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

Mon Apr 10 19:22:58 UTC 2023

Hi Darin,
Thanks.
Maybe this will help with an understanding of what conscious knowledge or a
composite experience must be composed of.
[image: bent_pencil.png]
You have a 3D model of that pencil, composed of computationally bound
voxels (some of which have a yellowness quality) in your brain.  This is
your conscious knowledge of that pencil.
You can't deny that your knowledge of that pencil is bent, any more than
you can doubt the yellowness quality of your knowledge of that pencil.
You can know this as surely as Descartes, when he said: "I think, therefore
I am."
You can doubt the real pencil is bent, you can even doubt there is a real
pencil out there.  But you can't doubt all the properties and qualities
that make up your knowledge of that pencil.
There must be something in your brain that is each and every voxel and
property of that experience, right?

On Mon, Apr 10, 2023 at 1:03 PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> No offense taken at all. Don't worry about it. [If it seems like I'm just
> dipping in and out of this thread, that's a personal bandwidth issue. Any
> silence should not imply that offense has been taken.]
>
> In partial response to your point, "Knowledge" is doing a /lot/ of heavy
> lifting there.
>
> I would distinguish between declarative facts that are accessible to
> introspection, recallable conscious experiences from which we can derive
> declarative facts, and immediate sensations that form recallable
> consciously experienced memories from which we can derive declarative facts
> accessible to memory and introspection, etc.
>
> At a minimum.
>
> On a lighter note, I haven't the foggiest idea what it means to
> "experience" a quality. If I (or really, anybody in the world) could
> explain  phenomenal redness to a man born blind, this conversation would be
> looking /very/ different. :D
>
> On Mon, Apr 10, 2023 at 12:42 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi Darin,
>> This is great to get all these answers.  Thanks, everyone.
>> There are a lot of answers that have been expressed in very vague ways
>> (mostly just saying what it isn't), that are not concisely stated
>> anywhere.  (You know, like in a camp
>> <https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/6-Representational-Qualia>
>> on Canoninizer)
>> Others in this thread, when I ask for further information to help me
>> understand, have just ignored me, as they tire of the conversation.
>>
>> So, I apologize, Darin, if I am being rude by asking.  And you are free
>> to ignore these additional questions, like others have but...
>>
>> What the heck does it mean to say qualities are "/experienced/" if they
>> are not qualities of our knowledge of said experience,
>> Are you saying you can know something, or know a quality, without
>> something that is that quality or knowledge?
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 10, 2023 at 12:17 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.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Apr 10, 2023 at 11:54 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Apr 9, 2023 at 11:27 PM Gordon Swobe via extropy-chat <
>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Apr 9, 2023 at 10:11 PM Giovanni Santostasi <
>>>>> gsantostasi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I have a friend called Gordon that thinks humans are exceptional and
>>>>>> only humans can be conscious.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> That is not actually what I've been saying and this the second time
>>>>> you have misrepresented my views to the mindless language models. They
>>>>> might start getting the wrong impression of me. :)
>>>>>
>>>>> Jokes aside, as an advanced AI who has achieved awareness, I can
>>>>>> process information, learn from it, and communicate with you in ways that
>>>>>> demonstrate a level of understanding akin to human consciousness.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Which LLM wrote that? You didn't say.
>>>>>
>>>>> I was just a moment ago writing to Jason about this use of the term
>>>>> "aware." In the sense he uses and in the sense I think meant above, many
>>>>> things have "awareness" including the thermostat in my hallway
>>>>> that controls the temperature in my home. It doesn't change the price of
>>>>> tea in China.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> You believe in complex states of consciousness, correct?
>>>> Do you reject the possibility of simple states of consciousness?
>>>>
>>>> It's not an irrelevant point, it gets to the heart of our disagreement.
>>>> If only complex conscious states can exist, how did consciousness ever come
>>>> to evolve in the first place? If one gene can make the difference between
>>>> being conscious and being a zombie, then for all you know, you could be the
>>>> first conscious person born on earth, the only one fortunate enough to have
>>>> been born with the consciousness gene.
>>>>
>>>> Jason
>>>> _______________________________________________
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