<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:large;font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(34,34,34);display:inline"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">I think it is a brute fact that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed.</font></div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" style="font-size:large;color:rgb(34,34,34)"> </font></div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-size:large;color:rgb(34,34,34)"> John K Clark</span></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Two things: define 'feel'. If you are conscious you can feel it; you can feel it if you're conscious. Round and round. Conscious = feeling??? Data processing can be verified objectively for man and machine. Is feeling something that goes along with this (epiphenomenon?) , or it IS this?</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Dreams are still unaccounted for. A limited form of consciousness, maybe. Outside data get ignored; inside data get processed.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">bill w</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Mar 31, 2017 at 10:19 AM, John Clark <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:johnkclark@gmail.com" target="_blank">johnkclark@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><span class=""><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Mar 30, 2017 at 4:11 PM, Brent Allsop <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:brent.allsop@gmail.com" target="_blank">brent.allsop@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:</div><div class="gmail_quote"><br></div></span><div class="gmail_quote"><span class=""><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 dir="ltr"><span style="font-size:12.8px"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>Part of our consciousness is a real detection system </span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></span></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"></div><font size="4">I've asked this more than once before but I'll ask it again because it is the key to the entire matter, WHAT'S WITH THIS "<b>OUR</b>" BUSINESS? You have direct evidence of the existence of one conscious being in the universe, and that's it. Nothing more. After that all you can do is use a theory to infer consciousness from behavior. Even if there is no proof I think it is a very reasonable assumption the theory is true, but it would be inconsistent to invoke it only when the being in question has a soft squishy brain and ignore it if the brain is hard and metallic. <br> </font></div><span class=""><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 dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><div> <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>of whatever is the neural correlate of redness. So, if we are talking about qualia, we are talking about consciously detecting the real thing, and distinguishing it from greenness. </div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"></div></span><font size="4">What evidence do<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> </div>you have that you can do this but a computer with a hard metallic brain can not<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">?</div> <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">And w</div>hat evidence do you have that you can do this and I<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">,</div> a human with a soft squishy brain<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">,</div> can too<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">?</div></font><span class=""><div> </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 dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>That's what consciousness is, it is a detector of qualities of nature of something in our brain. If you neurosubstitute out this ability to do this detection (either subjectively or objectively), your argument becomes invalid.</div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><font size="4">Your thought experiment is invalid. Good thought experiments like Einstein's show things, but you're not showing that one system experiences qualia and the other doesn't, you're just stated that one does and one doesn't. You've ruled out behavior for some reason I don't understand, so until you can find some other way to tell when the system is detecting qualia and when it is not we can learn nothing from your thought experiment.</font></div></div><span class=""><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 dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><div> <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">> </div>and there is a real part of nature that has a redness quality, without it being some kind of: "A miracle happens here."</div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></span><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><font size="4">OK, suppose someday we find </font></div><font size="4"><span class="">a real part of nature that has a redness quality</span><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">, the next obvious question would be, "what gives this real part on nature the redness quality?". For anything, not just consciousness, the chain of "why did that happen?" questions can only have 2 possible outcomes:</div></font></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><br></div></div><div><font size="4"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">1) </div>The chain of questions goes on forever <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">like an infinitely large </div>matryoshka <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"></div>doll<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> with one question always lurking inside another. </div></font></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"><br></div></div><div><font size="4"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">2) The chain of questions eventually terminates in a brute fact. At that point if you want you could indeed say "a </div>miracle happens here<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline">"; or you could be less dramatic and say </div><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">there are just no more whys in the why bag. </span></font></div><div><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></div><div><font size="4"><div class="gmail_default" style="display:inline"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">I think it is a brute fact that consciousness is the way data feels when it is being processed.</font></div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </font></font></div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><br></font></div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;display:inline"> John K Clark</div> </font></div><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"><br></blockquote></div><br></div></div>
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