[ExI] Digital Consciousness .

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 11:32 AM, spike <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

> Brent there is nothing wrong with your communication skills.  Qualia is
> (are?) a difficult concept.  I have pondered the hell out of it and still
> don't feel like I have even suck at it.  I would need to vastly improve and
> get a number of breakthrough insights on qualia to just suck.  It isn't your
> fault: your favorite topic is just hard to grok.

Spike,

It's difficult if you try to define or explain qualia. If you stick to
a minimal operational definition - you know you have an experience
when you have it - qualia are stupidly simple. The question is, if a
part of your brain is replaced with an electronic component that
reproduces the I/O behaviour of the biological tissue (something that
engineers can measure and understand), will you continue to have the
same experiences or not? If not, that would lead to what Brent has
admitted is an absurd situation. Therefore the qualia, whatever the
hell they are, must be reproduced if the observable behaviour of the
neural tissue is reproduced. No equations, but no complex theories of
consciousness or attempts to define the ineffable either.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou