[ExI] redness is relation assumption? (Was Re: My theory of consciousness)

[Jason Resch]

Hi Brent,

On Wed, Sep 30, 2026, 10:32 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> I've been working hard with Gemini this time to better understand all this
> by asking questions.  After all this it seems to come down to the same
> thing we've been repeating for some time.
>
> I think we are at an impasse because of how you define your terms. It
> seems to me that you define phenomenology as a function
> (organization/distinction), and then, by that very definition, exclude any
> consideration of intrinsic quality.
>

That is what I think phenomenal states consistent in, but I think it is
incorrect to say I arrive there by definition.

I think there is a lot of evidence on favor of this view, which I will list
the items here:

- The fact that there is a harmony between how good or bad things feel, and
how the things that bring those feelings relate to the organism's well
being.

- That the structures of awareness tend to match the structures of
experience (for example, vision appearing as a field, having three
dimensions of colors) and that corresponding to the discriminative
capacities of the eyes and retina.

- That thoughts, ideas, and conscious states are causally effective, they
directly cause actions or lead to other thoughts, and can produce reports
that are reliably about and track those conscious states.

- That intrinsic qualities, when separate from any causal properties, are
sealed off from the causal physical domain, and can have no effect on what
we say or do, or if they are part of the relevant causal properties, fit
into the functional definition, and are functional properties.

- That any complete functional model will replicate all outwardly testable
signs and behaviors, the functional substitute will make all the same
claims, report qualities in the exactly identical ways claim to be just as
conscious as before, be capable of making all the same distinctions, etc.



> If your starting definition is 'consciousness = function,' then your
> theory effectively ignores qualities by design.
>

That's not fair. If you browse through the paper you will see the entire
paper is orientated to explain what qualitative states are, and to give an
account of all the mysteries that emerge around the nature of qualitative
(phenomenal states). The hard problem, the meta problem, the explanatory
gap, why qualia feel intrinsic and unlike anything physical, etc.

My paper even goes so far to explain why people feel motivated to adopt an
intrinsicist theory like the one you propose.

See the treatments of Russellian monism in the latest rev 139 of my paper
here:

https://zenodo.org/records/23067626


>From my perspective, this doesn't explain consciousness; it simply
> describes a system's behavior and labels that description 'phenomenology.'
> If phenomenology is actually an intrinsic quality of a state, your theory
> misses the mark because it treats the 'what it is like' as a byproduct of
> the 'how it works,' rather than the reality being apprehended.
>

It's not a byproduct: a qualitative state *is* the structure of
discriminative knowledge itself. And to occupy such a state is to know it
immediately, directly, and intrinsically. It is the only thing that can be
known intrinsically (from a given perspective).


> You seem to think we are trapped inside our point of view and can’t
> access others' POVs, basically giving up and thinking qualities are
> ineffable.
>

I do claim that. This is a consequence of the fact that communicating
descriptions (generally speaking) does not change occupation. Occupation of
any first person state is to exclude occupation of all other first person
states. This is a tautology and it accounts for the explanatory gap. It's
not that any fact is missing from the picture, it's that each observer
occupies a distinct location (their own particular center, and not any
other's).

But I don't see this as giving up. My theory goes much farther than most
which either say the gap exists but can't explain it, or say eventually it
will go away but don't say how thwt will happen. My theory derives and
explains the appearance of a gap, not as a limitation of physical facts or
knowledge, but as a consequence of the exclusive nature of occupation (of
particular first person perspectives).


   But this belief is falsified by the simple fact that we can eff the
> ineffable if we sufficiently define our terms as in this example:
>     "My redness is like your greenness, both of which we call red."
>

If we knew enough about how the brain worked, and we had two similar enough
brains where we could verify these things, such a statement could be made.
But a lot rides on the brains being sufficiently similar for this statement
to be meaningful.

When I say descriptions does to convey the meaning of qualia, I mean in the
general sense. Consider the meaning of your sentence for a blind person, or
for Mary who has lived in a black and white room her whole life, or to a
bat that sees by echolocation. The labels "red" and "green" are meaningless
to them, and no matter how much you explain or teach them about red, it
will never put their brain into a "red seeing state". This is the sort of
gap that is unbridgeable.

You may make the claim that we can attach a neural ponytail between the
sighted person and the blind person and then the blind person can know what
color is, but this working rests on a lot of assumptions about how qualia
are created and bound which are not in evidence. Your theory may claim it
will work, but other theories will disagree.

