A proof that p-zombies are logically incoherent.

[Interesting Ian]

That's definitely an "interesting" interpretation.

This is what the knowledge argument is all about. A person who is unable to perceive in colour could never know what it is like to perceive greenness no matter how much scientific knowledge he possessed. Reading a book which contained all information about all things could never make him realise what experiencing greenness is like, or what a smell of a rose is like, or what experiencing love is like, or any qualia whatsoever.

 

[drkitten]

This is what the knowledge argument is all about. A person who is unable to perceive in colour could never know what it is like to perceive greenness no matter how much scientific knowledge he possessed.

Which means that you're defining "information" as something entirely separate and separable from knowledge. Which is, I repeat, "interesting."

A simpler and more sensible analysis would simply point out that the idea of a book that contains "all the information" about something involving qualia is a nonsensical concept, since qualia themselves contain (or are made of) information that cannot be captured in a book.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Which means that you're defining "information" as something entirely separate and separable from knowledge. Which is, I repeat, "interesting."

A simpler and more sensible analysis would simply point out that the idea of a book that contains "all the information" about something involving qualia is a nonsensical concept, since qualia themselves contain (or are made of) information that cannot be captured in a book.

But absolutely all information can be contained in a book, or indeed a string of 0's and 1's. There is more to knowledge than information (although of course the reductive materialist should deny this).

You seem to be employing a more inclusive definition of information.

 

[drkitten]

But absolutely all information can be contained in a book, or indeed a string of 0's and 1's.

Proof?

 

[PixyMisa]

This is what the knowledge argument is all about. A person who is unable to perceive in colour could never know what it is like to perceive greenness no matter how much scientific knowledge he possessed. Reading a book which contained all information about all things could never make him realise what experiencing greenness is like, or what a smell of a rose is like, or what experiencing love is like, or any qualia whatsoever.

What you are saying, then, is that qualia are information that cannot be gained from the objective world?

That just proves my point.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

This is what the knowledge argument is all about. A person who is unable to perceive in colour could never know what it is like to perceive greenness no matter how much scientific knowledge he possessed. Reading a book which contained all information about all things could never make him realise what experiencing greenness is like, or what a smell of a rose is like, or what experiencing love is like, or any qualia whatsoever.

Then they do not in fact possess all scientific information. They merely need process the actual "qualia" state information as it is generated by such experience. This can be determined from that, and either that data can be transferred directly into the proper "current experience" portion of the brain, or the memetic data that is created via that process can be directly placed into the memory storage of the person's brain to be accessed at their leisure.

This problem of yours is easy to resolve. All that is needed is a borg implant .

 

[uruk]

This is what the knowledge argument is all about. A person who is unable to perceive in colour could never know what it is like to perceive greenness no matter how much scientific knowledge he possessed. Reading a book which contained all information about all things could never make him realise what experiencing greenness is like, or what a smell of a rose is like, or what experiencing love is like, or any qualia whatsoever.

Well you may not be able to by using words describe what it is like to percieve greeness or oder, (because of the limitation of that particular media) but you could stimulate the proper areas of the brain with the proper pattern or stimulus give that person the experiance of greeness and oder. Artificial sight is being performed this way. They are allowing a totaly blind person to see by stimulating the proper areas of the brain electronicaly.

 

[PixyMisa]

This is what the knowledge argument is all about. A person who is unable to perceive in colour could never know what it is like to perceive greenness no matter how much scientific knowledge he possessed. Reading a book which contained all information about all things could never make him realise what experiencing greenness is like, or what a smell of a rose is like, or what experiencing love is like, or any qualia whatsoever.

I'll add two futher points.

First, this is simply not true to the way we experience things. We can indeed generate qualia (or isomorphic qualia-equivalents) based on other qualia and information obtained externally. This is known as empathy, and it is found in humans and some of the more intelligent animals.

Second, you have helped us understand why some philosophers seem to consider the concepts of p-zombies and qualia to be meaningful. It is because they are operating with a concept of information which is incoherent. That's what drkitten is saying. We consider that information is universal and substrate-neutral. Qualia - should they exist - are information. Experiences are information. Consciousness is an information process. Given that, the knowledge experiment simply falls flat, because the book contains all the information necessary to create the qualia as well.

