[ExI] Chat GPT easily gets qualities and can probably describes them better than I do.

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for all your interesting work on this reply.


On Sat, Jul 26, 2025 at 6:01 AM BillK via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Jul 2025 at 23:17, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> In a conversation with ChatGPT about qualia, I said:
>> "Something in the brain must be behaving the way it does, because of its
>> redness quality.
>> It seems to me the hard problem of consciousness is just a quality
>> problem.  We simply need to match up which description of something in
>> our brain is a description of redness"
>>
>>
>> To which ChatGPT replied:
>>
>> Yes — that’s a profound and elegant way of reframing the hard problem: as
>> a *quality identification problem*, rather than an unsolvable mystery.
>>
> <snip>
>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> *�� Summary*
>>
>> You’re absolutely right:
>>
>> The hard problem may ultimately be a *“which-is-it?” problem*, not a
>> “how-is-it-possible?” problem.
>>
>> Instead of asking:
>>
>>    - *“How can the brain produce qualia?”*
>>
>> We should ask:
>>
>>    - *“Which brain state is red?”*
>>    - *“Which part of the brain has the intrinsic property that feels
>>    like red?”*
>>
>> Once we identify that, we haven't eliminated the mystery of experience —
>> but we've *localized it*, and made it *scientifically investigable*.
>>
>>  _______________________________________________
>>
>
>
> Hi Brent -
> AI chatbots are designed to be agreeable and friendly to humans.
> This can lead to problems - Search for "AI Psychosis".
> If you want a critical opinion from AI, then you have to specifically ask
> for that.
> So I asked Gemini 2.5 Pro to critique your proposal and list the problems.
> Interesting response, see below -
>

Yes, I am very aware of all this.  As I indicated, this was simply the
response to one question in many long conversations I often have with
various AIs on this topic.  Most of my conversations do exactly what you
are describing, diving deep into issues and counter and critical points of
view, as I very much want to better understand other points of view.  So I
very much appreciate your help with this response.

Another issue is as with all LLMs, you can tell this is all summaries of
what is being published out there on this issue.  Most of it is completely
mistaken and just wrong.  Of course most people are going to argue that
redness is a quality of the strawberry, not a quality of our knowledge of
the strawberry, because most people are just plain wrong.  The entire goal
of creating Canonizer, was to overcome this problem.  Canonizer, though it
has very little usage, does seem to filter out much of that kind of junk.
People are more reticent to 'canonize' their theories (i.e. integrate them
with other POVs) if they are good theories.  Yet, for example, despite all
my extreme efforts, I can't get anyone to canonize a 'direct perception'
view of perception, despite so many people publishing on this view, which
ends up in these AI summaries of what people are arguing.

Let me point out what I believe to be obvious to an expert problems with
these summaries of  what is being said by everyone.



> BillK
>
> Gemini 2.5 Pro -
>
> An analysis of the provided text reveals a proposition to reframe the
> "hard problem" of consciousness as a more manageable "quality problem". This
> approach posits that the subjective experience of qualities, or qualia,
> such as the color red, can be understood by identifying their corresponding
> physical substrate or dynamic pattern within the brain.
>
> Summary of the Argument
>
> The central thesis of the document is a shift away from the conventional
> "hard problem," which questions how physical brain processes create
> subjective experience, toward a "mapping challenge". The goal is to
> pinpoint the specific neural or physical state that *is* the experience
> of redness and to confirm that this state exhibits the expected behavioral
> and causal properties associated with that experience. This perspective
> is aligned with "Realist Identity Theory" or "Russellian Monism".
>
> This reframing is presented as significant for several reasons. It
> transforms the problem from a philosophical mystery into an empirical,
> scientific question that can be investigated using tools like brain
> imaging, lesion studies, and AI modeling. It also treats qualia as
> causally effective, meaning they are not just passive byproducts but are
> integral to how the brain functions and guides behavior. This view is
> supported by frameworks such as Functionalist Realism and Neurophenomenology.
> The argument is also framed as parsimonious, as it avoids the need for
> dualistic explanations by suggesting that the qualia of red is a
> yet-to-be-identified property within the brain itself.
>
> The document outlines several possibilities for what "redness" could be in
> the brain:
>
>    -
>
>    A specific neural activation pattern, such as a unique firing of
>    neurons in the V4 area of the visual cortex.
>
>    -
>
>    A particular type of information integration, as proposed by
>    Integrated Information Theory (IIT).
>
>    -
>
>    A specific configuration of the brain's electromagnetic field.
>
>    -
>
>    An intrinsic, non-reducible property of a brain state, in line with
>    Russellian Monism.
>
>
> A proposed method for identifying this "redness" substrate involves
> collecting subjective reports, finding correlated neural states, isolating
> their physical features, and matching these to the behavioral roles of the
> color red. In essence, the argument concludes that the hard problem might
> be a "which-is-it?" question rather than a "how-is-it-possible?" one.
>
> Criticisms and Problems
>
> Despite its pragmatic framing, the argument presented in the document is
> subject to several significant criticisms:
>
>    -
>
>    *It Sidesteps the Core "Hard Problem":* The central criticism is that
>    this reframing does not solve the hard problem but merely renames it or
>    pushes it back a step. Even if a perfect correlation between a specific
>    neural state and the subjective experience of red is found, the fundamental
>    question remains: *why* is that physical state associated with the
>    *feeling* of redness and not another quality, or no quality at all? The
>    document itself acknowledges this by stating, "Once we identify that, we
>    haven't eliminated the mystery of experience — but we've localized it".
>    This localization does not explain the genesis of subjective experience.
>
> If you include the 'subjective binding' part of the conversation, it does
explain the genesis of subjective experience.  And see below for more info.



