[ExI] Digital Consciousness .

Brent Allsop brent.allsop at canonizer.com
Wed Apr 24 23:31:41 UTC 2013


Hi Kelly,

Yes, definitely progress.  I would just provide some advice, in that I 
think you are getting side tracked on lots of irrelevant complex things 
that are leading you away from the simplicity that is important here.

Just think of an idealized world where strawberries only reflect 650 NM 
light, which can easily be represented with a 1 (what we intend on 
picking), and leaves only reflect 700 NM light, which can easily 
represent with a 0 (what we don't want).  And only think of one redness 
quality and one greenness quality that we both agree is the middle of 
the road for both.

Also, we're talking about elemental qualities.  Some people think a 
single quale, is the entire supper complex emotional experience they 
have of life, and so they say my quale could not be felt by you, without 
you becoming me.  Of course THAT is true, but these experiences are 
built up out of, or painted with, elemental qualities that include the 
combination of simple elemental redness, a warmth feeling, our memories 
of everything to do with red, like blood.  The phenomenal knowledge of 
us perceiving this red, the phenomenal emotion, and so on.  All of this 
phenomenal knowledge is simply lots of elemental qualities our brain 
uses to 'paint' our conscious knowledge with.  And surely we will be 
able to 'eff' if you will, the qualitative elemental nature, to each 
other, and know if you are using my greenness, to represent the 
strawberry with, or if you are using some other phenomenal quality I 
have never experienced before in my life.

Also, you're starting to think sloppily when you say things like:

<<<
I can have a symbol "red" in a database, and if that is the result of a 
query issued by that camera device, then that recognition of red is no 
different than what happens from the query in my brain that comes up 
with the symbol "red".
 >>>

All of that is the intermediate stuff, like the light, the eye, and 
everything.  They are all just random stuff, for which, if you interpret 
it to be 'red' that is what you have.  But without that interpretation, 
the light is just light, the +5 volts is just that, and nothing like a 
redness quality, or the property of the surface of the strawberry, it is 
being interpreted as representing.  The only thing that makes such 
abstract 'red' substrate independent, is the fact that there is a 
consistent hardware layer doing the interpretation, from whatever 
physical media you are using to represent it.  All that intermediate 
stuff can be thought of as 'red', but findamentally, none of it is 
anything fundamentally like the initial cause nor the final result of 
that perception of red process.

Are we still on the same page?

Brent Allsop



On 4/24/2013 4:31 PM, Kelly Anderson wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 2:50 PM, Brent Allsop 
> <brent.allsop at canonizer.com <mailto:brent.allsop at canonizer.com>> wrote:
>
>
>     Hi Kelly,
>
>     Communication is a two way street.  So if I'm failing at
>     communication, it is a problem with me, also.  So thanks for
>     trying, and not yet giving up!
>
>     Let's back up a bit, and be sure we are clear on some of the
>     fundamentals.  For example, do you agree that 'red' is an
>     ambiguous term.
>
>
> It is ambiguous in that somewhere between 620--750 nm you will start 
> seeing red at a slightly different point than I will, but that is a 
> symbolic representation problem in how you and I LEARNED the concept 
> red. There would undoubtedly be a color in there that we both agreed 
> would be red, and then going off the other end, we would have the same 
> issue. But there is an unambiguous middle ground where it is 
> definitely red, and I don't think that is ambiguous in the least. We 
> would agree that orange has some redness to it.
>
>     It includes both the initial cause of the perception of 'red',
>     like when the strawberry reflects something like 650 NM light. 
>     And it also includes a phenomenal quality, which is a quality of
>     our knowledge of such.
>
>
> The recognition of red by my brain and by your brain even in the 
> unambiguous case of physical middle of the road redness will be 
> established by the lighting up of different neural patterns, or waves 
> of patterns if you believe some brain scientists.
>
>     In other words, redness is a quality of the final result of the
>     perception process.
>
>
> The recognition of red is different between you and I, but by the time 
> you turn it into a symbol, and turn that symbol back into speech, and 
> I recognize the speech, after all that messing around is done, then we 
> would agree that we have both perceived red, at least in many cases. 
> If I reach out to try and understand what you are saying, redness is a 
> symbol that is the final result of the perception process.
>
>     So, when we talk about 'red', you must distinguish between them,
>     and know which one of these you are talking about!?
>
>
> Meaning the physics red and the perception red and the symbol "red"? 
> Yup, got it. Those are all different things. Probably a lot of other 
> things in the middle of those things that we don't have language or 
> technology to describe, especially in an email, such as sound waves, 
> brain patterns and waves and so forth. When you break it down it does 
> indeed get VERY complicated.
>
>     Also, all the intermediate representations really have nothing to
>     do with 'red' other than some intermediate physical media is being
>     interpreted in an abstract way, as being red.  Without the correct
>     hardware interpretation layer, there is no 'red' anywhere in the
>     light or the eye, other than the abstracted information it all is
>     being interpreted as.
>
>
> If there is no eye and no brain, redness can still be detected by a 
> device. So Redness (if the definition is agreed upon) is a TRUTH that 
> lies outside of anyone's brain. I can have a symbol "red" in a 
> database, and if that is the result of a query issued by that camera 
> device, then that recognition of red is no different than what happens 
> from the query in my brain that comes up with the symbol "red". There 
> is no "emotion", but I don't think your definition of qualia 
> necessarily includes an emotional aspect, or does it?
>
> The qualia, as you call it, of redness, is simply the mental state of 
> resonating strongly with the symbol red (as represented by a learned 
> pattern state in my brain) in the context of an experience conveyed to 
> the perceiving brain by its sensory input, particularly the visual 
> input in this case.
>
> Are we getting anything like closer to common understanding?
>
> -Kelly
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20130424/0ea6d87d/attachment.html>


More information about the extropy-chat mailing list