[ExI] Do digital computers feel?

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Stathis.


Dang, not quite communicating yet.  You keep saying this over and over 
again.  I, also, over and over again in reply, try to describe the many 
problems that I see with this.  Thanks to all your help, I'm hopefully 
getting better each time.  But you never provide any evidence that you 
are trying to understand the problems I'm trying to describe.  All you 
seem to do is repeat over and over again with your overly simplistic 
system that A: the brain is a system made of parts, that B: each part 
interacts with neighboring parts, and finally C: if you replace one part 
with a different part that interacts with its neighbors in the same way, 
then the system as a whole will behave in the same way.

In addition to all the "hard" (as in impossible) problems that result 
with your insufficient swapping steps, there is this: I know I (there I 
didn't say "we", are you happy John?) can be conscious of 1: redness and 
2: greenness at the same time, as a composite experience.  And 3: using 
this composite awareness of each of these qualitatively different 
functionalities express that they are different.  With the system that 
you describe, and the simplistic way you do the do the neural 
substitution on "parts" with minimal interactions with their neighbors, 
it isn't possible to do the 3 above described functionalities without 
completely ignoring them.  You must do a substitution on some kind of 
system that has a reasonable chance of modeling the 3 mentioned 
functionalities adequately to be able to make any kind of claim that you 
know what is going on, phenomenally, with the neural substitution.  
Plain and simple, your system is completely qualia blind, like all the 
experimental neuro science being done today that I know of.

If you do a neuro substitution on any system which does have sufficient 
detail to at least model these 3 necessary functions (my simplified 
glutamate theory for example), there will be no "hard problems", and 
everything we subjectively know about how we can be aware of diverse 
composite qualitative experiences, will be sufficiently modeled.  We 
will be able to understand why the simplistic neural substitution of 
your system is qualia blind and leads some to think there are "hard 
problems".  We will be able to say we understand how these composite 
subjective experiences work and why, both subjectively and objectively, 
as the neuro substitution progresses.

Brent



On 2/17/2017 10:21 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>
> On 17 February 2017 at 16:04, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com 
> <mailto:brent.allsop at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>     Hi Stathis,
>
>     You obviously know more than I know about how neuro transmitters
>     work.  Thanks for helping me to better understand this type of stuff.
>
>
>     As I said, if what you say is true, then it merely falsifies the
>     prediction that glutamate is what performs the redness quality we
>     experience.
>
> It falsifies the theory that *any* particular substrate or physics is 
> necessary for the redness quality, or any other quale. The general 
> argument is this:
>
> A. The brain is a system made of parts.
> B. Each part interacts with neighbouring parts.
> C. If you replace one part with a different part that interacts with 
> its neighbours in the same way, then the system as a whole will behave 
> in the same way.
> D. If the part you replaced were essential for qualia, then the qualia 
> would change but the behaviour would not.
> E. Think about what it would mean if (D) were true.
>
> Note that this does not say anything about whether qualia can be 
> detected - only that qualia cannot be due to a particular substrate or 
> physics.
>
>     That is why I always resort to talking about the "simplified
>     theoretical world".  In the simplified world, there are only 3
>     colors: red, green and white. And in that simplified world,
>     glutamate has the redness quality, glycene has the greenness
>     quality, aspartate that has the whiteness quality, and it is one
>     neuron that binds them all together, so you can be aware of them
>     all at once.  And for Ben's sake: in this simplified world there
>     are "red and green signals in the optic nerve" that can be easily
>     inverted.
>
>
>     The goal is to make a very hard topic a little more simple.  If
>     one can understand the qualitative theory I'm trying to describe,
>     and how neuro substitutuion works with no "hard" problems, and how
>     people in such a simplified world can "eff the ineffable" by
>     properly qualitatively interpreting abstracted observation
>     knowledge - then they should be able to apply the same qualitative
>     theory in the more complex real world. All that is required is to
>     test for, and find, experimentally, in the real world, what it is
>     that takes the place of glutamate, glycene, aspartate, and the
>     single neuron binding system.  That job is for the
>     experimentalists to do, once they understand how to test for it by
>     no longer being qualia blind (by miss interpreting abstracted
>     observation information as they all do now) and effing the
>     ineffable by interpreting what they are observing, qualitatively
>     correctly.
>
>
>     Ben, I don't know if it will help, but I describe the "simplified
>     theoretical world" in more detail, in this talk:
>     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHuqZKxtOf4
>     <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHuqZKxtOf4> .  But it may not
>     help if you believe there are not elemental qualities out of which
>     our brain builds or paints composite qualitative experiences
>     with.  It sounds like you and John Clark agree on this?  Do you
>     also, like John, believe that effing the ineffable is impossible,
>     and thereby, qualia will forever not be approachable via objective
>     or sharable science?
>
>
>     Brent
>


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