[ExI] Quantum consciousness, quantum mysticism, and transhumanist engineering

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Stathis,


On 3/10/2017 2:52 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> I see no evidence that you understand the idea that with any possible 
> system, if you swap a part for another part that interacts with its 
> neighbours in the same way, the system as a whole will behave in the 
> same way. It is irrelevant what the system does or how complex it is. 
> The correct way to do the substitution is to make sure that the new 
> part interacts with the rest of the system in the same way as the 
> original part did, and you don't need to understand anything about 
> what the system does in order make this substitution.
>

OK, let me attempt, yet again, to convince you that I do fully 
understand the idea that with any possible system, if you swap a part 
for another part, that interacts with it's neighbors in the same way, 
the system as a whole will behave in the same way.  I completely agree 
with this, but the way you do the substitution is erroneous, and you are 
corrupting the system by always insisting you must be able to remove any 
way to compare one quality to another, no matter where you theorized 
that it might be.  For example, let's assume, for a moment, your theory 
that redness is "functional" as you claim.

I assert that if your theory is true, then there must be some "function" 
that is the redness function, and there must be some other function that 
must be detectably different that is the greenness function.  
Additionally, since we can be aware of them at the same time, there must 
be something that is binding these two functions enabling this composite 
qualitative experience of redness and greenness, leading to the ability 
to verbalize that they are qualitatively different.

Now, the error you make, is that you assert that you must always be able 
to replace the redness function, with the greenness function, in a way 
that it will always "behave in the same way" which you corrupting claim 
must be that the now new two greenness qualities (the redness being 
substituted with the greenness) are still different.  In other words, no 
matter where you put the comparison ability, you remove this ability, by 
asserting they must be different, even though they are now the same.

If you include the ability of the system to behave the same, including 
comparison of redness and greenness (whether they are material or 
functional) so that it preserves the ability to say that redness is 
different than greenness, only then can you consider it to be "behaving 
the same" in a sufficient, non corrupted way, to explain qualitative 
conscious comparison behavior and verbalization of such.

Brent

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20170313/35c69041/attachment.html>