[ExI] Do digital computers feel was Re: Is the wave function real?

[John Clark]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 1:35 PM, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
wrote:

​>> ​
>> ​I would agree that red is a subjective experience and "red" is just an
>> ASCII sequence. ​
>>
>
> ​> ​
> So you agree that there is a significant qualitative difference between
> your experience of redness and any abstracted representation of red like an
> ASCII sequence.  In other words, would you agree that it could be that my
> brain interprets the word "red" as being your greenness experience or
> something. (i.e. I could have red green inverted qualia from you.)
>

​Certainly I agree.​




> ​> ​
> Do you believe that something in your brain has your redness quality,
>

​It
would be more accurate to say
​ ​
something in
​my​

​mind​
 has
​my​
 redness quality
​. Mind is what ​the brain does and sometimes my brain does red.



> ​> ​
> and could anyone else besides you detect this stuff that has your redness
> quality while you are experiencing it, with any advanced detection
> system, and could they, using these same detection systems, do things like
> distinguish this quality from whatever it is that has your greenness
> quality when you experience that, instead...?
> ​ ​
> In other words, by making such observations on others, and on themselves,
> they could tell if someone else has red green inverted qualia from
> themselves?
>

​No. They could theoretically tell that I am experiencing the color ​I
associate with tomatoes and stoplights and not the color I associate with
spinach and golights, but there is no way they could know if my subjective
experience of those colors was inverted from their own. I don't know what
it would feel like to be a bat and I never will; the only way would be for
me to become a bat but then I still wouldn't know because I wouldn't be I
anymore, I'd be a bat.

John K Clark




>
>
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