[ExI] Who does or does not think consciousness is composed of color (and other) qualities?

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Apr 10, 2023 at 1:17 PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> We have phenomenal conscious experience of qualities like audio, touch,
> proprpieception, smells, and memories.
>
> Consciousness is /experienced/ as qualities, but I think it's a step too
> far to declare that consciousness is composed of these. We don't, as far as
> I know, have the slightest idea what consciousness is composed of - what
> it's made of, and how that interacts with the material universe.
>

Are we certain what conscious is made of and how it interacts with the
material universe? I would say we are not. However, I would say it is not
the case that we don't have the slightest idea what it could be, or how it
could interact with the material universe. We have a lot of ideas (perhaps
too many of them), but a few I think make sense and are comprehensible.
Some even may be testable (as I think is possible in an indirect way when
different theories of consciousness lead to different predictions for our
observations of the world).

This is the case for computationalism, which has as a consequence, that
consciousness would emerge out of the infinite computations present within
the absolute truth concerning arithmetical relations between numbers. This
theory predicts we should observe a quantum mechanical reality, which as it
happens, we do. Then we can say that based on this evidence, we have some
confidence that consciousness is composed of these computations. The
physical universe (or rather, the appearance of one) then emerges from the
set of computations that happen to instantiate your particular present
mind-state. This then, would be the link between consciousness and physics.

Jason
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