We aren’t missing the terminology (we can name and describe everything in
> the brain, including all its functions both inside and out); all we are
> missing is the dictionary that connects the subjective with the objective
> .
>

This is all about Frank Jackson's "Mary's Room" thought experiment, which I
have a section talking about it. One of my friends said this was the single
best account of Mary's Room he had ever seen. I don't know if you will feel
that way, but I think if you understand what I say in that short section,
you will see why I don't think there can be such a dictionary. A dictionary
would amount to a further elaboration of third person descriptions, but as
I show, descriptions aren't enough to make arbitrary brains realize
arbitrary qualitative states.

 All we need to do is ask questions like: “Which of all our third-person
> descriptions is a description of first-person redness?
>
>
>
Even knowing every physical fact is not enough to know what it's like to be
any particular observer. See my new 8.2 "exclusivity of occupation"
sections in rev139. It explains why even an omniscient mind who knows every
third person fact is still limited from knowing what it's like to be
someone else.

Jason


>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2026 at 8:41 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 29, 2026, 1:11 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Hi Jason,
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Sep 26, 2026 at 11:28 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, Sep 25, 2026, 5:29 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>> [Snip]
>>
>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> And co-pilot agreeing this was an issue with your paper I asked it:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> “Can you formulate some proposals for how his paper might address this
>>>>> issue? Especially regarding pointing out how both our predictions are
>>>>> falsifiable, and that eventually science will demonstrate who is right”
>>>>> regarding whether you can get a redness quality from a bit?”
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Here is co-pilot’s response:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Brent, this is exactly the right question to be asking — because *your
>>>>> view and Resch’s view make different empirical predictions*, and the
>>>>> paper *could* make this explicit. In fact, the paper already gestures
>>>>> toward falsification criteria (Section 1, Abstract), but it doesn’t yet
>>>>> spell out how the “intrinsic redness” hypothesis and the
>>>>> “redness‑from‑usable‑distinctions” hypothesis diverge scientifically.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The paper does have an explicit mention of this idea under "11.3
>>>> Challenges for nonfunctionalist theories" where I give the example of using
>>>> different material substrates, I.e. silicon, germanium or carbon to build a
>>>> computer that emulates a conscious mind, and whether this could manifest
>>>> any difference in demonstrated behavior.
>>>>
>>>
>>> You're leaving out the most important 'function' of consciousness: its
>>> ability to apprehend what physical properties are like.  i.e. the ability
>>> to answer questions like: What is redness like for you? or, "My redness is
>>> like your greenness, both of which we call red."
>>>
>>
>> But note it is your assumption that consciousness is the apprehension of
>> physical properties, rather than apprehension of higher level properties.
>>
>> While I allow that we can do much to discover the nature of one person's
>> qualitative structure, as well as perform experiments on ourselves and how
>> changing ones brain affects one's own experience, for reasons I make clear
>> in the paper, direct comparison of the type you say "your redness is like
>> my greenness" I don't see as possible.
>>
>> But perhaps in your conversations with AI on how to construct a test, you
>> could work out how a neural ponytail could relay the same experience to two
>> minds.
>>
>> But as I see it, the neural ponytail argument supports functialism. Let's
>> say we have a sample of some physical thing that has this redness property
>> sitting in a petri dish on a table. Then we have a long neural ponytail
>> connected to this petri dish to directly interface with this redness
>> material and the other end connected to someone like Mary who has never
>> seen red because she lives in a black ad white room all her life.
>>
>> When we hook her up, she explains ahh, so that is what red is. But then,
>> we connect the neural pony tail to another petri dish, this time containing
>> elemental greenness. And she says ooh, I like green even more.
>>
>> But then: just what is the neural pony tail transmitting from the dish to
>> her brain? None of the elemental redness or greenness leaves the petri
>> dish, none of it flows through the neurons of the ponytail tail. The only
>> thing that could change is the pattern of firings. Is this how you see it
>> working?
>>
>> If so, what changes if we preserve the same pattern of neuron firings in
>> the other end of the ponytail, but without the elemental redness or
>> greenness, would that same pattern of firing not induce Mary to have the
