[ExI] Symbol Grounding

[Brent Allsop]

On Sun, Apr 23, 2023 at 4:43 PM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> Quoting Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>:
>
> > This is so frustrating.  I'm asking a simple, elementary school level
> > question.
>
> So you think that the Hard Problem of Consciousness reframed as a your
> so-called "Colorness Problem" is an elementary school level question?
> Then maybe you should quit bugging us about it and seek the advice of
> elementary school children.
>

I am working with those people that do get it.  Now, more than 40 of them,
including leaders in the field like Steven Lehar
<https://canonizer.com/topic/81-Mind-Experts/4-Steven-Lehar>, are
supporting the camp that says so.  Even Dennett's Predictive Bayesian
coding Theory
<https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/21-Dennett-s-PBC-Theory>
is a supporting sub camp, demonstrating the progress we are making.
Gordon, would you be willing to support RQT
<https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/6-Representational-Qualia>?
The elementary school kids are telling us, plug things into the brain, till
you find what it is that has a redness quality.  So, we are collecting the
signature, and once we get enough, experimentalists will finally get the
message and then start doing this, and eventually be able to demonstrate to
everyone what it is that has a  [image: red_border.png] property.  To my
understanding, that is how science works.


The reason I am bugging you functionalists is because I desperately want to
understand how everyone thinks about consciousness, especially the leading
popular consensus functionalism camps. Giovani seems to be saying that in
this functionalist view, there is no such thing as color qualities, but to
me, saying there is no color in the world is just insane.  You seem to be
at least saying something better than that, but as far as I can see, your
answers are just more interpretations of interpretations, no place is there
any grounding.   You did get close to a grounded answer when I asked how
the word 'red' can be associated with [image: green_border.png].  Your
reply was  "at some point during the chatbot's training the English word
red was associated with *the picture in question*."   But "*the picture in
question*" could be referring to at least 4 different things.  It could be
associated with the LEDs emitting the 500 nm light.  It could be the 500 nm
light, which "the picture" is emitting, or it could be associated with your
knowledge of   [image: green_border.png]. in which case it would have the
same quality as your knowledge of that, or it could be associated with
someone that was engineered to be your inverted knowledge (has a red /
green signal inverter between its retina and optic nerve), in which case,
it would be like your knowledge of [image: red_border.png].  So, if that is
indeed your answer, which one of these 4 things are you referring to?  Is
it something else?


You guys accuse me of being non scientific.  But all I want to know is how
would a functionalist demonstrate, or falsify functionalist claims about
color qualities, precisely because I want to be scientific.  Do you believe
you have explained how functionalism predictions about color qualities
could be falsified or demonstrated, within functionalist doctrines?   If
so, I haven't seen it yet.  So please help, as all I see is you guys
saying, over and over again, that you don't need to provide an unambiguous
way to demonstrate what it is that has this quality: [image: red_border.png],
or even worse functionalism is predicting that color doesn't exist.  As if
saying things like that, over and over again, makes them true?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20230423/6e94e819/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: green_border.png
Type: image/png
Size: 161 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20230423/6e94e819/attachment.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: red_border.png
Type: image/png
Size: 187 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20230423/6e94e819/attachment-0001.png>