[ExI] Fwd: Mental Phenomena

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Stathis,



No matter how I try to say things, you always twist them to be something
different, so they can fit into your assumption that the “forces” and
“behavior” are different than the qualia.  I completely agree that
everything you say is true, given the assumption that "forces", and
"behavior" are different than qualia.  So, if you are going to eternally
map what I’m trying to say, into your assumption, we will never make any
more progress.  Let me know if you are willing to try looking at things in
a different way, with some different assumptions.  Let me know if you are
going to make an attempt to do what I have done for you, the way I am
repeating back to you, what you are trying to say to me, and working from
within your model.



Otherwise, progress will continue to be impossible.

On Sat, Feb 15, 2020 at 2:46 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, 16 Feb 2020 at 06:12, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> 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.
>>
>
> No, humans do not just pick strawberries, they also see them, smell them,
> have emotional responses to them and so on. A human who had a brain implant
> that allowed them to pick strawberries without these other experiences
> would immediately tell us that there was something seriously wrong with
> their perception. A human who had artificial neurons that perfectly matched
> the I/O behaviour of their biological neurons, on the other hand, would not
> only pick the strawberries but also report that they looked, smelled,
> tasted and so on exactly the same.
>
> 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.
>>
>
> You seem to miss the fact that I keep saying it is impossible for the
> subject to become qualia blind when a qualia blind scientist does the
> neural replacement correctly.
>
> 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>".
>>
>
> But you can be confident that if the experimentally verifiable behaviour
> of the neuronal model is all in order, then the consciousness will also be
> in order. Isn’t that exactly what you want?
>
> 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.
>>
>
> Experimentalist are still often contemptuous of philosophy and of the idea
> of qualia, which they think is philosophy rather than science.
> Nevertheless, this does not stop them doing a good job of elucidating and
> perhaps one day replicating the function of neurological tissue.
>
>> --
> Stathis Papaioannou
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