[ExI] Mental Phenomena

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Mon, 30 Dec 2019 at 07:32, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Hi Ben,
>
>
>
> Thanks for jumping in on this!!
>
>
>
> I was completely agreeing with everything you were saying.  I get so upset
> at most theories of consciousness that have exactly the problem you pointed
> out with:
>
>
>
> “It seems to be a general rule of nature that large numbers of complex,
> higher-level things are built from much smaller numbers of simpler,
> lower-level things.”
>
>
> One of many examples is “pan-psychic” ideas that claim everything has
> “proto” consciousness.  What the heck is a "proto" consciousness?  Does a
> proto-consciousness have the same resolution and color depth as our
> visual consciousness?
>
>
> But then you revealed your qualia blindness in your last paragraph by
> saying:
>
>
> “the concept of 'elemental red' is sheer nonsense”.
>
>
> “Red” is a label we give to something that reflects or emits red light.
> It is elemental “redness” that we are talking about.  Redness is a label
> for a very different set of elemental physics than “red”.  One is a color
> property that initiates perceptions.  Colorness is the different property
> of the final physics that result from perception.  Colorness is the
> qualities of the stuff we directly experience from which our conscious
> knowledge is composed.
>
>
> Ben, let me ask you this.  What do you think your knowledge of a
> strawberry is composed of?
>
>
> I believe the supporters of “Representational Qualia Theory
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Representational-Qualia/6>” are saying
> exactly what you are saying by defining consciousness (love, free will,
> intentionality…)  to be “Composite computationally bound elemental
> physical qualities in the brain like redness and greenness.”
>

You have said that it is in theory possible to know what another person’s
qualia are like. Could you use the same method to decide if simple
components or simple systems have qualia?

> --
Stathis Papaioannou
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