[ExI] Zombie Detector (was Re:Do digital computers feel?)

Jason Resch jasonresch at gmail.com
Sun Jan 1 18:06:59 UTC 2017 

On Sun, Jan 1, 2017 at 10:49 AM, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> Hi Jason,
>
> Good question.  Let me first ask you a question, then based on your
> answer, I will be able to better answer your questions.
>
>
> Let's say you duplicate a person, possibly with a Star Trek like
> transporter.  Except you make one minor change.  You completely swap the
> new persons redness knowledge with their greenness knowledge.  I would say
> you have still successfully transported them, that you have achieved
> multiple-realizability and functionally they will be identical.
>

I believe personal identity is something that falls on a spectrum, so you
can say there is a successful transport even if it is not 100% identical,
but of course this leads to the question of where do you draw the line. I
am not sure that such a line can be drawn.


> But, the new person represents knowledge of strawberries with a greenness
> quality.  Do these before and after people have "identical mental states"?
>
If one person is remembering red strawberries, and the duplicate is
remembering green strawberries, I would say they are not identical mental
states.

I believe that every change to someone's qualia requires a change to their
mind/brain, but not all changes to a mind/brain will result in differently
experienced qualia. This is the essence of multiple realizability, a
many-to-one relationship between brain states and mental states, and an
overall abandonment of the importance of the substrate (so long as the same
mind-states appear the same to the person from the inside).