>> same behavior? If not, how can she directly apprehend what is at the other
>> end of the ponytail other than by some psychic ability?
>>
>> Or is your idea that the pony tail extends her brain so that it directly
>> feels redness and greenness by direct contact with it? So then, is the
>> feeling and experiencing of green happening only at the neurons in the
>> petri dish and not in her visual cortex?
>>
>>
>> [Snip]
>>
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Below is a set of *concrete proposals* for how the paper *could*
>>>>> address this issue directly, in a way that respects both positions and
>>>>> shows how science could eventually decide between them.
>>>>>
>>>>> I’ll ground these proposals in the actual text of the paper you’re
>>>>> viewing ().
>>>>>
>>>>> *⭐ Proposal 1 — Explicitly acknowledge the competing definition of
>>>>> phenomenal character*
>>>>>
>>>>> The paper could add a short section saying:
>>>>>
>>>>> “Some theorists hold that phenomenal qualities (e.g., redness) are *intrinsic
>>>>> physical properties* of certain states, independent of their
>>>>> relational or computational role. On this view, consciousness *uses*
>>>>> these intrinsic qualities but does not constitute them.”
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I don't have a clear picture of how a process could use or access these
>>>> intrinsic qualities.
>>>>
>>>
>>> We simply know there is some process that can 'subjectively bind' 2 or
>>> more elemental qualities into one unified gestalt subjective experience.
>>> We can objectively observe all this, it's just that the resulting
>>> descriptions of the qualities' behavior don't tell you what they are like.
>>> We simply need to ask questions like: "Which of all those descriptions
>>> is a description of redness?"" and we need the resulting dictionary between
>>> the subjective and the objective.
>>>
>>
>> I think a useful exercise to understand the functionalist view is to put
>> yourself back a few hundred years ago and imagine a scientist asking the
>> same sorts qustions about life as you do about consciousness, questions
>> like: "What in the description of all these tissues, humors, and organs, is
>> the description of life?"
>>
>> It would then be strange for the ultimate answer to turn out to be some
>> specific material or force or property inherent to some tissue.
>>
>> Rather, the answer turned out to rest on a number of high level
>> functional capacities, of metabolism, reproduction, growth and repair, etc.
>> rather than a new force or different kind of matter. It turned out what
>> separated life from non-life was not the kind of matter, only how it was
>> arranged. That is the functionalist view on what separates consciousness
>> from non conscious, how a particular system is arranged and organized,
>> rather than how it is constituted.
>>
>>
>> [Snip]
>>
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> But if behavior is preserved by running the same high level program,
>>>> how could any behavioral difference enter the picture?
>>>>
>>>
>>> As I was saying, you ask the system, "What is redness like for you?"
>>> And there must be some set of physics that constitutes that redness.
>>>
>>
>> Here is an example that might help you see my understanding of what
>> redness could be.
>>
>> An autonomous vehicle is in a sense "nothing but" a bunch of electronics.
>> And yet, it can do things like "recognize a stop sign". But recognizing
>> stop signs isn't a property of electronics as the field of electronics is
>> generally understood.
>>
>> If new properties like stop sign recognition can emerge when we put a lot
>> of electronics together in a particular kind of organization, then could it
>> not also be the same for cases like recognizing red vs. green? Where a new
>> property (redness) emerges from putting a bunch of neurons together in a
>> particular kind of organization, rather than it being an innate fundamental
>> property of the low level individual neurons?
>>
>> We accept "emergence" for explaining how we get life from dead atoms, or
>> stop sign recognition out of a bunch of transistors, why assume redness
>> cannot be an emergent property as well?
>>
>>
>> If it cannot aprehend the physical qualities on which it is instantiated,
>>> it isn't functioning correctly.
>>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> If no behavioral change occurs, then how then could this test reveal
>>>> any difference in the phenomenal experiences of the computers based on
>>>> different substrates? How do we discover of any of them lack redness or
>>>> experience redness differently when the behavior is known a priori to be
>>>> identical?
>>>>
>>>> This is why my paper takes the path of justifying the theory
>>>> abductively (from the wide number of facts it can explain)
>>>>
>>>
>>> Again, you're leaving out the simple fact that consciousness apprehends
>>> physical properties.
>>>
>>
>>
>> If you deleted "physical" in the above sentence I would agree. I see this
>> as similar to saying "life consists of chemical properties." True in a
>> sense, but it does more to obscure than illuminate.
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> thereby showing it is a powerful and useful theory. This is a
