[ExI] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness

[Richard Loosemore]

Damien Broderick wrote:
> At 11:38 AM 11/15/2008 -0700, Brent wrote:
> 
>  >If, as this theory predicts, we discover that something in our
>  >brain does have phenomenal properties
> 
> Ah--then does the brain also have non-reductive *musicality* properties 
> over and above these postulated hearing-air-vibrations-as-sound-qualia 
> properties? I mean, sure, let's say we need these mysterious additional 
> raw qualia detectors just to *eff* sounds qua sounds, but doesn't that 
> leave out our capacity to identify and enjoy *musical* sound qualia? Are 
> these meta-[in]effable properties? You might say No, appreciating music 
> is just a neurocomputational/affective response to the basic sound 
> qualia, both innate and learned, but isn't that just *evading the issue* 
> of the (as it were) unutterable mysteriousness of music, its 
> meta-[in]effable character? And so on, turtles of different voice in 
> every direction.

Ben Goertzel made a similar point, on the AGI list, re the higher-level 
"conscious experience" of a chair (versus the common-or-garden raw 
qualia like the colors of all the bits of a chair).

If concept-atoms that represent qualia cause us to speak of the 
"conscious experience of the color red", and so on, then we would expect 
that a concept-atom one level up, encoding the conjunction of all the 
qualia involved in a chair percept, would also tend to make us talk the 
same way, although to a lesser extent.  Why?  Because that higher-level 
concept-atom would still inherit a good deal of the unanalyzability of 
teh Level-0 ones. In other words, the analysis mechanism would fail 
after just one unpacking step, and this would end up looking like a 
diluted form of a "conscious" experience.

The same argument would apply to music, as a combination of sound qualia.

It is important to note that in general people do not speak of "music" 
qualia, although they do (as you just did) speak of a lesser form of 
mystery in the subjective quality of music.





Richard Loosemore