[ExI] Qualia are not in the matrix (was Re: The Matrix: Resurrections trailer)

Brent Allsop brent.allsop at gmail.com
Sun Sep 12 03:35:05 UTC 2021


On Sat, Sep 11, 2021 at 7:23 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Can you explain how it would be less "magic" if qualia arose from a
> substance than from a function?
>
Of course, what you say is equally problematic in both cases, but only IF
you accept the "arose" assumption to start with.  That is the assumption
causing all these contradictory 'hard problems".  All these
contradiction and so called 'hard problems' are proving absolutely, that
there is a problem with your assumptions.  Once you lose that assumption,
all the contradictions and problems go away.  Everything becomes
simple every day demonstrable intrinsic physical qualities of stuff.

It is not magic, to think of a strawberry as being intrinsically red.  The
intrinsic colors of things is just every day demonstrable elementary school
physics, not magic.  It is those intrinsic qualities of physics which
represent the 1s and 0s you so love.  But only if you have a dictionary to
tell you which intrinsic qualities represent a 1.  We just need to realize,
that our description of the behavior of something the reflects red light,
tells us nothing of what the behavior is qualitatively like.  It is our
description of glutamate, reacting in a synapse, that is the description of
an intrinsic redness quality we can directly apprehend representing our
knowledge of red things with that intrinsic quality.

Also, I haven't understood how you would falsify the idea that qualia are
> specific to a substance.
>
I've tried many times to explain this.  But you must keep mapping my
explanations, into your qualia blind world, and into your 'arises'
assumptions, making it impossible for you to understand the trivially
simple stuff  I'm trying to describe.

We are predicting that it is glutamate, and only glutamate, which has the
intrinsic redness quality.  We predict that nobody, especially
functionalists, will ever be able to produce a redness experience, without
that glutamate, and that absolutely every time someone directly apprehends
glutamate, that behavior will always only ever have that same redness
quality behavior.  Never failing, never falsifiable, never changing.  (oh,
and if you don't like glutamate, pick another description of something in
the brain, because it's got to be one of our descriptions of all that
different stuff in the brain.)  That is not magic, intrinsic colors of
physical stuff is just every day demonstrable elementary school physics.
Once you lose the 'rises' assumption, all the hard problems disappear, and
everything becomes everyday commonly demonstrable intrinsic physical
qualities anyone and everyone can directly apprehend with a neural ponytail
that can do computational binding (something impossible in your world of
only discrete logic, as proven by the neural substitution).

If we replaced a part of a person's brain with a functionally equivalent
> component they would (by definition) say that they were experiencing
> exactly the same qualia, and then what would you conclude?
>
That is exactly what I meant by my claim is falsifiable.  IF someone is
able to produce redness, from any function, that will obviously falsify my
claim.  I will jump to the functionalist camp in that case.
In fact, I'll even jump to the functionalist camp, IF you can give me an
equally believable "function" that you would predict has a redness quality,
which I could falsify, similar to my prediction that it is glutamate that
has an intrinsic redness quality is falsifiable.  For example saying it is
the Square Root function, just doesn't even pass the laugh test.  That is
my point, there is no function, from which a redness quality can arise,
it's just absurd, proving, to me at least, that someplace, you are making
incorrect assumptions.

Intrinsic qualities, like redness and greenness, are simply physical
qualities of something in our brain.  That is just elementary school all
day every day demonstrable physical reality, not magic.
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