Spirits (was RE: [extropy-chat] Qualia Bet.)

[Brent Allsop]

Robin Hanson,

> But how will you know *that* you are effing?  Say we find some weird
> particle
> that interacts with brains and correlates with states of awareness.  Say
> with
> the help of such particles we let you and your wife mix up your minds, so
> that your brain gets input directly from her brain.  How will you know
> this
> isn't just some fancy hookup to her brain-as-computer that allows you to
> treat her as a video game?  How will you know you are accessing her
> qualia?

You are right, strictly speaking, effing, alone will not let you know with
absolute surety that you have the right phenomenal property in the
destination mind.

You are hypothesizing that qualia will correlate with "some weird particle"
that we find.  I am hypothesizing that it will be an additional to causal
property of matter (particles?) we already causally know about which
correlates to phenomenal properties.  Whatever qualia turns out to be - the
effing answers below will still be the same.

With effing, some causal detector causally senses the corelate's causes (but
not its phenomenal properties as this is impossible with abstracted
representations) in the source brain.  This data is then communicated to the
destination brain via abstracted cause and effect communication.  In the
destination brain, this abstract information is then converted back into the
correct real correlate which has (we will assume we know the right one to
produce given the incoming abstract causal data) the same phenomenal
properties in the other brain.

Right now, people point out possibilities like we are a brain in a vat - or
that other's are not phenomenally conscious like ourselves, solipsism... and
so on.  Everyone admits these possibilities - but no one gives these ideas
any consideration other than a very remote possibility.  Occam's Razor and
assumptions about physical phenomenon being consistent are some of the many
rational reasons for making these very rational and productive assumptions.

When we discover these correlates we will understand much more than we do
now, the natures, the whats and whys of them.  Making these arguments - that
we have things right as far as other minds and effing goes - all the more
compelling.  We will find that the causally detectable correlates will
always be correlated with the same red in all minds.  And I suspect our
knowledge of these correlates will tell is rational reasons for why warm is
different than red, is different than a sound - and so on.  Again, giving us
much more reason for confidence when we have things right.

Beyond this kind of effing, I have also talked about grand unified spirit
worlds full of shared spirits and claimed that this will be the ultimate
proof that we do have these mappings between phenomenal properties and their
correlates right.  Because of its requirement of extreme brain redesigning
and enhancing - these capabilities will of course come much latter than the
simple effing I talked about above.

This will work because everything in these unified worlds of consciousness
will effectively be one conscious mind.  Just as we are aware of a red quale
in one hemisphere and a green quale in the other hemisphere of our brain at
the same time, everything in these shared spirit worlds will be universally
aware of it all.  In other words, each of the spirits in these shared worlds
will be aware of the same phenomenal property of the same neural correlate
in the same grand mind.

I guess I should explain what I mean by a "spirit".  At the center of our
conscious world is a phenomenal representation of our skull which represents
our real skull with two window like holes that miss represent our eyes.
Inside this knowledge of our skull, looking out these windows, is conscious
knowledge of an "I" that is our knowledge of our self looking out these
windows.  Unlike our knowledge of our skull - this "spirit" has no referent
in reality that it represents.  But despite its lack of a referent, this
knowledge of ourselves is still very real and in reality what we
phenomenally (or spiritually if you will) are.

When we have an "out of body" experience - it is this knowledge of this "I"
or "spirit" that leaves our knowledge of our skull - all of which is in the
conscious world produced by our brain.

Surely in the future we will be able to architect interface system (similar
to the corpus callosum which connects our brain hemispheres) allowing
multiple spirit worlds to be unified into the same conscious world.  Surely
our spirits will be able to "travel" between these types of properly
designed shared conscious worlds.

When we are doing sophisticated things like this with qualia - it will be
all but impossible to say we don't have the map between phenomenal
properties and their correlated precisely right.  For all practical purposes
we will know with a surety - that we are really and accurately effing.

Many people trouble about "uploading" - fearing the true "I" or spirit will
be destroyed and will not survive through to its duplicate in another more
capable mind machine.  Such very real problems can easily be solved by
having our spirits "move" to more capable shared spirit worlds through these
types of methods.  In fact I describe just such a process in my short (50
pages) Science fiction story "1229 Years after Titanic" which is available
at http://home.comcast.net/~brent.allsop if anyone is interested.

Brent Allsop

P.S.  Is no one interested in taking my bet?