[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet

[Brent Allsop]

gts:


 >>> I think we know a great deal about physics, 
but we know practically nothing about how 
consciousness arises from inert matter. <<<

All we know about physics is its causal 
properties.  If something causes something it 
will set in motion a string of cause and effects 
that will eventually produce a phenomenal 
property in our brain, which will be our 
conscious awareness of the initial causal 
property we perceive.  Because of their 
subjective and to date unshare able or ineffable 
nature we have been completely ignoring anything 
additional to this.  That is why we know so 
little about them.  But just because we have been 
ignoring the red in our consciousness (or worse, 
thinking red is a property of something that 
reflects 700 nm light and thinking we need 
nothing like this in our brain) doesn’t change 
how phenomenal it is and how entirely different 
it is from anything that is only causal.


 >>> In your view does all matter have these 
phenomenal properties? And by that do you mean 
all matter is aware? This is pan-psychism -- one 
way to approach the 'hard problem'. Pan-psychism 
removes the need to explain the seemingly magical 
transformation from inert to aware. All matter is 
aware, and becomes self-aware in higher animals. <<<<

A camera can be “self aware” by pointing it in a 
mirror.  The picture it takes of itself is 
information that represents itself – hence it has 
knowledge of itself or is “self-aware”.  But 
again this knowledge of itself is not composed of 
phenomenal properties like our conscious knowledge of ourselves is.

 From what you describe of “Pan-psychism” here it 
doesn’t sound reasonable.  We don’t know if all 
matter has phenomenal properties – or if matter 
only achieves these phenomenal properties when it 
is in particular complex states in highly 
organized groups of neurons or whatever.  We just 
know absolutely what red is like, how it is 
different than green, salty, and so on and how 
this is very different than something that is 
purely abstractly causal.  Knowing the answer to 
these types of question in great detail will be 
one “test” of whether this phenomenal property 
theory is correct or not.  This is what we must 
discover and indeed what this theory says we 
should be looking for.  Not some way for 
consciousness to “arise from some causal 
property” as Chalmers so brilliantly points out.


 > > Red is and always will be red.  Certainly the neural

 > > correlate that has red will always have the same red

 > > in any mind.



 > I'm not so certain.

Why?  Has red ever changed during your life 
time?  Has salty?  Have you ever confused red 
(the A qualia) with green (the B qualia) or 
salty?  Red is and always will be red – no 
confusion whatsoever and we always know very 
reliably that A is like A and not like B.

Sure, taste is a bit more nebulous and fleeting 
and obviously people taste things very 
differently (represent the same chemical content 
of food with different quale) – To me that simply 
says we should focus on the plain, simple, and 
constant ones, like color, first and an 
understanding of the others will follow.


 > I'm game, but you'll need first to think of a way to test it. :)

You must not be paying attention.  When or if we 
discover what part of matter, in what state, has 
these phenomenal properties – we will be able to 
reliably tell when someone is experiencing red or 
green...by causally observing the particular 
correlates of matter that have those phenomenal 
properties.  When we can eff qualia to other 
minds (including artificial minds) by 
reconstructing the matter in the proper state in 
other minds, enabling us to know what other 
conscious minds are like or which quale they use 
to represent various types of information, that 
will be the proof of the theory.

True, it might be a bit hard to define precisely 
what I am claiming will happen within the next 10 years.

I’m mainly saying that someone will finally 
recognize that we should not be looking for some 
property to emerge from only causal properties of 
nature.  Someone will realize there must be 
phenomenal properties in nature in addition to 
causal properties.  And with this theory – 
someone will start looking in the right place and 
finally discover them (i.e. be able to reliably 
predict when people are experiencing red and 
cause people to experience red when they throw 
the switch
)  I am also claiming this will be 
popularly accepted as the greatest and most earth 
changing scientific achievement to date.  It will 
finally solve the “problem of other minds”, make 
the ineffable effable, tell us what spirits are 
(and are not) make Turing (and all others) seem 
stupid for coming up with the Turing test as the 
best way to know if something else is conscious 
rather than something more like just asking them 
“what is red like for you”
 and so on.

If all of this happens before 10 years, I will 
win.  I am betting this will obviously be the 
case and that there will be no argument from any 
intelligent person.  If any of this doesn’t come 
to pass – or if it turns out to be something 
different than phenomenal properties (could red 
really “emerge” from or be nothing more than 
abstractly simulated by a complex set of causal properties?) – then I lose.

Can you think of some better ways to better pin 
this down based on what I’m trying to say?

Brent Allsop