[ExI] Can philosophers produce scientific knowledge?

Sun May 9 23:14:59 UTC 2021

On Mon, 10 May 2021 at 09:04, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> Hi Jason,
>
>
> On Sun, May 9, 2021 at 2:09 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> I watched the series of videos you linked to, and while I thought it was
>> well executed and explained, I did not find any account of qualia given
>> either.
>>
>
> Hmmm, not sure how you were able to think that about the video.  You
> certainly are the first I've seen to think anything like this.  Almost
> every part of the video is going over what we know, infallibly, about
> qualia.  everything from the statement in the intro: "We need to
> pinpoint the location of your colored qualia" in the introduction to the
> description of a few of the many camps  which are supporting sub camp of "Representational Qualia
> Theory
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/6-Representational-Qualia>"
> each of which account for qualia in different falsifiable ways.  RQT
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/6-Representational-Qualia#statement> is
> basically describing how each of the sub camps can be falsified in a way
> all the supporters of all sub camps agree with.
>
>
>> My own beliefs concerning qualia and their ineffability is that qualia
>> relate to how information is processed in the brain, while our third-person
>> ("from afar") representations or descriptions of information can only
>> capture a serialization of 1's and 0's. I can send words or hand gestures
>> to you, or write squiggles on paper, to put new inputs into your senses,
>> but I can't directly manipulate the processing of information as done by
>> your brain. This is what differentiates book knowledge from first-person
>> experience. It is also why Mary learns something new when she sees red for
>> the first time: she activates new forms of processing information by her
>> brain. She could read all the books in the world on what red is like
>> without causing her brain to activate the appropriate areas that make her
>> experience red.
>>
>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>
>> I think it is an open question whether the behavior would be identical
>> for a qualia-inverted being,
>>
>
> Again, not sure how you can think this.  It would simply be a fact that if
> two brains had inverted red/green qualia, and you asked them both: "What is
> your redness like."  It is simply a logical fact that they must give
> different answers, since they each represent red with different qualities.
> This pictures basically shows each of the different answers each of these
> people would give to the question: "What is redness like for you?"
>
> [image: image.png]
>
>
>> especially if you include introspection of brain processes in the scope
>> of externally visible ("from afar") behaviors. As you say, to get inverted
>> qualia requires a differently-engineered brain, and that would be a
>> third-person observable difference. For there to be no observable
>> difference in behavior with inverted qualia or not is also to suggest that
>> if we had a switch that could invert or revert the qualia at will, that the
>> observer could not notice or report on the flipping the switch back and
>> forth. If they could not notice the flipping, then I think it is a
>> difference that makes no difference, and thus is not a difference at all.
>>
>
>>
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>
>> Visual perception is the most complex, and likely most contentious of
>> qualia to discuss. I think it is easier to consider the quale of the most
>> simplistic of senses, such as stimulation of a single tactile nerve. For
>> example, lightly touch the back of your hand with the top of a pen so you
>> can just barely feel it. What does it feel like? All we can really say
>> about this quale is that it is nothing more than the knowledge of being
>> touched in that particular location. *Qualia are just certain forms of
>> knowledge*.
>>
>
> Again, not sure how anyone could get any utility in thinking of qualia
> this way.  Qualia are simply a factual physical quality, or if we assume
> functionalism, a factual functional quality which can represent knowledge.
> As we've been pointing out, your redness could represent knowledge of red,
> your redness could represent knowledge of green, or for that matter, a bat
> could use redness to represent knowledge of prey it receives from
> echolocation while hunting.
>
>
>> The dictionary definition of consciousness is awareness of information.
>> Awareness is having knowledge of. So consciousness is merely having
>> knowledge of information.  There are infinite forms of information, and
>> interrelations, and ways of processing information, and so I think there
>> are also infinite varieties of possible qualia.
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>
>>>
>> I think we can rule out "glutamate" or any particular neural transmitter
>> or molecule as having any immediate role in our perception, on the basis of
>> the pigeonhole principle. There are far more possible perceptions (even
>> just considering possible perceived colors) than there are
>> chemicals/proteins in the brain. Color-blind individuals can perceive
>> around 10,000 colors. Normally sighted individuals with trichromatic vision
>> enables humans to distinguish around 1,000,000 different colors. A few rare
>> humans are tetrachromats, and can perceive 100,000,000 distinct colors.
