[ExI] Taxonomy of Minds

[John Clark]

On Sat, Apr 4, 2026 at 7:16 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:


> * > This faithless thinking—that consciousness isn't fully approachable
> via science, and that attempting to approach it would only be "heading down
> a rabbit hole"—has blinded us to what I predict will be the greatest
> discovery of all time: "Which of all our descriptions of stuff in the brain
> is a description of elemental redness."" and how is it subjectively bound
> to all the other phenomenal qualities to generate consciousness.*
>


*I've heard you say stuff like that before but I've never understood what
you mean. For me, saying Process X causes consciousness wouldn't be any
more satisfying than saying God causes consciousness, I'd want to know as
many details as necessary for it to become intuitively obvious how the
parts of Process X interact and produce consciousness. And the parts can't
be complicated black boxes for me to feel that the problem of consciousness
has been completely solved. It's very important that all the parts of
Process X be as simple as possible, and you just can't get simpler than a
part that can only change from on to off or off to on.  *

*In addition to theory there is even solid empirical evidence that it's a
brute fact that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being
processed intelligently, it is the only explanation of how Darwinian
Natural Selection managed to construct at least one conscious being, and
probably many billions of them. *

*Maybe even after all that you still have a feeling of dissatisfaction, but
that is the best you're ever going to get, so if you're still unhappy with
that explanation then you are doomed to have a unhappy life because it is a
rocksolid fact of logic that an iterated sequence of "why" or "how"
questions either goes on forever or terminates in a brute fact.  *


> * > and how is it subjectively bound to all the other phenomenal qualities
> to generate consciousness.  If everyone hadn't engaged in this faithless
> "rabut hole" kind of thinking, I think we would have discovered this by
> now.*
>

*It would be possible in theory for Mr. Bat Allsop to know what it's like
to be Mr. Bat Allsop, but Brent Allsop will never know what it's like to be
a bat, and a bat will never know what it's like to be Brent Allsop,
only ** Brent
Allsop knows that.*


> *> It seems obvious to me that the left hemisphere of the brain isn't a
> solipsist, because it knows, absolutely that the right hemisphere exists,*
>

*For most people who have not had radical brain surgery, the left
hemisphere of their brain does not know what it would be like to be a left
hemisphere unconnected to a right hemisphere. *

* John K Clark*




>
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