter. There is nothing new about consciousness,  
except in so much as it is more highly evolved. Consciousness is nothing  
more than aware matter becoming aware of itself.  Evolution produced  
consciousness as a way to exploit the fundamental awareness of all matter.  
Consciousness may even be an inevitable consequence of evolution.


-gts