<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif">On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 Brent Allsop </span><span dir="ltr" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"><<a href="mailto:brent.allsop@gmail.com" target="_blank">brent.allsop@gmail.com</a>></span><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif"> wrote:</span><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>I think I'm starting to
understand more about your theory, and how to test for it<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> [...] </div>So if your theory is proven true<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">...</div></div></blockquote><div> </div><div><font size="4"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">There is no way my ideas about consciousness (or that of anybody else)</div> <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">can ever be proven true or false, so it is not a scientific theory. Instead, "<i>intelligent behavior implies subjectivity and consciousness is what date feels like when it is processed and produces intelligent behavior</i>" are axioms. If I refuse to take them as my starting point then there are only 2 alternatives: </div></font></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><br></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4">1) I am the only conscious being in the universe.</font></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4"><br></font></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4">2) Everything in the universe is as conscious as I am, including rocks.</font></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4"><br></font></div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4">Neither alternative is very appealing so I think I'll stick with my axioms. Actually everybody not just me uses behavior to determine if something is conscious or not, that's why they believe rocks are not conscious but other people are, except when they behave as if they are asleep or dead. Yes it's not perfect, maybe they're just pretending to be sleeping or dead and maybe rocks are just shy and don't feel like talking, but it's the only tool we have so if you want to be consistent you must use it on computers too.</font></div></div><div> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>So if your theory is proven true, </div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">That will never happen.</font></div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"> <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>you will be able to take a
sufficiently complex set of bits and organize them in the right way,
put them in the right (red) context and wala, a redness quality will
be experienced by you. And potentially all you need to do to change
this same set of bits into your greenness qualia,</blockquote><div><font size="4"><br></font></div><div><font size="4"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">But if you switched my qualia of red and green how would my behavior change, how would you notice any difference in me? I'd still say strawberries and stoplights have the same color and spinach and go-lights have the same color. And how would I notice a difference? </div> <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">My memories of what a strawberries and what a stoplight looks like would also change. So if switching the red and green qualia would make no difference objectively and it would make no difference subjectively then what difference would switching the two color qualia make? </div></font></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>But what do you mean by "byproduct of"? </div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">I mean you can't make an arch without a spandrel and you can't produce </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">intelligent behavior without consciousness. Evolution can't detect consciousness in others any better than we can, but like us it can detect intelligent behavior. I know for a fact that Evolution did produce consciousness at least once so I must conclude that consciousness is a byproduct of intelligence. You must make the same conclusion, provided of course that like me you do know for a fact that there is at least one conscious being in the universe. If you don't know that for a fact then all bets are off.</div></font></div><div> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>Certainly that at least
implies a causal relationship from the physics to the qualia - but
are you saying the reverse isn't true? - that the quality of your
experience that is the byproduct of physics has no detectable causal
effect on physical reality? </div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4">There are many correct answers to the question, "why did you scratch your nose?". Some answers would involve physiology, some would involve physics, some would involve mosquitoes, and some would involve qualia. "Because I felt my nose itch and I thought it would feel good if I scratched it" would be a perfectly acceptable answer. </font> </div> </div><div> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>are you implying that your redness quality has no physical
causal properties?<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><font size="4"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">No, the redness qualia causes me to put my foot on the brake pedal of my car whenever I see a traffic signal take on that quality. </div> </font></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>I'm predicting that my redness quality must have detectable physical
causal properties</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4">Me too. As I said there is more than one way to correctly answer a question. "I'm picking strawberries because the neurons in my brain are sending signals to the muscles in my fingers to do so" would be a correct answer, " I'm picking them because I think red strawberries</font></div><font size="4"> </font><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4">taste good" would also be a correct answer. </font> </div></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4"><br></font></div></div><font size="4">To a physicist pressure is a perfectly real concept, and the idea<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>that pressure makes a balloon expand is true. And the concept that a million billion trillion gas molecules are pushing on the inside of a balloon making it expand is also true. Two different ways of saying the same thing and both are true. The one that is the most useful depends on the thing you're trying to do, if you're studying Brownian Motion you use one, if you're studying hurricanes you use the other. </font><div><font size="4"> </font><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">> Aren't you saying that "a suitably written program stored in a digital computer" does have something for which to interpret the abstracted word "red" as - which is the neural correlate of your redness?</blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">Yes.</font></div></div><div> <br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"> <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>With all current computers that I know of nobody has done anything to represent red with the correct set of organized bits in the right context</blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"></font><font size="4">Well.....since the 1960's computers (with suitable robotic eyes and hands) have been able to look at a pile of red and green balls and pick out the ones you would interpret as red and put them in one bin and pick out the ones you would interpret as green and put them in another bin. I agree with your interpretation that the 2 qualia are different and we both agree with the robot's interpretation of what is red and what is green. I don't understand what more is needed because that's the same way I determine if you can detect a difference between red and green. I don't know of any other way to go about it and it seems to me we should play by the same rules regardless of if we are judging people, computers, or rocks. </font></div></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>P.S. John, thank you so much for sticking with all this for so
long!! </div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4">I enjoy this sort of thing.</font></div><font size="4"> </font></div><div><font size="4"><br></font></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4"> John K Clark</font></div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div> </div></div></div></div>