[ExI] What is Consciousness?

[Brent Allsop]

On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 1:22 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 21, 2023 at 8:41 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> Thanks, Jason, for this great thread, and the various expert views you
>> provided.
>>
>
> Thank you. I am glad you liked it. :-)
>
>
>> It'd be so great to see if we could get all those experts to support a
>> concise statement about what they all agree consciousness is, so we could
>> track that, and see how much consensus there was for the best ideas they
>> all agree on, and track how much consensus the various competing ideas
>> achieve over time, and so on.
>> THAT is exactly what we are doing in the Representational Qualia Theory
>> petition / emerging consensus camp statement, a growing number of experts
>> are now supporting and helping to improve, recruit new supporters and so on.
>>
>
> Aren't consciousness researchers already doing this, through papers,
> conferences, journals, books, etc.?
>

No.  We live in a post truth world.  No matter where you go on the
internet, including in peer reviewed journals, someone on the other side
can claim, mistaken or not: "THAT is fake news".  The theoretical field of
consciousness was suffering from this kind of no trusted truth polarization
since way before the internet.  You have the atheists on the one side
publishing things like Dennett's: "Quine Qualia" (means ignore qualia till
you know how to test for them.  Dennett also provided the most quoted
definition of qualia there is).  Then the masses in that atheist camp
mistakenly think statements like that justify bleats like "The entire idea
of qualia is ridiculous.'  But the religious nutcases LOVE these kinds of
mistaken bleats and tweets.  They understand how absolutely real physical
qualities are, so they then think they are justified in thinking qualia
prove their crazy religious ideas.  (Are you listening, Stuart Laforge and
Giovanni Santostasi?  In my opinion, continued statements like yours are
contributing to religious nutcase goals.)  All the peer reviewed philosophy
stuff of today is completely full of these types of mistakes and junk that
does nothing but polarize in this way.  At best a paper or a book is one
person's opinion, using their own unique terminology claiming they are
right and everyone else is wrong.  The only thing that everyone agrees on
today is the also mistaken belief that there is no expert consensus on
anything.

The "Naive Realists" (they think redness is a quality of the strawberry) or
even worse people making statements like "The entire idea of qualia is
ridiculous" thrive in the bleato tweet spheres where no mistakes ever get
criticized in their particular isolated bubbles.  There is so much of this
type of bleating and tweeting being published they almost seem to be
justified.  Before we started Canonizer, I fully expected one of these
types of camps to open up on our camp system
<https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Theories-of-Consciousness/1-Agreement> as
one of the leading popular consensus camps.  However, surprise surprise,
after 10 years of attempting to get any naive realist to start a camp
containing the ideas they continue to bleat, tweet and publish, I have not
been successful with even one.  Despite all the continued naive bleating
and tweeting publishing, there is still no naive realism camp on
Canonizer.  In other words, the mistaken ideas tend to self-sensor, when
you take them out of their isolated bubbles, and place them in a place
where they are faced with direct competing camp criticism exposing them for
what they are.

I predict Stuart Laforge and Giovanni Santostasi will be consistent with
this behavior.  They will continue to bleat and tweet statements like "The
entire idea of qualia is ridiculous", but they will refuse to start a camp
expressing anything close to those kinds of statements.


P.S.  In addition to running the consciousness consensus project now for
more than 10 years, I do have a degree in Computer Science and continue to
work as such designing and building systems.
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