[ExI] What is Consciousness?

Tue Apr 4 08:07:20 UTC 2023

The implication of your "Science succeeds. The mystery endures" claim seems
to be that qualities of consciousness are not approachable via science?

Yes, I understand the difference between ontology and science.  Evidently
you believe everything about what redness is like is 100% ontology, and
none of it is approachable via science?

For the moment, let's assume that science will soon demonstrate which of
all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a description of redness
(i.e. falsify your current assertions).
And let's use glutamate as a mere stand-in, to be replaced with whatever
science demonstrates it to be.
The prediction is that science will be able to objectively and reliably
demonstrate to all that it is glutamate that is behaving the way it does,
because of its redness quality.

Sure, we won't know the ontology of why glutamate has a redness quality, we
will just know that glutamate will always be experienced as the same
redness in all brains.
This is the same as we don't know the ontology of why force = mass *
acceleration, yet this scientific knowledge enables us to dance in the
heavens.
Similarly, we won't know the ontology of why glutamate can be experienced
as redness, just knowing that it does, 100% of the time, will still enable
us to do qualitative conscious science, repair, engineering, uploading, and
all of that.

We start with color, because that is the most obvious phenomenal quality,
and the easiest to understand.  Once you understand what a colorness
quality is, then you can use the same non quality blind understanding to
grock sound, emotion, and the physical nature of all the rest of the
phenomenal feels of which consciousness is composed.

All the supporters of Representational Qualia Theory
<https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/6-Representational-Qualia>
agree that their camp's which are making falsifiable predictions about the
nature of colorness qualities can be falsified, once experimentalists start
observing the brain in a non quality blind way.  Yes, I understand the
difference between the words "material" and "immaterial".  Substance
dualists
<https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/48-Substance-Dualism>
predict that colorness qualities, of which consciousness is composed, are
immaterial.  (you are not an immaterialist, or are you?)  As long as
experimentalists remain qualia blind, crap in the gap theories like
substance dualism will remain not falsified.  There is no problem with
believing in a theory that is not yet falsified, is there?  All the crap in
the gap camps can still make this same claim, that their camp has not been
falsified, since nobody knows what a quality is.  But once we discover
which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a description of
redness, it will finally close this gap and falsify all these crap in the
gap theories, like substance dualism.  It is so frustrating how everyone on
this list seems to be working to prevent everyone from discovering which of
all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a description of redness, to
the joy of the crap in the gap camps.  Can you prove to me you understand
this?

Have I sufficiently proven to you that I understand your questions about
ontology, immaterialism and so on?

I still see no evidence you can understand and answer any of these questions
<https://canonizer.com/topic/592-Are-You-Qualia-Blind/1-Agreement>, nor
that you understand anything in the about to be published Physicists Don't
Understand Qualities
<https://www.dropbox.com/s/k9x4uh83yex4ecw/Physicists%20Don%27t%20Understand%20Color.docx?dl=0>
paper.

On Tue, Apr 4, 2023 at 12:48 AM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Apr 3, 2023 at 10:29 AM Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>> ### Oh, not ignoring. Nobody knows why signal processing through these
>>> differing parts of the neural network feels as it feels, rather than
>>> feeling as something else. This is the hard problem of consciousness.
>>> Nobody has even the rudiments of the knowledge of ontology that is
>>> presumably needed to solve this problem.
>>>
>>> Since the problem is way beyond my (or anybody else's) capabilities, I
>>> defer further analysis until and if new pertinent information is available.
>>> I would advise all people to do the same.
>>>
>>
>> We're working to build and track consensus around a message to the world
>> that says there IS no hard problem, it is just a color quality problem.
>>
>
> ### Most definitely there is a hard problem at the core of ontology. Or
> rather I should say, ontology as a branch of philosophy is a morass of
> unanswered and perhaps unanswerable questions that steadfastly refuse to
> yield to the progress of mere natural science. What does it mean to exist?
> Why does our existence feel in the way it feels? What is this "physics"
> that people talk about? Do you really understand the words "material" and
> "immaterial"?
>
> We can determine which particular structures and processes in the world
> seem to be associated with conscious experience, in excruciating detail but
> all that does not shed light on why things feel like they feel to us,
> whether you are talking about the experience of color, or sound, or emotion.
>
> Of course there is a hard problem of consciousness, right there at the
> core of ontology.
>
> Science succeeds. The mystery endures.
>
> Rafal
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