If qualia are not information, then what are they? They are not physical, that's stipulated. That doesn't seem to leave anything except recourse to ad-hoc dualism.

 

[Z]

All information cannot be encoded into a book. This is true. However, all information can be encoded into binary media. All that is then required is an appropriate device for decoding the bits into the appropriate experience.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

Then it can be encoded into a book , just write in binary and get a scanner and image recognition software to use as the input device.

And oh yes, empathy, of course! Part of it is also imagination. We can build up a pretty good idea of what someone else is experiencing based on what they are telling us and what we have experienced. It stands to reason that since our brains are constructed very similarly, one's red is experienced the same as another's red.

 

[PixyMisa]

All information cannot be encoded into a book. This is true. However, all information can be encoded into binary media.

Are you restricting books to be feasible-in-the-real-world bound volumes of ink on paper, or am I missing something? Because books, in general, work perfectly well as binary media. Okay, not perfectly well, but they do work.

Edit: Dark Jaguar beat me to it.

 

[Z]

Did I say an e-book? No. And does a web page count as a book? No.

Can a book - digital or paper - carry a sensation of 'hot' or 'rose-scented'?

well... ok, so it can. Paper, anyway.

The point I was going for, was if we restrict 'book' to either pen-and-paper or typical e-book, there are some sensations we can't (yet) encode into a book, but that doesn't mean we can't encode them at all. Of course, a new kind of 'book' with the ability to emit chemicals and tactile stimuli would be very interesting...

 

[PixyMisa]

Did I say an e-book? No. And does a web page count as a book? No.

Can a book - digital or paper - carry a sensation of 'hot' or 'rose-scented'?

Books don't carry sensations, or at least, that's not the point of them. What they carry is encodings.

The point I was going for, was if we restrict 'book' to either pen-and-paper or typical e-book, there are some sensations we can't (yet) encode into a book, but that doesn't mean we can't encode them at all. Of course, a new kind of 'book' with the ability to emit chemicals and tactile stimuli would be very interesting...

No, that's not right. We can still encode the information into the book. It's just that we need something to decode it with. We have been encoding sensations like "hot" and "rose-scented" into books for as long as there have been books, and we decode it with our imagination.

You're talking about a more direct and explicit encoding, I think, and that requires an encoding mechanism and a decoding mechanism, but we can indeed record the encoded data in a book.

 

[Z]

Books don't carry sensations, or at least, that's not the point of them. What they carry is encodings.

No, that's not right. We can still encode the information into the book. It's just that we need something to decode it with. We have been encoding sensations like "hot" and "rose-scented" into books for as long as there have been books, and we decode it with our imagination.

You're talking about a more direct and explicit encoding, I think, and that requires an encoding mechanism and a decoding mechanism, but we can indeed record the encoded data in a book.

Fair enough. We can also record that encoded data chiseled into a rock, then, if we have the appropriate decoding mechanism.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

Yeah, pretty much. And, if we write it as data which, when properly utilized, can be placed into someone's grey matter, you can actually have a direct person to person transfer of the so called "qualitative states". Hence, the whole "borg collective" thing I brought up.

 

[PixyMisa]

Yes, although loading the data into our brains intact is still problematic.

Darn, we all agree about everything. I thought I came here for an argument!

 

[Z]

Yes, although loading the data into our brains intact is still problematic.

Darn, we all agree about everything. I thought I came here for an argument!

One of the key problems with loading data direct to the brain is that each brain is wired a little differently.

See, with computers, any two computers off the assembly line will be nearly identical, so loading software, etc. into them is simple. You know that certain sections of memory are dedicated to certain uses, etc.

With human brains, though, what we have are computers designed as they go along. While one might be using memory addresses D221A5C-D221A9B for tactile memory, another might well have relegated that information to areas D219F311-D220001. While one brain might have encoded 'red' as a binary pattern of 01101001, another might have it encoded as a trinary pattern of 0122010, while still another might use two codes in tandem. Software compatibility? Damn near nil. At best, we know general areas that are used generally for certain things; but if we read the data in one brain that we think is related to 'scent of a rose', and transfer that data to another brain, even keeping the data in tact... the other brain might instead get 'memory of last sexual contact' or 'scent of a pile of dung'. And if we already knew where in the brain 'scent of a rose' was supposed to exist, and what code it used, why would we need to transfer anything?

