[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet

[gts]

On Mon, 28 Nov 2005 14:12:58 -0500, Damien Broderick  
<thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:

> That's an easy enough trick, but what is it like to hear a molecule of  
> phosphorus scoffing?

Something like watching a pig fly. :)

Thinking about insects, probably they live entirely in the present, with  
no self-concept and zero recall of their qualia.... something like  
watching a movie frame by frame but always forgetting the previous frames.

We can then ask the same question about even lower organisms like  
bacteria, which unlike flies have no obvious sense organs. My imagination  
does not stretch that far, but I note that the sense organs of the fly are  
made of the same basic building blocks that make bacteria, and that  
bacteria do sense their environments in more primitive ways. Like flies  
they don't realize that they can sense their environments, but it's a  
plain fact that they do.

-gts