[ExI] Fwd: Paper on "Detecting Qualia" presentation at 2015 MTA conference

[Brent Allsop]

Hi John,

I can see how jumping into this conversation, new, the way you have, one 
would say LOL.  But, my prediction is that if you read, and understand 
the paper, it will all make sense.  glutamate is just the example 
theory, that only applies to the simplistic 3 color world, described in 
order to describe as simply as possible, how to get around the 
qualitative information gap.  You obviosly know of experimental facts 
that falsify this prediction.  And this is the point: an example of a 
theory about the qualitative nature of consciousness, that can be 
falsified.  So, the only remaining task is to replace glutamate, with 
whatever are the necessary and sufficient detectable properties, for 
someone to experience a redness quality.  And any such new theory will 
simply be a variation on this first incorrect theory that enables us to 
bridge the qualitative gap, and to eff the ineffable, in an 
experimentally verifiable to all way.


On 2/1/2015 9:35 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 1, 2015 at 6:11 PM, Brent Allsop 
> <brent.allsop at canonizer.com <mailto:brent.allsop at canonizer.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>     This theory also predicts that this elemental fundamental stuff,
>     in addition to behaving according to these laws, also has
>     fundamental qualities, like redness.  It predicts that particular
>     qualities are one and the same as particular behaviors.  The
>     prediction is that nature builds our composite consciousness out
>     of these elemental qualities.  In the 3 color world, the
>     scientists don't know why glutamate has a redness quality, just
>     that it does.
>
>
> ### Sorry, this really fails the LOL test. Fundamental quality of 
> redness in *glutamate*??
>
> One might claim there are some irreducible properties of information 
> processing that manifest as qualia, from simple redness to the feel of 
> a quadratic function being plotted by a 3d-representing mind to the 
> taste of madeleines in the remembering human but to say that low-level 
> chemistry determines these properties is just silly. There is million 
> chemical processes happening inside your mind that are clearly 
> irrelevant to qualia, since they remain both subjectively and 
> objectively undetected (i.e. have no measurable impact on behavior or 
> measurable internal states that correlate with behavior). Replacing 
> glutamate with another neurotransmitter in your mind while adjusting 
> its receptors and enzymes as to make higher-level brain activity (EEG, 
> rCBF responses, etc.) the same would have no impact on "qualia", just 
> as replacing a 4004 system with an i7 system in a Pong arcade game, 
> properly implemented, would not change the game itself.
>
> Rafal
>
>
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