>>>> limitation all theories of consciousness face, because each of us is
>>>> trapped in our own view, we can never see what anyone else sees. So unlike
>>>> most theories in science which depend on repeatable objective results,
>>>> consciousness theories (being designed to describe the subjective) can't
>>>> use many of the standard scientific methods.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>    - Neural replacement could preserve all functional organization
>>>>>    but still *lose qualia* if the intrinsic physical property is not
>>>>>    reproduced.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> My new paper (will be ready in a few days) makes some powerful
>>>> arguments against this possibility (of maintaining organizational
>>>> equivalence but losing qualia i.e. zombies).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> This is the “fading qualia” or “dancing qualia” possibility.
>>>>>
>>>>> *Centered‑knowledge prediction (paper’s view)*
>>>>>
>>>>> If phenomenal character *is* the organization of usable distinctions:
>>>>>
>>>>>    - Any system with the same usable distinctions and access
>>>>>    relations *must* have the same phenomenal character.
>>>>>    - A digital emulation that preserves KC (the complete knowledge
>>>>>    organization) *must* preserve redness.
>>>>>    - Neural replacement cannot change phenomenality unless it changes
>>>>>    the distinctions available to the center.
>>>>>
>>>>> This is organizational invariance (Section 4.1–4.2, ).
>>>>>
>>>>> *Empirical divergence*
>>>>>
>>>>> The paper could say:
>>>>>
>>>>> “If intrinsic qualia exist, then two systems with identical KC could
>>>>> differ phenomenally. If centered knowledge is correct, such divergence is
>>>>> impossible.”
>>>>>
>>>>> This sets up a clear empirical fork.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Essentially where your theory and mine diverge comes down to whether
>>>> the intrinsic redness sits below the "substitution level" or above it.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes.  We are simply making different predictions about the nature of
>>> qualities, and it is up to the experimentalists to demonstrate which theory
>>> is false.
>>>
>>>
>>>> If it is a high level property that sits above the substitution level,
>>>> then your theory and mine can be seen as equivalent. But if the property
>>>> sits below, that is, it it is some feature or property of a thing that can
>>>> be used to build a universal Turing machine, then when sitting in this
>>>> space as a building block of a computer it must necessarily exist below the
>>>> substitution level for any program this computer runs. It would then be
>>>> causally isolated from having any effect on the process, and whether this
>>>> property is present or not at that low level, makes no difference to the
>>>> evolution of this program. It will unfold the same way regardless.
>>>>
>>>> *⭐ Proposal 3 — Identify testable consequences of each view*
>>>>>
>>>>> The paper already proposes tests for its own theory (e.g., neural
>>>>> replacement, emulation fidelity). It could add parallel tests for intrinsic
>>>>> qualia.
>>>>>
>>>>> *Test A — High‑fidelity neural replacement*
>>>>>
>>>>>    - Replace neurons with silicon equivalents that preserve all
>>>>>    functional distinctions.
>>>>>    - *Intrinsic‑qualia view:* Phenomenal character might change or
>>>>>    fade.
>>>>>    - *Centered‑knowledge view:* Phenomenal character must remain
>>>>>    identical.
>>>>>
>>>>> *Test B — Digital emulation with preserved KC*
>>>>>
>>>>>    - Build a digital emulation of a subject’s brain at the
>>>>>    substitution level.
>>>>>    - *Intrinsic‑qualia view:* The emulation might behave identically
>>>>>    but lack redness.
>>>>>    - *Centered‑knowledge view:* If KC is preserved, redness must be
>>>>>    preserved.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> I might suggest as something to try: take all of your writings and
>>>> thoughts on your theory of consciousness and ask a frontier model AI to put
>>>> it together in an organized paper in a similar manner as I did for my
>>>> ideas. I started using OpenAI but recently switched to Claude Fable and
>>>> have found it far better and faster. It can do much more in each step
>>>> without messing things up and builds new PDFs in seconds rather than
>>>> minutes. It's ability to research and find relevant citations in the
>>>> literature is also quite good (though not perfect). I think this will make
>>>> your ideas much easier to share with certain people, and you will also
>>>> learn a lot from the experience (I certainly did). It will help you frame
>>>> your own ideas relative to others in the field, point out people who have
>>>> agreed with or defended ideas like your own, point out challenges similar
>>>> theories face, and can recommend how to go about testing your theory.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks, this is very helpful.  I've gotten started on this, and it is
>>> very helpful.
>>>
>>
>>
>> I am very anxious to see the result when you were ready to share!
>>
>> Jason
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20261001/fc261319/attachment-0001.htm>