[ExI] Digital Consciousness .

[Kelly Anderson]

On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 2:50 PM, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at canonizer.com>wrote:

>
> Hi Kelly,
>
> Communication is a two way street.  So if I'm failing at communication, it
> is a problem with me, also.  So thanks for trying, and not yet giving up!
>
> Let's back up a bit, and be sure we are clear on some of the
> fundamentals.  For example, do you agree that 'red' is an ambiguous term.
>

It is ambiguous in that somewhere between 620–750 nm you will start seeing
red at a slightly different point than I will, but that is a symbolic
representation problem in how you and I LEARNED the concept red. There
would undoubtedly be a color in there that we both agreed would be red, and
then going off the other end, we would have the same issue. But there is an
unambiguous middle ground where it is definitely red, and I don't think
that is ambiguous in the least. We would agree that orange has some redness
to it.


> It includes both the initial cause of the perception of 'red', like when
> the strawberry reflects something like 650 NM light.  And it also includes
> a phenomenal quality, which is a quality of our knowledge of such.
>

The recognition of red by my brain and by your brain even in the
unambiguous case of physical middle of the road redness will be established
by the lighting up of different neural patterns, or waves of patterns if
you believe some brain scientists.


> In other words, redness is a quality of the final result of the perception
> process.
>

The recognition of red is different between you and I, but by the time you
turn it into a symbol, and turn that symbol back into speech, and I
recognize the speech, after all that messing around is done, then we would
agree that we have both perceived red, at least in many cases. If I reach
out to try and understand what you are saying, redness is a symbol that is
the final result of the perception process.


> So, when we talk about 'red', you must distinguish between them, and know
> which one of these you are talking about!?
>

Meaning the physics red and the perception red and the symbol "red"? Yup,
got it. Those are all different things. Probably a lot of other things in
the middle of those things that we don't have language or technology to
describe, especially in an email, such as sound waves, brain patterns and
waves and so forth. When you break it down it does indeed get VERY
complicated.

Also, all the intermediate representations really have nothing to do with
> 'red' other than some intermediate physical media is being interpreted in
> an abstract way, as being red.  Without the correct hardware interpretation
> layer, there is no 'red' anywhere in the light or the eye, other than the
> abstracted information it all is being interpreted as.
>

If there is no eye and no brain, redness can still be detected by a device.
So Redness (if the definition is agreed upon) is a TRUTH that lies outside
of anyone's brain. I can have a symbol "red" in a database, and if that is
the result of a query issued by that camera device, then that recognition
of red is no different than what happens from the query in my brain that
comes up with the symbol "red". There is no "emotion", but I don't think
your definition of qualia necessarily includes an emotional aspect, or does
it?

The qualia, as you call it, of redness, is simply the mental state of
resonating strongly with the symbol red (as represented by a learned
pattern state in my brain) in the context of an experience conveyed to the
perceiving brain by its sensory input, particularly the visual input in
this case.

Are we getting anything like closer to common understanding?

-Kelly
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