[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet.

[Brett Paatsch]

Robin Hanson wrote:

> At 11:32 AM 12/1/2005, John K Clark wrote:
>>>You *cannot* declare both "I know qualia exist because I see them",
>>>and also "scientific investigation cannot find qualia"
>>
>>Although I pretty much agree with your views on this subject I can quibble
>>with the above statement.

I think I agree with John on this point, though perhaps not for his reasons.

Scientific investigation cannot proceed without some investgatory agent
(some "scientist" or scientists to do the investigating and apply the 
method)
and there are some experiences that are so fundamental (not magical or
mystical just fundamental, like perhaps the experience of seeing something
as red) that the tools of science cannot get the individual truthseeking
scientist any closer too.

Describing the wavelength of red light as red does not tell a scientist any
more about what red looks like to him.

There would be neurons firing somewhere in the red-perceivers brain
and a correlation between what their firing and the subjects reported
experience might be drawn, but the subject himself cannot know
redness any better as redness by using scientific apparatus.

Of course a scientist could use tools to measure reports of seeing
red from a variety of subjects, correlate those against wavelenght data,
and be more confident than a nonscientist that the reported redness
(the word red mapping to an experience based on neural activity) was
the same between any two subjects.

> I pretty much agree with Eliezer - If you can see your qualia, then if we
> could watch your brain closely enough we could see whatever you see.  I
> think it is more accurate to say that we are built to assume that we have
> direct experience.  Our brain is made to tell us that of course we have 
> it.
> But assuming something is different from having evidence of it.

This surprises me a bit. No amount of close watching makes what is
being looked at, the observed, become the observer.  I can't understand
what you could mean by "seeing".

If John's brain sees something there will of course be a physiological
(a neurological) basis for that. But that doesn't mean that you can see
what he sees by measuring it or by monitoring the neurological changes.

Even if you could trigger the actual neurons in Johns brain such that
you could cause him to see red and report seeing red at will and with
100% reliabilitity that would not mean that you were "seeing" the red.

Or would it, in your opinion?

I'm a bit confused as to how you and perhaps Eliezer might think of
science I'm wondering if you imagine it as something that can occur
without there being even a single scientific agent, a scientist, to do it.

I can't.

Brett Paatsch