<div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, 30 Dec 2019 at 07:32, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Hi Ben,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Thanks for jumping in on this!!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">I was completely agreeing with
everything you were saying. I get so upset
at most theories of consciousness that have exactly the problem you pointed out
with:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(84,130,53)">“It seems to be a general rule of nature that large numbers of
complex, higher-level things are built from much smaller numbers of simpler, lower-level
things.</span>”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span style="font-size:12pt">One of many examples is “pan-psychic”
ideas that claim everything has “proto” consciousness. What the heck is a "proto" consciousness? Does a </span><span style="font-size:16px">proto-consciousness</span><span style="font-size:12pt"> have the same resolution and color depth as our </span></font>visual <span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">consciousness?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">But then you revealed your qualia
blindness in your last paragraph by saying:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(84,130,53)">“the concept of 'elemental red' is sheer nonsense</span>”.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial">“Red” is a label we give to something that
reflects or emits red light. It is elemental
“redness” that we are talking about. Redness
is a label for a very different set of elemental physics than “red”. One is a color property that initiates
perceptions. Colorness is the different property
of the final physics that result from perception. Colorness is the qualities of the stuff we directly experience from which our conscious knowledge is composed.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Ben, let me ask you this. What do you think your knowledge of a strawberry is composed
of?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif"><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span style="font-size:12pt">I believe the supporters of “</span></font><a href="https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Representational-Qualia/6" style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;font-size:12pt;color:blue" target="_blank">Representational
Qualia Theory</a><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span style="font-size:12pt">” are saying exactly what you are saying by defining
consciousness (love, free will, intentionality…) to be “</span><span style="font-size:16px">Composite</span><span style="font-size:12pt"> computationally bound elemental
physical qualities in the brain like redness and greenness.”</span></font></p></div></blockquote><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">You have said that it is in theory possible to know what another person’s qualia are like. Could you use the same method to decide if simple components or simple systems have qualia?</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><span style="font-size:12pt"></span></font></p></div></blockquote></div></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Stathis Papaioannou</div>