[ExI] Fwd: Mental Phenomena

Sat Feb 15 19:10:52 UTC 2020

Right, but what you are telling people is that all we need to do to upload
and fix something, is to put it all in a computer that only has 1s and 0s.
What you are effectively telling people is that all we need to do is to
restore the ability of the robot to pick the strawberry.  Nothing else
matters.

But, when you go down that rat hole that ignores so many of the facts (beng
like Mary, not know the color all our abstract descriptions of physics are
describing)  You are telling the experimentalists you don’t need to step
out of the room, and find out what color things are.  You are telling them
it is perfectly OK to remain “qualia blind”.  You are telling them the only
thing that matters is restoring the ability to pick the strawberry.

In that world, as Chalmers has become famous for, there is a “hard” (as in
impossible) problem.  "fading dancing absent" qualia don't make any
sense.  There
is an “explanatory gap”.  And this huge “gap” is where all the religious
and sloppy crap emerges.  There is no experimental way to falsify any of
these crap theories.  Nobody can know what consciousness is, nobody can
know what uploading will be like.  They think that if they can pick the
strawberry, the upload will be a success, but they have this (very
justified) uncomfortable feeling that maybe this will not be the case,
because they realize that they don’t even really know if someone else is
conscious or not, or if anything else really exists or not.  They can't
really know if there is "The Island
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399201/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1>"  or if they are
more likely like Logan in "Logan's Run
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0>".

The only reason experimentalists are still so qualia blind (like Mary) is
precisely because of functionalist using their sloppy sleight of hand,
leading them away from what is important:  The real color of things.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Feb 14, 2020 at 10:52 PM
Subject: Re: [ExI] Mental Phenomena
To: Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>

On Sat, 15 Feb 2020 at 09:42, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Stathis,
> On Fri, Feb 14, 2020 at 12:59 PM Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> You have attempted to point out a problem, but you have not succeeded in
>> pointing out a problem.
>>
>
> Yes.  This is so frustrating.  I believe I fully understand what you are
> saying, and the arguments you are using which you think justify your belief
> that it is a "LOGICAL NECESSITY" that redness can arise from ones and
> zeros.  And I've proven this in that I've repeated it back to you all of
> it  in a way that says you agree that I understand what you are saying.
> Yet you can do nothing even close to the same in return.
>
> To me, It seems so obvious that there are multiple problems in what you
> are claiming.  But no matter what words I try to use, to describe those
> problems, you still obviously just twist everything I say, to fit within
> your qualia blind model, and fail to understand anything about the model
> I'm trying to describe.  You certainly can't describe anything about my
> model, and how it reveals the problems in your arguments.
>
> I guess my only solace is that I KNOW (It is a LOGICAL NECESSITY ;) That
> some day experimentalists will objectively observe something (as in some
> kind of substrate) in the brain, that is redness, and that nobody will ever
> be able to find anything other that THAT substrate (even if it is only some
> kind of function, the fact that redness results from that function must be
> considered a physical fact, and people will refer to that a s particular
> substrate on which conscious redness cannot exist without.  My prediction
> is also, that this "functionalist" view is holding back scientific
> understanding of the brain, and future histories will agree on the damage
> that you, Chalmers and everyone who so instists that this is a "logical
> necessity" are slowing down progress.  I feel it is my life work, to
> overcome this falcy, to show experimentalists how not to be qualia blind,
> so they can discover what it is that has a redness quality, we we can
> finally falsify all this "crap in the gap"  (functionalism is the largest
> load of crap to me, even worse than substance dualism and quantum views on
> consciousness.)  And it is so frustrating to me, when I'm trying to help
> the world to understand how to use experimental methods in qualia, on
> social media, in places like Quora.  Only to have people like you and James
> Carroll and all the other "functionalists" (By far the most popular
> consensu camp, still) who everyone knows is way smarter than I could ever
> be come in and cut me off at the knees.
>
> I guess the reason I'm so emotional about this is it is far more than just
> wanting to be right, and wanting to not be wrong.  It is a matter of
> wanting to push the science of consciousness forward.  So people can better
> understand what it will mean, and what it will be like to be uploaded, and
> all that.  Let me ask you this.  Do you think your continued touting of
> this functionalism, and what Chalmers is doing, and all the rest of you
> functionalists, is moving the understanding of consciousness forwards or
> backwards?  Is it helping anyone to understanding what uploading could be
> like?  How do you think historians (after they discover what it is that has
> a redness quality) will judge promoters of functionalism?  Will they
> consider "functionalists" as people that helped move the science forward,
> or as clueless people that lead everyone down obviously mistaken rat holes,
> preventing any progress in the field.  Something that continues to keep
> everyone from understanding what it means to be qualia blind, or having a
> clue about what it might mean to be uploaded.
>

As a philosophical theory, functionalism gives neuroscientists confidence
that one day it may be possible replace damaged brain tissue with a
non-biological analogue, perhaps make conscious machines, or upload a human
mind. I don’t see how it could impede progress as you suggest.

> --
Stathis Papaioannou
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20200215/df4db6a8/attachment.htm>