The Hard Problem of Gravity

[Ichneumonwasp]

Information processing, IAOI, is not a sufficient explanation because [as demonstrated earlier] every physical process and interaction is informational. What must be understood is what physical or metaphysical principle makes specific processes produce the experience of information as a particular quality, or combination of qualities. The theoretical grasp of such a principle is the only means by which humans will be able to reliably reproduce qualitative experiences synthetically -- perhaps even devise ways of 'designing' novel experiences never before imagined.

That is precisely why I brought up the distinction (in the psychological and neurological literature, but there is no seeming consistency of definitions from what I can tell) between an emotion and a feeling. If you view a 'feeling' as a higher order cognition based in emotion (which is subconscious) or even add to this motivational states (also subconscious) that produce not behaviors but slight behavioral tendencies that must be 'sifted amongst' how would such behavioral tendencies be represented? They must show up somehow if they are to affect behavior -- are these not the very things we speak of as qualia, experiences; they are the 'colors of what happens' telling us what stuff means, what is important.

And isn't that still some sort of information processing? It's just a different sort of information dealing with valuation.

 

[Nick227]

IMO, its not enough just to catalog what particular neural processes are correlated with particular sense impressions. The fact that our subjective experiences are of sensory information is a no brainier [pun intended]. There must be some theoretical means of explaining why those particular processes give rise to the experiences they do.

Information processing, IAOI, is not a sufficient explanation because [as demonstrated earlier] every physical process and interaction is informational. What must be understood is what physical or metaphysical principle makes specific processes produce the experience of information as a particular quality, or combination of qualities. The theoretical grasp of such a principle is the only means by which humans will be able to reliably reproduce qualitative experiences synthetically -- perhaps even devise ways of 'designing' novel experiences never before imagined.

I feel that you are treating "experience" in too dualistic a fashion. At a sub-brain level, there is no self doing any experiencing. Pretty much everyone, from all sides, agrees this. So I have to ask you just what you are really looking for here. Experiential reality can be considered filled with qualia, but this in no way undermines Strong AI as I see it.

Were you to take a dose of LSD or psilocybin I'm sure the qualia would get more "qualic" still! Everything would be brighter but all that's happening I think is that, in effect, you're turning up the gain level. How reality is is how the brain creates it. No one is observing or experiencing it... until we consider life at the level of the whole organism.

I really think you need to get clearer about your notions of self and experience here.

Nick

 

[dlorde]

I really think you need to get clearer about your notions of self and experience here.

WHS.

 

[Nick227]

WHS.

Wobbly Hedgehog Syndrome?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Dimsdale?

 

[Nick227]

Dimsdale?

Well, I mean people create such fantasies about their experiences! My experience this, my experience that...

The human brain is a cobbled together mess of ill-fitting modules, existing in an uneasy coalition, many of which date back to before the ark. And they expect this thing, which more resembles something knocked up by the A-Team from the contents of an old garage, to create experiences! It's a fantasy. All it can do is tell stories. And that not particularly well.

Nick

 

[Dancing David]

Well, I mean people create such fantasies about their experiences! My experience this, my experience that...

The human brain is a cobbled together mess of ill-fitting modules, existing in an uneasy coalition, many of which date back to before the ark. And they expect this thing, which more resembles something knocked up by the A-Team from the contents of an old garage, to create experiences! It's a fantasy. All it can do is tell stories. And that not particularly well.

Nick

So you don't have perceptions?

Okay.

Now as to it being a mish mosh, it sure is.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Well, I mean people create such fantasies about their experiences! My experience this, my experience that...

The human brain is a cobbled together mess of ill-fitting modules, existing in an uneasy coalition, many of which date back to before the ark. And they expect this thing, which more resembles something knocked up by the A-Team from the contents of an old garage, to create experiences! It's a fantasy. All it can do is tell stories. And that not particularly well.

Nick

I agree, but it was a Monty Python reference.

 

[AkuManiMani]

Even tho one can validly argue that the mind and mental phenomena are processes, they have a sufficiently stable conformation and integrity to be considered objects in their own right...