>> This number is far greater than the number of genes in the human genome, so
>> it is more than the number of unique proteins our cells can manufacture. So
>> it's not possible for base molecules to represent qualia -- only higher
>> level structures have room for enough unique complexity to explain the
>> variety of our perception.
>>
>
> Of course. but that IS the point.  That fact that you can so easily
> falsify the prediction that glutamate = redness, is the point.  Once you
> falsify glutamate, you just keep substituting another description of
> something in the brain, till it can no longer be falsified.  Then you will
> have an objective definition of redness, having connected the subjective
> with the objective.
>
> The second point is for simplicity's sake.  everyone always get's lost and
> distracted in all the complexity, and they completely miss the important
> principle.  So, imagine you were a researcher in a simple 2 color world,
> The only two colors were red and green, no other shades of color or
> anything.  Emagine that in this world a description of glutamate is a
> description of what you'd directly apprehend as redness, and a description
> of glycine is a description of greenness.  So, given you were in such a
> simple world, and didn't know these two facts, how might you connect the
> subjective and the objective descriptions?  Then, once you can understand
> how once you can make the connection that glutamate = redness and glycine =
> greenness, you can then eff the ineffable, answer questions like: "What is
> redness like for you?" (answer being glutamate, for one person and glycine
> for the other) and so on.
>
> Then once you understand the important principle of how the objective and
> subjective can be connect, then you can start thinking about more complex
> theories much more capable of not being falsified in our more complex world.
>
>
> 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.
>>>
>>
>> If functionalism fails at the neural-simulation level, would your theory
>> say it succeeds if we simulate everything physical down to the quark-lepton
>> level, which includes all the electric fields, particles, glutamate
>> particles, etc.? Or would this simulation result in a zombie world, with
>> non-conscious patterns nonetheless writing books about qualia and the
>> mysterious nature of the redness of red?
>>
>
> Your terminology is all so vague.  There are thousands of different ways
> all of it could be interpreted to mean, so having troubles knowing which of
> these thousands I should be thinking you mean.  Redness can be represented
> and simulated by most anything.  It can be represented by greenness, or it
> can be represented by +5 volts on a line (as we indicated in the video) or
> anything else.  The only important thing to realize is that anything that
> is NOT redness, which is representing redness, needs a dictionary to know
> what that thing is representing.  While redness, itself, is simply a
> physical fact about the quality of you knowledge of red things, no
> dictionary required.  The prediction is that no functionalist will ever be
> able to produce a redness quality experience with ANY function, no matter
> what it is, or no matter what is running it.
>
> I always like to ask functionalists to offer a similarly falsifiable
> function, comparable to my Molecular Materialism glutamate falsifiable
> example.  Like, maybe the function x squared is redness and x cubed is
> greenness?  But of course, functionalists just always seem to give you that
> blank stare proving they have no idea what you are even asking of them,
> they don't seem to realize how absurd any functionalist prediction that any
> particular function could in any way result in a physical redness quality
> really is.
>

The function is the package deal: when Brent walks throught the world
talking about red and green in the way he normally does, he experiences red
and green.

> While there are many reasons to doubt functionalism/computationalism,
>> there is strong indirect observational evidence supporting it, which is
>> that if we assume computationalism is true, we can directly explain many of
>> the observed properties of our physical world. I have written about this
>> here:
>>
>>
>> https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/#Predictions_of_the_Theory
>>
>
> We clearly think of qualia and consciousness in very different ways, and
> I'm having a real hard time getting a clear picture of your way.  It'd sure
> be great if we could get your way 'canonized" in a camp in the "Theories
> of Cons consciousness
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/1-Agreement>"
> topic.  Could we get you to come up with a camp name, and a concise
> statement describing your view on all this, so we could get it canonized
> with the other theories we've collected to date?  FYI, as you can see,
> Stathis' camp is Functional Property Dualism
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/8-Functional-Prprty-Dualism#statement>,
> and mine is "Molecular Materialism
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/36-Molecular-Materialism#statement>".
> It sounds like your version of functionalism has more to it than just Functional
> Property Dualism
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/8-Functional-Prprty-Dualism#statement>
> ?
>
>
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-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
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