<div dir="auto"><div>If epiphenomenalism were true we wouldn't have access to reliably talk about our inner states of consciousness, our feelings, our awareness, etc.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">The author of "epiphenomenal qualia", Frank Jackson, which introduced the thought experiment of Mary the color scientist, later had this epiphany leading him to reject his original conclusion that qualia were epiphenomenal:</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">FJ: “Epiphenomenalism was unbelievable, and indeed that was a consideration that eventually made me change my mind.”</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Interviewer: “So why did you change your mind?”</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">FJ: “Well, the biggest factor was the picture of myself writing ‘epiphenomenal qualia’, but not being caused to write ‘epiphenomenal qualia’ by qualia. I said in ‘epiphenomenal qualia’ that you had to be an epiphenomenalist about qualia, and what that meant was that qualia didn’t change the words that came out of my mouth or the movements of my pen on pieces of paper, so that meant that when I gave the talk defending ‘epiphenomenal qualia’, when I wrote the paper defending ‘epiphenomenal qualia’, the qualia weren’t causing the talk and they weren’t causing the writing, and I just decided this was sort of unbelievable.”</div><div dir="auto">[...]</div><div dir="auto">“It was the picture of myself writing the paper, uncaused by the qualia.. I said that I can’t believe this. And I came to think that was the triumph of philosophical cleverness over common sense.”</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Jason<br><br><div class="gmail_quote" dir="auto"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 10:27 AM William Flynn Wallace 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"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000">I can't say that I understand your reply fully. All behavior, intelligent or not, comes from your unconscious mind. Maybe I don't understand epiphenomenal as well as I think I do. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:large;color:#000000">I do understand this: <span style="color:rgb(32,33,36);font-family:Roboto,arial,sans-serif;font-size:16px">: a secondary mental phenomenon that is caused by and accompanies a physical phenomenon but has no causal influence itself.</span> Like seeing tuba notes in color. bill w</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Jun 17, 2022 at 8:48 AM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, 17 Jun 2022 at 23:01, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:large;color:rgb(0,0,0)">OTOH - it could be that our conscious mind is like God looking down on us and observing our behavior - meaning that the conscious has no role in our behavior at all - it is superfluous - epiphenomenal. So if that is true, trying to make robots conscious is a waste of time. No advantage to it. It has programs that monitor all output like our conscious mind . All is done by our unconscious and the conscious is just an observer. No free will, but we don't need it - our unconscious (which is really conscious of all inputs) does all the work.</div></div></blockquote><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">If consciousness is epiphenomenal, it isn’t an optional extra. It is a side-effect of intelligent behaviour.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:large;color:rgb(0,0,0)" dir="auto"></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:"comic sans ms",sans-serif;font-size:large;color:rgb(0,0,0)">bill w</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Jun 17, 2022 at 2:13 AM Colin Hales via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">Hi,<br></div><div dir="ltr"><div>This is to let you know of the arrival of this publication:</div><div><br></div><div>Hales, C.G., and Ericson, M.L. (2022). Electromagnetism’s Bridge Across the Explanatory Gap: How a Neuroscience/Physics Collaboration delivers Explanation into all Theories of Consciousness. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 16.<br></div><div><a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2022.836046/full" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2022.836046/full</a> <br><a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2022.836046/full#supplementary-material" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2022.836046/full#supplementary-material</a> <br></div><div><br></div><div>This is the full and final argument.</div><div><br></div><div>Note that on page 9 there is a brief discussion of a new kind of chip. That is the one I am building at unimelb. AGI because it can't be anything else. Actual artificial neurons (no general-purpose computing, no software, no models, no programming). Bottom line line: put the signalling physics of the brain in in natural form, naturally interacting, naturally adapting on the chips, NOT the physics of a general purpose computer.</div><div><br></div><div>The abstract is below. Overall:</div><div>1) all theories of consciousness are actually EM field theories.</div><div>2) bringing explanation of the 1st person perspective requires an epistemic upgrade to the standard model of particle physics.</div><div><br></div><div>Turns out that to properly cover all the bases needed 22 pages and an 8 page supplementary. Sorry about that.</div><div><br></div><div>Interesting times.</div><div><br></div><div>cheers,</div><div>Colin</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>==========================================</div><div><span style="font-family:Georgia,"Times New Roman",Times,serif;font-size:20px;color:rgb(62,61,64)">A productive, informative three decades of correlates of phenomenal consciousness (P-Consciousness) have delivered valuable knowledge while simultaneously locating us in a unique and unprecedented explanatory cul-de-sac. Observational correlates are demonstrated to be intrinsically very unlikely to explain or lead to a fundamental principle underlying the strongly emergent 1st-person-perspective (1PP) invisibly stowed away inside them. That lack is now solidly evidenced in practice. To escape our explanatory impasse, this article focuses on fundamental physics (the standard model of particle physics), which brings to light a foundational argument for how the brain is an essentially electromagnetic (EM) field object from the atomic level up. That is, our multitude of correlates of P-Consciousness are actually descriptions of specific EM field behaviors that are posed (hypothesized) as “the right” correlate by a particular theory of consciousness. Because of this, our 30 years of empirical progress can be reinterpreted as, in effect, the delivery of a large body of evidence that the standard model’s EM quadrant can deliver a 1PP. That is, all theories of consciousness are, in the end, merely recipes that select a particular subset of the totality of EM field expression that is brain tissue. With a universal convergence on EM, the science of P-Consciousness becomes a collaborative effort between neuroscience and physics. The collaboration acts in pursuit of a unified explanation applicable to all theories of consciousness while remaining mindful that the process still contains no real explanation as to why or how EM fields deliver a 1PP. The apparent continued lack of explanation is, however, different: this time, the way forward is opened through its direct connection to fundamental physics. This is the first result (Part I). Part II posits, in general terms, a structural (epistemic) add-on/upgrade to the standard model that has the potential to deliver the missing route to an explanation of how subjectivity is delivered through EM fields. The revised standard model, under the neuroscience/physics collaboration, intimately integrates with the existing “correlates of-” paradigm, which acts as its source of empirical evidence. No existing theory of consciousness is lost or invalidated.</span><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div>
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</blockquote></div></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr">Stathis Papaioannou</div>
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