Jason


>
> Brent
>
> On 12/31/2016 4:44 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
> Brent,
>
> Thank you, the video cleared it up for me then. So do you have no
> objection to multiple-realizability (the idea that different physical
> materials could in theory be used to construct minds that have identical
> mental states)?
>
> Jason
>
> On Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 4:53 PM, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi Jason,
>>
>> I'm just talking in simplified qualitative terms to make communication
>> easier to model what is and isn't important.  that is the only reason I
>> used the term grue to represent all the 99 million or whatever new colors
>> that any particular tetrachromat can experience (surely they are not all
>> the same).
>>
>> Also, when i say that glutamate has the redness quality and glycene has
>> the grenness quality, this too, is just simplified.  I am describing what
>> it would be like in a hypothetical world that only has 3 colors - red
>> (glutamate), green(glycene), and white(aspartate).  (see:
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHuqZKxtOf4&t=30s)  I simply describe in
>> that video that if there was such a world, how could the people in that
>> world correctly see that in their simplified world that glutamate was the
>> neural correlate of red (and not think it was white since glutamate
>> reflects white light).
>>
>> Then once a person can understand how this general correct qualitative
>> interpretation theory works in the simplified world, they can use the same
>> proper qualitative interpretation of abstracted data, in the real world -
>> to finally not be qualia blind and finally discover what really has all the
>> redness qualities any one of us can experience.
>>
>> Brent
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 3:29 PM, Jason Resch <jasonresch at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 4:15 PM, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I, like most people, am a mere tetra chromate – I experience the world
>>>> with 3 primary colors.  But some people are tetrachromats, and do it
>>>> with 4 primary colors.  Let’s call this 4th color “grue”.  Obviously,
>>>> all us tri chromats can hear the person say things like: “No that is Grue,
>>>> not one of the primary colors, as you claim” and we can observe what is
>>>> causing the 4th primary color, including it’s neural correlate in
>>>> their brains.  In other words, like Frank Jackson’s brilliant color
>>>> scientist raised in a black and what room, us trichromats can learn
>>>> everything about grue, and see that it is not in our heads, but we can see
>>>> when the neurarl correlate of grue is in the head of a tetrachromat.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> In other words, all of us normal trichromatic people are grue zombies.
>>>> We can know and communicate everything about them.  In fact, we might
>>>> even be able to be trained to call the right things grue, just like the
>>>> tetrachromat does, and lie about it, and convince everyone else that we
>>>> might be a tetrachromat.  (until you observe my brain)  So, until we
>>>> enhance our primary visual cortext and give it what has the grue color, we
>>>> will never know how the tetrachromat qualitatively interprets the word
>>>> “grue”.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Now, some people think of a “p-zombie” as something that is atomically
>>>> identical to us, but just doesn’t have the qualitative experience of
>>>> consciousness – which of course is very absurd, and very different than the
>>>> grue type of zombie, I am, who simply isn’t yet capable of producing the
>>>> grue neural correlate in my brain.  But I can represent grue with
>>>> anything else that is in my brain, and talk about it as if it was grue, in
>>>> a grue zombie way.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> But no new neurotransmitters are required to experience grue.
>>>
>>> Moreover, tretrachromats don't just see 1 new type of color, they can
>>> see 99 million new colors that us trichromats cannot see. This is because
>>> we can sense about 100 independent relative brightnesses for red green and
>>> blue colors, which allows 100x100x100 possible resulting colors (1 million
>>> colors). Tetrachromats get to see 100x100x100x100 or 100 million colors.
>>>
>>> How can so many new colors come about if the neurocorolates are somehow
>>> dependent on specific chemicals in the brain? Tetrachromats don't have 100
>>> times as many chemicals in their brain as trichromats have, yet they get to
>>> perceive 100 times as many qualia.
>>>
>>> Jason
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 12:30 PM, Jason Resch <jasonresch at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Reminds me a bit of "An Unfortunate Dualist":
>>>>>
>>>>> http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-23-unfortunate-
>>>>> dualist.html
>>>>>
>>>>> As to your puzzle, if Fred is unable to detect any effects from
>>>>> conscious people (including their reflections), then he should not  be able
>>>>> to see his own reflection, but then he also shouldn't be able to hear his
>>>>> own thoughts either. Which might be your definition of a zombie, making him
>>>>> visible, etc. "Russell's reflection". However, Fred's own voice might still
>>>>> be heard if Fred's consciousness is an epiphenomenon, but I think
>>>>> practically speaking I think epiphenomenalism can be ruled out, together
>>>>> with the notion of p-zombies.
>>>>>
>>>>> See Daniel Dennett's "The Unimagined Preposterousness of Zombies":
>>>>> https://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett/papers/unzombie.htm
>>>>>
>>>>> Dennett argues that "when philosophers claim that zombies are
>>>>> conceivable, they invariably underestimate the task of conception (or
>>>>> imagination), and end up imagining something that violates their own
>>>>> definition".[3]
>>>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie#cite_note-Dennett1991-3>
>>>>> [4]
>>>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie#cite_note-Dennett1995-4> He
>>>>> coined the term "zimboes" – p-zombies that have second-order beliefs
>>>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-order_logic> – to argue that
>>>>> the idea of a p-zombie is incoherent;[12]
>>>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie#cite_note-12> "Zimboes
>>>>> thinkZ they are conscious, thinkZ they have qualia, thinkZ they
>>>>> suffer pains – they are just 'wrong' (according to this lamentable
>>>>> tradition), in ways that neither they nor we could ever discover!".[4]
>>>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie#cite_note-Dennett1995-4>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm not sure, however, whether your thought experiment sheds any new
>>>>> light on the concepts of consciousness or zombies. It seems like it may be
>>>>> only a reformulation of the "Barber Paradox", where the self reflexivity is
>>>>> a "power to detect only non-consciousness things", aimed at one's own
>>>>> consciousness.
>>>>>
>>>>> Jason
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 11:13 AM, Stuart LaForge <avant at sollegro.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Jason Resch wrote:
>>>>>> <Therefore, if the brain is a machine, and is finite, then an
>>>>>> appropriately programmed computer can perfectly emulate any of its
>>>>>> behaviors. Philosophers generally fall into one os three camps, on the
>>>>>> question of consciousness and the computational theory of mind:
>>>>>> Non-computable physicists [. . .]Weak AI proponents [. . .]
>>>>>> Computationalists.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Which camp do you consider yourself in?>
>>>>>> -------------------------------------------
>>>>>>
>>>>>> As a general rule, I prefer not to go camping with philosophers as I
>>>>>> prefer the rigor of science and mathematics. But if I must camp in
>>>>>> that
>>>>>> neck of the woods, I would set up my own camp. I would call it the
>>>>>> Godelian camp after Kurt Godel. Since I am a scientist and not a
>>>>>> philosopher, I will explain my views with a thought experiment
>>>>>> instead of
>>>>>> an argument.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Imagine if you will a solipsist. Let's call him Fred. Fred is
>>>>>> solopsist
>>>>>> because he has every reason to believe he lives alone in a world of
>>>>>> P-zombies.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> For the uninitiated, P-zombies are philosophical zombies. Horrid
>>>>>> beings
>>>>>> that talk, move, and act like normal folks but lack any real
>>>>>> consciousness
>>>>>> or self-awareness. They just go through the motions of being
>>>>>> conscious but
>>>>>> are not really so.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So ever since Fred could remember, wherever he looked, all he could
>>>>>> see
>>>>>> were those pesky P-zombies. They were everywhere. He could talk to
>>>>>> them,
>>>>>> he could interact with them, and he even married one. And because
>>>>>> they all
>>>>>> act perfectly conscious, they would fool most anyone but certainly not
>>>>>> Fred.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This was because Fred had, whether you would regard it as a gift or
>>>>>> curse,
>>>>>> an unusual ability. He could always see and otherwise sense P-zombies
>>>>>> but
>>>>>> never normal folk. Normal folk were always invisible to him and he
>>>>>> never
>>>>>> could sense a single one. So he, being a perfect P-zombie detector,
>>>>>> came
>>>>>> to believe that he was the only normal person on a planet populated by
>>>>>> P-zombies.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Then one day by chance he happened to glance in a mirror . . .
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Does he see himself?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I want to hear what the list has to say about this before I give my
>>>>>> answer
>>>>>> and my interpretation of what this means for strong AI and the
>>>>>> computational theory of mind.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Stuart LaForge
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
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>>>>>
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