[ExI] Coherent vs. Incoherent Fears of Being Uploaded

Emlyn emlynoregan at gmail.com
Thu Jan 21 03:28:54 UTC 2010


2010/1/21 Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com>:
> 2010/1/21 Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com>:
>
>>> Qualia, consciousness, subjectivity, experience, intentionality,
>>> understanding: What a ridiculous question! Of course I believe in
>>> these things! So do you! So does everyone who is able to believe
>>> anything!
>>
>> The "Q" word is especially dangerous. It's a reification
>> into a noun that causes many people to actually *look*
>> for a physiological manifestation. We're a lot better off
>> without it. Unlike those other, relatively unobjectionable
>> terms, this one arose strictly in the course of armchair
>> philosophy dabbling.
>
> I don't see why "qualia" is used at all, but I take it as synonymous
> with "experiences". Experiences are thought to be "real", and to have
> a physiological basis. A zombie is supposed to have the behaviour but
> not the experiences.

I think Qualia really means emotions, or feelings. When people talk
about the "redness of red", they mean the feeling of it. And really,
that you feel anger, or happiness, in a subjective, experiencing kind
of way, is exactly as mysterious as the feeling of red.

Someone earlier was talking about why we might have these subjective,
experienced feelings at all, why would evolution use them? I think
that, whatever they are, they are part of a system developed back when
the brain was much poorer at information processing, in much simpler
organisms, and that system is still there, even though if you were to
start from scratch without it, you could probably make a fitter
organism. We're made up of all kinds of things like that.

-- 
Emlyn

http://www.songsofmiseryanddespair.com - My show, Fringe 2010
http://point7.wordpress.com - My blog



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