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

[Jason Resch]

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
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