[ExI] Quantum consciousness, quantum mysticism and transhumanist engineering

[Ben]

Brent wrote:

"As far as I can tell, from reading this and subsequent posts, is that
your theory is completely qualia blind or devoid.  In no place in your
theory is there anything we could experience as a redness quality, and
be able to experience and distinguish it (and objectively detect such
differences) from a greenness quality being experienced."

Of course. As I said before, subjective and objective are completely 
different things. You seem to think you can 'objectively detect' a 
subjective experience. If anything is absurd, that is. You're 
effectively saying we can determine the size of beauty.

"What could make "red", "OxF00" be experienced as redness and
what differences does "green" or "0x0F0" cause you to experience greenness?"

The association of "red", "OxF00", etc., with memories of seeing 
telephone boxes and blood, etc. and the association of "green", "0x0F0" 
with memories of seeing grass, copper oxide, etc. Not to mention, of 
course, reading words like "crimson", "jade", etc., and imagining 
emotions like anger and jealousy... The lists are going to be rather 
large, I suspect (and of course, different for different individuals).

The exact signals used in any given brain can be completely arbitrary, 
as long as they are consistent. You grow up getting a certain,  probably 
randomly-derived signal to a certain stimulus, and that becomes the 
'code' for that stimulus, reinforced by repetition. Babies probably 
start off with lots of different codes, that gradually get winnowed down 
to a smaller set through a kind of darwinian selection process. Someone 
else may well have a totally different code for the 'same' stimulus (by 
which I mean the same external stimulus, filtered through their own 
sensory apparatus). There is no static or constant 'thing' which somehow 
'is' that experience, the experience is a compound process involving 
many neural circuits, and I'm willing to bet that over time, these 
change, possibly quite a lot, but we would still say that we experience 
the same thing as before (even though that is probably not true).

In fact, I would challenge you to prove that your 'red' of today is the 
same as your 'red' of yesterday or last week or ten years ago. Surely, 
if subjective experience is measurable as you seem to think, this should 
be possible?


"but redness just is"

You keep telling us where we are going wrong. Now I'm going to tell you 
that this is where you are going wrong: "redness just is" is false. I'd 
go so far as to say that redness doesn't exist at all. It's a figment of 
your imagination.


Ben Zaiboc