[ExI] Is Artificial Life Conscious?

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Stuart,

On Fri, May 13, 2022 at 4:42 AM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Quoting Brent Allsop:
> > Hi Stuart,
> >
> > On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 11:46 PM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat <
> > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> >> I think what you have done with your color problem is entangle the
> >> hard problem of consciousness with the millennia old problem of
> >> universals. Does redness actually exist at all? Does redness exist
> >> only in the brain? Can something have the redness quality without
> >> actually being red? Does it have the redness quality when it is
> >> outside of the brain? Can abstract information have the redness
> >> quality? Is something red if nobody can see it?
> >>
> >
> > I'm probably arguing that there isn't an impossible to solve  "hard
> problem
> > of consciousness" , there is just the solvable "problem of universals" ?
> > or in other words, just an intrinsic color problem.
> > That's the title of our video: "Consciousness: Not a 'Hard Problem' just
> a
> > color problem <https://canonizer.com/videos/consciousness/>.
>
> The hard problem of consciousness has been around for less than 50
> years, but you think it is impossible to solve. The problem of
> universals has been around for thousands of years, yet you think it is
> solvable.
>

No, only the popular consensus functionalists, led by Chalmers, with his
derivative and mistaken "substitution argument" work. results in them
thinking it is a hard problem, leading the whole world astray.  The hard
problem would be solved by now, if it wasn't for all that.
If you understand why the substitution argument is a mistaken sleight of
hand, that so-called "hard problem" goes away.  All the stuff like What is
it like to be a bat, how do you bridge the explanatory gap, and all that
simply fall away, once you know the colorness quality of something.

And I don't really know much about the problem of universals.  I just know
that we live in a world full of LOTS of colourful things, yet all we know
are the colors things seem to be.  Nobody yet knows the true intrinsic
colorness quality of anything.  The emerging consensus Representational
Qualia Theory
<https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/6-Representational-Qualia>,
and all the supporters of all the sub camps are predicting once we discover
which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a description of
redness, this will falsify all but THE ONE camp finally demonstrated to be
true.  All the supporters of all the falsified camps will then be seen
jumping to this one yet to be falsified camp.  We are tracking all this in
real time, and already seeing significant progress.  In other words, there
will be irrefutable consensus proof that the 'hard problem' has finally
been resolved.  I predict this will happen within 10 years.  Anyone care to
make a bet, that THE ONE camp will have over 90% "Mind Expert consensus",
and there will be > 1000 experts in total, participating, within 10 years?



>
> > First, we must recognize that redness is not an intrinsic quality of the
> > strawberry, it is a quality of our knowledge of the strawberry in our
> > brain.  This must be true since we can invert our knowledge by simply
> > inverting any transducing system anywhere in the perception process.
> > If we have knowledge of a strawberry that has a redness quality, and if
> we
> > objectively observed this redness in someone else's brain, and fully
> > described that redness, would that tell us the quality we are describing?
> > No, for the same reason you can't communicate to a blind person what
> > redness is like.
>
> Why not? If redness is not intrinsic to the strawberry but is instead
> a quality of our knowledge of the strawberry, then why can't we
> explain to a blind person what redness is like? Blind people have
> knowledge of strawberries and plenty of glutamate in their brains.
> Just tell them that redness is what strawberries are like, and they
> will understand you just fine.
>

Wait, what?  No you can't.  Sure, maybe if they've been sighted, seen a
strawberry, with their eyes, (i.e. directly experienced redness knowledge)
then became blind.  They will be able to kind of remember what that redness
was like, but the will no longer be able to experience it.


>
> > The entirety of our objective knowledge tells us  nothing
> > of the intrinsic qualities of any of that stuff we are describing.
>
> Ok, but you just said that redness was not an intrinsic quality of
> strawberries but of our knowledge of them, so our objective knowledge
> of them should be sufficient to describe redness.
>

Sure, it is sufficient, but until you know which sufficient description is
a description of redness, and which sufficient description is a description
of greenness, we won't know which is which.


> > The only way to know the qualities of the stuff we are abstractly
> > describing is to directly apprehend those qualities as computationally
> > bound conscious knowledge.
>
> But blind people have computationally bound conscious knowledge and
> can directly apprehend qualities too. Why can't they directly
> apprehend the glutamate in their brains? Is blind people glutamate
> different than normal glutamate?
>
> > Once we do discover and demonstrate which of all our descriptions of
> stuff
> > in the brain is a description of redness and greenness, then we will know
> > the qualities we are describing.
> > Once we have this dictionary, defining our abstract terms, we will then
> be
> > able to eff the ineffable.
>
> Why is not telling a blind person that redness is what perceiving a
> strawberry is like, not sufficient to eff the ineffable?
>
> > Let's assume, for a moment, that we can directly apprehend glutamates
> > qualities, and they are redness, and our description of glycine is a
> > description of greenness.
>
> If we assume this, then why can't a blind person apprehend the
> qualities of all that glutamate in their brain?
>
> > (If you don't like glutamate and glycine, pick anything else in the
> brain,
> > until we get one that can't be falsified.)
> > Given that, these would then be saying the same thing:
> > My redness is like your greenness, both of which we call red.
> > My glutamate is like your glycine, both of which we represent red
> > information with.
>
> You subsequently correct this to: "My redness is like your greens,
> both of which we chose to represent or
> convey red information with. I use glycine (which you use to represent
> green with) and you use glutamate
> to represent or convey red information."
>
> So if this "stuff" is glutamate, glycine, or whatever, and it exists
> in the brains of blind people, then why can't it represent redness (or
> greenness) information to them also?
>

People  may be able to dream redness.  Or they may take some psychedelics
that enables them to experience redness, or surgeons may stimulate a part
of the brain, while doing brain surgery, producing a redness experience,
Those rare cases are possible,  But that isn't yet normal.  Once they
discover which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a
description of redness, someone like Neuralink will be producing that
redness quality in blind people's brains all the time, with artificial
eyes, and so on.  But to date, normal blind people can't experience redness
quality.


>
> >
> >
> >>> This is true if that stuff is some kind of "Material" or
> "electromagnetic
> >>> field" "spiritual" or "functional" stuff, it remains a fact that your
> >>> knowledge, composed of that, has a redness quality.
> >>
> >> It seems you are quite open-minded when it comes to what qualifies as
> >> "stuff". If so, then why does your 3-robot-scenario single out
> >> information as not being stuff? If you wish to insist that something
> >> physical in the brain has the redness quality and conveys knowledge of
> >> redness, then why glutamate? Why not instead hypothesize that is the
> >> only thing that prima facie has the redness property to begin with
> >> i.e. red light? After all there are photoreceptors in the deep brain.
> >>
> >
> > Any physical property like redness, greenness, +5votes, holes in a punch
> > card... can represent (convey) an abstract 1.  There must be something
> > physical representing that one, but, again, you can't know what that is
> > unless you have a transducing dictionary telling you which is which.
>
> You may need something physical to represent the abstract 1, but that
> abstract 1 in turn represents some different physical thing.


Only if you have a transducing dictionary that enables such, or you think
of it in that particular way.  Other than that, it's just a set of physical
facts, which can be interpreted as something else, that is all.




>
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