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

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Stathis,

It's great to hear from you.  And the target audience of this paper, is 
intelligent people like you, so I really need help understanding how 
best to comunicate to people with this POV.  So, thank you for reading, 
and for jumping in here.

You are using untestable not well defined metaphysical terms when you 
talk about "consciousness" like this:  "this will never be able to tell 
you if the subject being studied really is conscious".

When you use the term "conscious" you are talking about composit qualia, 
or all of what conscoiusness is, as something that is not easily 
completely sharable in it's entirety.  And you are providing no way to 
falsify any such assertions.   All I hear you saying is that 
consciousness is not approachable via science.

What I am trying to say, is that you can break composite "consciousness" 
and composite qualia down to elemental qualities, like redness and 
greenness.  And that there is some kind of binding mechanism that binds 
them together, so that you can be aware of redness and greenness, at the 
same time, and know how qualitatively different they are.  Like when a 
painter makes a composit painting, using elemental color qualities, I am 
saying that you can break conscoiusness down to effable, detectable, 
elemental qualities.



On 1/31/2015 7:37 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
> Suppose, for example, you hypothesise that CMOS sensors in digital 
> cameras have colour qualia. You could show experimentally the 
> necessary and sufficient conditions for certain colour outputs, but 
> how would this help you understand what, if anything, the sensor was 
> experiencing? If you tried connecting it to your own brain and saw 
> nothing, how would you know if that was because the sensor lacked 
> qualia or because it doesn't interface properly with your brain?
>

You are thinking about this at the wrong level.  CMOS systems can only 
do intelligent operations if they have hardware that is interpreting 
that which does not have consistent ones and zeros, as if it did.  And 
it certainly doesn't have anything like an elemental redness quality at 
that abstractly operating, interpreted from it's diverse intrinsic 
physical qualities level.

But, there is the possibility, that some stuff like CMOS, does have an 
intrinsic qualitative nature, that can be bound up with other qualities 
the way our brain binds things with redness and greenness up.  And 
interpreting the way CMOS acts as only colorless ones and zeros, is 
being blind to the qualitative nature that it could have.  Zombie 
information can represent everything about the qualitative nature of 
CMOS, but you can only know what the qualitative nature of the same is, 
if you interpenetrate, correctly, what you are detecting, not some 
interpreted pieces of zombie information we think of it as having.


> The other point I would like to make is that (it seems to me) you have 
> misunderstood the neural substitution thought experiment you describe 
> near the end of the paper. Suppose glutamate is responsible for 
> redness qualia, and you replace the glutamate with an analogue that 
> functions just like glutamate in every observable way, except it lacks 
> the qualia. The subject will then accurately describe red objects, say 
> he sees red, and honestly believe that he sees red. How would you show 
> that he does not actually see red? How would you know that your 
> own red qualia were not eliminated last night while you slept by 
> installing such a mechanism?
>

No, you know I fully understand this argument.  Chalmers points out 
multiple possible ways science could demonstrate what happens, 
subjectively, when you do this neural substitution.  You only consider 
the view that it will be possible to do it, just as described, so there 
is a conundrum.  So if your interpretation, leads to such 
contradictions, then you are going down the wrong path.  Why do you 
refuse to consider any other possibility?

Chalmers points out there is a vanashing qualia and fading qualia 
options you are not considering.  I don't like the way he describes 
these, because they are very metaphysical and non testable predictions 
about what is happening.  So, if you assume a 3 color world, like that 
described in the paper, the theory makes testable predictions about how 
the qualitatively consciousness scientists will discover, when they do 
the neuro substitution experiment. Nothing they present to the binding 
system will ever have a redness quality, except that which really has 
redness, so it will be a kind of vanishing qualia.

The critical part of the neuro substitution experiment, is adding in the 
hardware interpereters, for every piece of hardware replacing the 
knowledge being represented with qualitative properties.  Sure, you know 
how to interpret what the zombie knowledge represents, it can be thought 
of as behaving the same way.  And, once you replace the binding 
mechanism, and all that does have true qualitative nature, it will be 
possible to think of it as being the same thing. But, by definition, the 
zombie information will not have redness, it can only be interpreted as 
and thought of, as if it does.

And sure, this is a very simplistic theory.  But the prediction is, that 
this is just an example of how to cross the qualitative knowledge 
boundary in one possible world.  And the prediction is, that a simple 
variation on this theory will make it possible to bridge this knowledge 
gap in the real world.

Does any of that help?

Brent Allsop



On 1/31/2015 7:37 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>
> On Saturday, 31 January 2015, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at canonizer.com 
> <mailto:brent.allsop at canonizer.com>> wrote:
>
>
>     On 1/30/2015 7:43 AM, William Flynn Wallace wrote:
>>     One side of this debate says that subjective experiences are
>>     metaphysical.  So I have two comments:
>>
>>     1 - How does one go about proving the existence of something
>>     metaphysical?
>>     By proving that physical causes don't exist for that experience? 
>>     Isn't that trying to prove a negative?
>>
>>     2 - Since nothing has ever been shown to be metaphysical (no way
>>     to measure it), why would one ever start from that as an
>>     assumption?  Why, in fact, believe in anything at all
>>     metaphysical, in the most literal sense?  Demons and angels? 
>>     Ghosts?  (It does seem that many people will believe in these
>>     things rather than what science says. If anyone has any doubt
>>     that we are an intellectually flawed species, just look at that
>>     fact.)
>>
>>     In short, there seems to me to be no way to establish that
>>     metaphysical causes exists for anything.  At least, no scientific
>>     way.  Playing with words, thought experiments, and just sheer
>>     sophistry don't do the job.
>
>     Either you didn't read the paper entitled "Detecting Qualia"
>     (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Vxfbgfm8XIqkmC5Vus7wBb982JMOA8XMrTZQ4smkiyI/edit?usp=sharing)
>     or you didn't understand any of it.   You must have at least read
>     the title: "Detecting Qualia", but evidently you refuse to
>     understand what most people understand such to mean, as proof by
>     you asserting that there is "no way to measure it". Since you
>     don't seem to get it, I guess I'll have to explain it to you: 
>     Detecting, is the same as measuring, and if it is detectable, it
>     is physical, and experimentally demonstrably to all to be
>     physical, just like all physics.
>
>     Brent Allsop
>
>
> Dear Brent,
>
> I've read the paper. Maybe I haven't understood it properly, but it 
> seems to me that the main thing you have in mind when talking about 
> "effing the ineffable" is the neural correlates of consciousness, and 
> this will never be able to tell you if the subject being studied 
> really is conscious, let alone what the actual conscious experience is 
> like.
>
> Suppose, for example, you hypothesise that CMOS sensors in digital 
> cameras have colour qualia. You could show experimentally the 
> necessary and sufficient conditions for certain colour outputs, but 
> how would this help you understand what, if anything, the sensor was 
> experiencing? If you tried connecting it to your own brain and saw 
> nothing, how would you know if that was because the sensor lacked 
> qualia or because it doesn't interface properly with your brain?
>
> The other point I would like to make is that (it seems to me) you have 
> misunderstood the neural substitution thought experiment you describe 
> near the end of the paper. Suppose glutamate is responsible for 
> redness qualia, and you replace the glutamate with an analogue that 
> functions just like glutamate in every observable way, except it lacks 
> the qualia. The subject will then accurately describe red objects, say 
> he sees red, and honestly believe that he sees red. How would you show 
> that he does not actually see red? How would you know that your 
> own red qualia were not eliminated last night while you slept by 
> installing such a mechanism?
>
>

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