[ExI] What is Consciousness?

Sat Mar 25 20:40:30 UTC 2023

*No emotions or memories to add to the perception by the AI.*

These emotions can be added (they are codes anyway in our brain too) and
same for memories. They are not there by design for several reasons (cost,
fear the AI would become too human like and so on). There is nothing
fundamentally different.

On Sat, Mar 25, 2023 at 1:34 PM William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> That is not true at all. There is nothing direct about "apprehending"
> redness. The perception of red by the brain is a translation of an
> electromagnetic wave properties (its wavelength and intensity in a given
> region of the light spectrum) into the language of the brain that is
> physical sensations.
> There is no difference from what happens in the computer.
>
> Except: The AI will 'see' red.  A person might see red and from memory
> label it as a Chinese red, cerise, the color of the shirt you wore
> yesterday, and think that it is your least favorite hue of red.  Really
> unlimited perceptions here.  No emotions or memories to add to the
> perception by the AI.  Bill w
> The
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 25, 2023 at 3:27 PM Giovanni Santostasi <gsantostasi at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> *You don't 'perceive' redness, you directly apprehend it as a quality of
>> your computationally bound conscious  knowledge.*
>>
>> That is not true at all. There is nothing direct about "apprehending"
>> redness. The perception of red by the brain is a translation of an
>> electromagnetic wave properties (its wavelength and intensity in a given
>> region of the light spectrum) into the language of the brain that is
>> physical sensations.
>> There is no difference from what happens in the computer.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Mar 25, 2023 at 1:22 PM Giovanni Santostasi <
>> gsantostasi at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Brent is making a big difference between the "*direct"* perception of
>>> red of a person and the derived recognition of a red stimuli by a robot
>>> (using the RED word to describe that). But there is nothing direct about
>>> our perception of red. It is also a derived experience. There are several
>>> steps to go from the electromagnetic vibration of light to the recognition
>>> of red in a human. At each step there is exactly a translation from a
>>> dictionary, in a sense. It starts with the receptors in the retina that
>>> "translate" the chemical reaction happening in a given receptor to a
>>> particular code based on neuron spiking. This signal is transmitted to
>>> different parts of the brain to be processed and redirected to other
>>> regions of the brain to be further processed. At each step, there is a sort
>>> of translation made of neurotransmitters and electrical impulses.
>>> Yes, it is marvelous in the end we perceive something that we recognize
>>> as red. It is the mystery of consciousness but it is not a mystery from a
>>> scientific point of view (we understand most of the components and it is
>>> just a matter of putting everything together in a coherent whole) but from
>>> an existential point of view. Red feels as something because it is the way
>>> for the brain to tell us something is happening. How else would it do it?
>>> If it whispered the word "RED" it would feel also as something (of course
>>> an absurd idea because the brain has no idea of English a priori but it can
>>> and it does know how to manipulate neurons that create sensations). This
>>> doesn't happen only with colors but basically any bodily sensation, yes, it
>>> is fascinating we feel them and we aware of them but it is not science job
>>> to explain how this happens besides what it is already doing and explain
>>> the chain of event to make this happen. I have the FEELING that Brent is
>>> asking for science to make us FEEL red by listening how experience of red
>>> is processed by the brain. But that is not what science is about.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Mar 25, 2023 at 12:05 PM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think you mean interpretations of sensations.  bill w
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Mar 25, 2023 at 12:34 PM Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> 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.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> extropy-chat mailing list
>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>>>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
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