[ExI] Fwd: Paper on "Detecting Qualia" presentation at 2015 MTA conference

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Sun, Feb 1, 2015 at 6:11 PM, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at canonizer.com>
wrote:

>
>
> This theory also predicts that this elemental fundamental stuff, in
> addition to behaving according to these laws, also has fundamental
> qualities, like redness.  It predicts that particular qualities are one and
> the same as particular behaviors.  The prediction is that nature builds our
> composite consciousness out of these elemental qualities.  In the 3 color
> world, the scientists don't know why glutamate has a redness quality, just
> that it does.


### Sorry, this really fails the LOL test. Fundamental quality of redness
in *glutamate*??

One might claim there are some irreducible properties of information
processing that manifest as qualia, from simple redness to the feel of a
quadratic function being plotted by a 3d-representing mind to the taste of
madeleines in the remembering human but to say that low-level chemistry
determines these properties is just silly. There is million chemical
processes happening inside your mind that are clearly irrelevant to qualia,
since they remain both subjectively and objectively undetected (i.e. have
no measurable impact on behavior or measurable internal states that
correlate with behavior). Replacing glutamate with another neurotransmitter
in your mind while adjusting its receptors and enzymes as to make
higher-level brain activity (EEG, rCBF responses, etc.) the same would have
no impact on "qualia", just as replacing a 4004 system with an i7 system in
a Pong arcade game, properly implemented, would not change the game itself.

Rafal
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