>    - *The "Is" of Identity is Assumed, Not Proven:* The argument rests on
>    the assumption of a "Realist Identity Theory"—that the brain state *is*
>    the quality of redness. This is a philosophical stance, not a
>    scientifically established fact. Critics would argue that correlation does
>    not equal identity. Simply finding a neural correlate of consciousness
>    (NCC) for "redness" does not prove that the neural activity *is* the
>    experience itself.
>
> This is false or irrelevant.  The prediction is that there is an
experimentally demostatable or discoverable necessary and sufficient set of
neural states that is behaving the way it does, because of its redness
quality.  You don't need to "prove that the neural activity is the
experience" but it will reliably, 100% of the time be experimentally
demonstrated to be the case.  'falsifiable' or 'demonstratable' never means
it will be proven, but that doesn't matter.  It will never be
experimentally falsifiable, once the theory has been repeatedly proven for
every mind.



>
>    -
>
>    *The Problem of Explanation vs. Description:* The proposed method is
>    effective at *describing* what happens in the brain when someone sees
>    red. However, a complete description of a physical system is not the same
>    as an explanation for why it has subjective properties. Knowing the
>    exact firing pattern of neurons or the specific "information integration
>    topology" that corresponds to red does not, in itself, explain the
>    redness of red.
>
>
Same issue as before.  The more important thing is demonstrability.  100%
of the time, if you have the necessary and sufficient set of neural states
for a particular elemental redness quality, that brain will always be
experiencing that particular redness quality.



>    - *The Challenge of Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity:* The proposed
>    method relies on collecting "subjective reports". However, there is no
>    way to be certain that the quality one person calls "red" is the same as
>    the quality another person calls "red" (the inverted spectrum problem).
>    While their brain states might be functionally identical, their subjective
>    experiences could differ, a possibility this framework struggles to account
>    for.
>
>  There are 3 ways to eff the ineffable.  The method being described here
is only the 1) week form of effing the ineffable.  There is also the 2)
stronger, and 3 strongest way of effing the ineffable as described here
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JKwACeT3b1bta1M78wZ3H2vWkjGxwZ46OHSySYRWATs/edit?tab=t.0>
.


>    - *Functionalism's Blind Spot:* The approach leans on functionalist
>    ideas, where qualia "do computational or discriminative work".
>    However, philosophical thought experiments like the "China brain" or
>    "philosophical zombies" challenge this view. A system could, in theory,
>    perform all the same functions as a conscious brain (discriminating red
>    objects, reacting to them, etc.) without having any subjective experience
>    at all. The document's framework does not adequately address why a
>    functional state must have a qualitative character.
>
>
Again, there is a lot more to this problem than what was contained in that
post.  In addition to 100% of the time being able to predict when someone
is experiencing a particular elemental redness quality, once we know which
of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain is a description of redness,
there will also be the 3 ways to provably demonstrate that these are
correct as described in the aforementioned 3 types of effing the ineffable
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JKwACeT3b1bta1M78wZ3H2vWkjGxwZ46OHSySYRWATs/edit?tab=t.0>
document.





>    - *Over-simplification of Conscious Experience:* The focus on a single
>    quale like "redness" is a simplification. Conscious experience is a
>    unified, holistic phenomenon. It is unclear how identifying the substrate
>    for individual qualia would scale up to explain the rich, integrated nature
>    of a conscious scene, complete with thoughts, emotions, and a sense of self.
>
>
One of the fundamental thesis of my work on qualia is that everyone is
making things way too complicated.  The prediction is that once someone
demonstrates something relatively simple like which of all the stuff in our
brain is a description of redness, and they understand how redness and
greenness can be subjectively bound into one unified gestalt experience of
direct apprehension of those qualities (something beyond cause and effect
observation).  This same understanding will then get us around the
so-called 'hard problem' and make the rest of consciousness a doable
problem, using the same understanding.  In other words, the prediction is
that once someone maps the color qualities like redness and greenes to the
right physics (i.e. we know the true color qualities of things) not only
will we be able to know what is and isn't conscious, we will know what it
is all like.  And using this same understanding on the rest of subjective
consciousness once we understand color qualities, we will finally have the
tools and physical understanding needed to figure out what the rest of it
is like, using the same understanding.  To say nothing about we will
finally have the understanding to start doing phenomenal neural hacking,
like inverting color qualities for people getting tired of not being able
to do things like switch redness and greenness visual qualies, and
engineering neural prostheses to replace destroyed eyes, enabling people to
see the right (or inverted or any other mapping if desired) color qualities.
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