[ExI] What is Consciousness?

[Giovanni Santostasi]

Stuart,
Perfect. I tried to explain the same idea you are expressing to Brent many
times but I could not do it as efficaciously as you did. The entire idea of
qualia is ridiculous (everything or nothing is a qualia) and for sure is
useless to tell us anything about consciousness there is no fundamental
difference between the Red of the robot, the red of the human or the
camera. Qualia have no relevance for consciousness.
Giovanni


On Tue, Mar 21, 2023 at 10:47 PM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> Quoting Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>:
>
> > If you can understand the basic idea of how our knowledge of red
> > things is represented by a redness quality, and you can clearly
> understand
> > how this is very different than the way an abstract system just uses the
> > word 'red' (requires a dictionary) to represent knowledge of red things
> > with, then you can take the general idea of conscious knowledge being
> like
> > something, and this is what is most important about what consciousness
> is,
> > and how this is very different than the kind of abstract computation
> > computers do.
>
> So following your rationale that consciousness requires "essential
> qualities" rather than "abstract data" then old -fashioned color film
> cameras were conscious:
>
> Old-fashioned analog color film camera, like the polaroid are more
> like the human visual system than a robot's (non-digital, wet
> chemicals, not solid-state, etc). The camera's photographic negative
> represents its redness quality like your greenness. The photographic
> process involves no dictionaries or data, just silver-nitrate crystals
> having a phenomenal-experience of red light. Therefore the photograph
> has a redness quality and is the knowledge of redness produced by the
> conscious experience of the camera.
>
> Therefore the camera is conscious in the same way as a human being,
> but the robot has an abstract consciousness.
>
> I have attached a figure of yours I have modified for you so as to
> include the camera.
>
> Stuart LaForge
>
>
>
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