[ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge?

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Jason,
Sounds like you know your stuff, and have been studying the field for some
time, so fun to have an additional challenger, even if your just another
person in the currently leading consensus "functionalism" camp, which I
believe is dead wrong.

On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 8:07 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> If the "bio-brain" is conscious, and the "compu-brain" preserves all the
> relevant interrelationships of the bio-brain in an isomorphic manner, then
> all externally visible behavior will likewise be the same.
>

Still not accounting for qualia in any significant way.  For example,
wonder if you have two bio-brains, one engineered to be red/green qualia
inverted.  With questions like: "What is redness like for you, they will
behave very different, but on everything else you are describing in your
post, they will behave identically, even possibly better, in any way you
care to define better.

For that matter, Stathis is also always completely qualia blind, and any
functionalists I have ever seen, the same.  They never fully account for
qualia in anything they talk about or argue, and always completely avoid
any reference to what qualia are, or how they would fit in any of the
beliefs, or how redness might fit in their 'neuro substitution'....  To me,
this is very strong evidence that any functionalists has no grasp at all on
the qualitative nature of consciousness, and the assumptions they are
making.  They just ignore it all, thinking it doesn't need to be accounted
for.


> The person with a compu-brain will still cry when in pain, still say
> there's an incommunicable difference between red and green, still describe
> their dull back ache in full (and identical) detail to the person with the
> bio-brain. If based on the brain of Chalmers or Dennett, the compu-brain
> will even still write books in the mysteries of consciousness and qualia.
>
> In short, there's would be no objective or scientific test you could do to
> rule out the consciousness of the compu-brain, as all objective behaviors
> are identical.
>
> Although you could reason that "if philosphical zombies are logically
> impossible" then "identically functioning compu-brains must be conscious,
> in the same ways as bio-brains are conscious."
>
> I see no rational basis for an assumption that the compu-brain is not
> consciousness or is differently conscious. But there are rational bases for
> assuming they must be the same (e.g. dancing/fading qualia, self-reports,
> non-dualism, non-epiphenomenalism, successes of neural prosthesis, the
> anti-zombie principle).
>
> 3. There must be something that is responsible for each of the intrinsic
>> qualities of each elemental piece of conscious knowledge, and you must be
>> able to observe these computational differences.
>>
>
> Are you speaking from a first person or third person viewpoint when you
> say you must be able to observer computational differences?
>

Two answer this, let's assume our description of glutamate, reacting in a
synapse, is a description of your redness quality.
If not, then substitute all instances of glutamate, with whichever
description of stuff in our brain, is a description of redness.
Given that, here is the answer:

We "Directly apprehend" glutamate reacting in a synapse as a redness
quality of subjective experience (first person)
We observe glutamate, from afar, possibly using scientific instruments, and
we end up with a description of glutamate, and how it behaves.  (third
person)
Notice any description of how glutamate behaves tells you nothing of the
colorness quality of that behavior.  You need a dictionary to know that.

For more info on this, see the "Distinguishing between reality and
knowledge of reality
<https://canonizer.com/videos/consciousness/?chapter=differentiate_reality_knowledge>"
chapter of our video.
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