Still, there are some real possibilities emerging from current brain research, and there may be only a few dozen types of software to create compatibility engines for...

 

[cpolk]

Yes, although loading the data into our brains intact is still problematic.

Darn, we all agree about everything. I thought I came here for an argument!

Don't know if this'll start one or not...

"Qualia" is hogwash. Not being able to describe something is due to a lack of descriptiveness of modern language and the necessity of such a description, and is not an indication that it is impossible to describe or know without experience.

Since human behavior is shaped by human experience, you cannot have a creature that behaves like a human without having experiences like a human. I think the origins of "p-zombies" were caused by a misunderstanding of autism.

A book contains no knowledge. It contains symbols that represent the ideas of the author. When we read those symbols, we match them with their definitions, and process the information by way of interpreting the meaning of the writer.

Um.... I don't know. I don't have anything else to say. I'm not very good at starting arguments.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

One of the key problems with loading data direct to the brain is that each brain is wired a little differently.

See, with computers, any two computers off the assembly line will be nearly identical, so loading software, etc. into them is simple. You know that certain sections of memory are dedicated to certain uses, etc.

With human brains, though, what we have are computers designed as they go along. While one might be using memory addresses D221A5C-D221A9B for tactile memory, another might well have relegated that information to areas D219F311-D220001. While one brain might have encoded 'red' as a binary pattern of 01101001, another might have it encoded as a trinary pattern of 0122010, while still another might use two codes in tandem. Software compatibility? Damn near nil. At best, we know general areas that are used generally for certain things; but if we read the data in one brain that we think is related to 'scent of a rose', and transfer that data to another brain, even keeping the data in tact... the other brain might instead get 'memory of last sexual contact' or 'scent of a pile of dung'. And if we already knew where in the brain 'scent of a rose' was supposed to exist, and what code it used, why would we need to transfer anything?

Still, there are some real possibilities emerging from current brain research, and there may be only a few dozen types of software to create compatibility engines for...

That is a very good point. I would submit the software of our brains has a lot more compatible aspects than not, but the links between the data stored in our heads are likely to be different from person to person, based entirely on the fact that each person is different.

In fact, I'm reminded of something I read concerning the nature of memory, namely that due to how the ability to have a thought is all based on reference to all the other data, all memories are not stand alone things but all depend on the presence of everything else. Memories are a chain, but not just one long chain, a big mess of a chain with all the links interconnecting with a bunch of others at once. Pick a single link out of that chain and you can unravel a LOT and nullify the ability for a large amount to have any meaning. Pick away the memory of seeing a green thing and the word green's definition is drastically reduced, if not made meaningless altogether. That isn't too much different than how a computer is designed, but a computer is likely a bit neater about it. Since a computer's functions can in a large part be seperated (by that I mean each individual program doesn't really need the rest, just the OS), one can delete Word and still operate Firefox perfectly. Our brains likely don't have this luxery and are probably much more like the OS itself, where removing a single file makes a huge number of other files useless, or more to the point, removing a chunk of data from a program's code at random will make the program inoperable.

So yeah, it is a "tad" tricker than my suggestion to copy an experience flawlessly from person to person.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

Don't know if this'll start one or not...

"Qualia" is hogwash. Not being able to describe something is due to a lack of descriptiveness of modern language and the necessity of such a description, and is not an indication that it is impossible to describe or know without experience.

Since human behavior is shaped by human experience, you cannot have a creature that behaves like a human without having experiences like a human. I think the origins of "p-zombies" were caused by a misunderstanding of autism.

A book contains no knowledge. It contains symbols that represent the ideas of the author. When we read those symbols, we match them with their definitions, and process the information by way of interpreting the meaning of the writer.

Um.... I don't know. I don't have anything else to say. I'm not very good at starting arguments.

Yep, I agree here .

I can only add that those experiences need not actually BE experienced. They can be artificially generated or copied and then implanted. But the fact remains that yes, it has to have experiences to draw from in order to form a coherent response, no matter the source of those experiences. And, despite the origin, and even if such a being is able to accept that it's memories are artificial, they are still it's own memories and it is still capable of judging truth based on current observations and comparing them for consistancy with it's own memories.