[ExI] What is Consciousness?

[Brent Allsop]

On Sat, Mar 25, 2023 at 9:00 AM Gadersd via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Can anyone give a better (non circular) definition of a quality?
>
>
> A quality is a particular configuration of particle interactions. We do
> not know which configuration of particle interactions corresponds to your
> perception of red because that must be experimentally determined.
>

Close, but  No, this is still circular.  "perception" is an abstracting
process that requires senses, like eyes or ears.  It is a long chain of
causal physical properties, none of which need to be 'redness' but all can
be interpreted as representing 'redness' with a dictionary.  Perceptions
are just interpretations of interpretations, none of which define what
redness means.
[image: 3_functionally_equal_machines_tiny.png]

All 3 of these systems can perceive 'red'.  But only the first to know what
redness is like (the second one's redness is like your greenness.)

For each point of conscious knowledge on the surface of that strawberry,
the first one has  something in its brain that has a redness quality.  The
second one has the same, the difference is, each point has something that
has your greenness quality.  The 3rd one has a bunch of pixel
representations, each of which is represented by something abstract, like
the word 'red'.

You don't 'perceive' redness, you directly apprehend it as a quality of
your computationally bound conscious  knowledge.  A quality is a physical
property of which conscious experience is composed.  Redness is the final
result of perception.
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