[ExI] Is Artificial Life Conscious?

[Jason Resch]

On Tue, May 10, 2022, 8:31 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> There are lots of competing theories making predictions about what qualia
> are.
> It will be an answers to the question: Which of all our descriptions of
> stuff in the brain is a description of redness.
>

I think it is an error to presume it must be "stuff". Many things we know
are not stuff. A game of chess, the story of Gulliver's travels, bits, etc.
What all these things have in common is that they can be implemented using
various kinds of stuff.

You can implement a chess game using marble, wooden, plastic pieces, etc.

You can have the story of Gulliver's travels in hard cover, ebook, PDF,
webpage, etc.

You can implement bits in punch cards, magnetic tape, optical flashes,
charges in flags memory, etc.

None of these things (chess, the story, the bits) is stuff, they are ideas
and abstractions. Any instance can be made of particular stuff, but the
material is largely irrelevant.

My question to you is: how do you know "red" is a certain kind of stuff,
rather than an idea or abstraction?

Jason

My assumption is there is some necessary and sufficient set of
> observable physical behavior or chemical reactions which are the
> descriptions of redness.
> So to say anything that is not the qualia, is anything outside of this
> necessary and sufficient set of physics.
> So, by definition, if anything varies from the necessary and sufficient
> set, it would no longer be redness.
> I like to think of it as being similar to when you burn certain metals, it
> emits  different colored light.
> Obviously, if you change or remove the metal, the color changes.  And
> nothing but those metals will produce the same chemical reaction that emits
> that particular color.
> It isn't the light, which many things could produce the same light, it is
> possible that only the particular chemical reaction that can be
> computationally bound, such that if it changes, the redness will change in
> a way that the entire system must be aware of that change from redness.
>
>
>
> On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 2:25 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, 11 May 2022 at 03:00, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, May 10, 2022 at 9:15 AM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Wed, 11 May 2022 at 00:02, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Yes, that is all true, but it is still missing the point.
>>>>> There must be something in the system which has a coolorness quality.
>>>>> You must be able to change redness to greenness, and if you do, the
>>>>> system must be able to report that the quality has changed.
>>>>> If that functionality is not included somewhere in the system, it does
>>>>> not have sufficient functionality to be considered conscious.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> There is something in the system that gives rise to colourless
>>>> qualities,
>>>>
>>> This is a falsifiable claim.  The prediction is that our abstract
>>> description of something like glutamate, is a description of redness, and
>>> that nothing else but that will be able to get redness to 'arise'.  Nothing
>>> will have an intrinsic redness quality, without glutamate (or whatever it
>>> is that has the redness quality)
>>>
>>> but it can be replicated by anything else that replicates the reporting
>>>> of it.
>>>>
>>> Yes, I agree.  The prediction is that the neuro substitution will fail,
>>> because nothing but glutamate has the redness quality.
>>> And saying that consciousness must work in a discrete logic way, where
>>> there is no substrate dependence on redness, and no ability to report the
>>> change to greeness, is missing the point.
>>> Because if that is the case redness can't supervene on anything,
>>> including functions, for the same substitution reason.
>>>
>>
>> You have never explained what you think would happen if the glutamate
>> were replaced with something that could replicate the observable behaviour,
>> the pattern of glutamate molecules’ interactions with other molecules via
>> the electromagnetic force, but not the qualia.
>>
>>> --
>> Stathis Papaioannou
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