I'm not sure quite what you mean by their having a "sufficiently stable conformation and integrity to be considered objects in their own right", e.g. what kind of conformation and integrity are you referring to, in what medium, and what evidence is there of it ? Are you just saying that they are consistent features of our subjective experience?

That's pretty much it. There are consistencies and regularities to them. Without such regularities they would be intelligible to the subjects experiencing them and there would be no basis for communicating them to other subjects.

To once again use the technological analogy; thoughts and feelings can be thought of as software withing the operating system of the mind.

The point is that subjective experiences necessarily have an objective reality. There is no logical way of getting around it.

You make the assertion as if it is self-explanatory, but it isn't. I sense a category error. The concept of subjective experience is an objective reality - we can discuss in abstract and metaphorical ways what it is like, but the experience itself is, by definition, subjective - there's no logical way of getting around it. Your subjective experiences are uniquely yours and we can only share your description of them. You could expose me to an almost identical set of stimuli in an effort to give me the same experience, but it would be my experience - processed through my brain, eliciting sensations unique to me.

This brings up the very interesting question of whether or not people, on the whole, experience the same sensations in the same way. There's no way at the present to for anyone to know for sure but I'm willing to bet that, on the whole, the quality of our basic sense impressions tend to overlap or are identical. The obvious exceptions would be people with significant physiological differences such as in the case of color blindness and synesthesia.

If, however, there were some reliable model of exactly what processes produce the specific qualities of our sense impressions then we would have a more solid epistemic basis for not only determining which subjects are conscious but how those subjects may experience the world.

There must be some theoretical means of explaining why those particular processes give rise to the experiences they do.

As we've already agreed (didn't we?) those processes are the experiences.

I believe we pretty much do agree on that point. Where I think I differ is that I do not consider our current understanding of such processes to be sufficient.

 

[AkuManiMani]

I feel that you are treating "experience" in too dualistic a fashion. At a sub-brain level, there is no self doing any experiencing. Pretty much everyone, from all sides, agrees this. So I have to ask you just what you are really looking for here. Experiential reality can be considered filled with qualia, but this in no way undermines Strong AI as I see it.

Were you to take a dose of LSD or psilocybin I'm sure the qualia would get more "qualic" still! Everything would be brighter but all that's happening I think is that, in effect, you're turning up the gain level. How reality is is how the brain creates it. No one is observing or experiencing it... until we consider life at the level of the whole organism.

I really think you need to get clearer about your notions of self and experience here.

Nick

I do not ascribe to Cartesian dualism. If you got a chance to read over some of my more detailed responses on the subject you can see that I consider the subjective and objective to be co-substantial.

As near as I can discern, atm, the realized capacity for subjective experience is the conscious experiencer. An analogy for my conception would be to view consciousness like a taunt string. The various patterns of vibration along the string are what we call experience. There is no need to invoke observers within observers in an infinite regression. All one needs to do is define that base media of qualitative experience and you've found the conscious observer.

 

[westprog]

The pieces aren't even connected, West.

They're in a big heap. Of course they're connected. Some are electrically insulated from others, just as in the "working" computer.

No.

So are the people who think they do have qualia mistaken, or is their experience of the universe different?

 

[rocketdodger]

So are the people who think they do have qualia mistaken, or is their experience of the universe different?

Are the Eskimos who have different words for snow mistaken, or is their experience of the universe different?

And if you told an eskimo that a special kind of snow was just like the rest, except the water molecules behaved differently, and so insisting that this snow was somehow special was a fallacy, what would they say?

There is no doubt that what you and others label "qualia" exist. What is in doubt is whether or not such a thing is really that different from what we already have labels for.

 

[AkuManiMani]

As I said already; that reasoning simply does not follow. I suppose the point of confusion lies in how I've phrased the argument so I'll attempt to clarify by rephrasing it thus:

So in effect you are retracting your earlier claim that you can have qualia about qualia ?

If so, then what is a qualia, exactly ? And how do we know they exist ? And how can we distinguish them from one another ? What is it made of ?

I ask these because, to me, consciousness is neither seamless nor particularily focused.

Not really. What I intended to do was to rephrase the argument in such as way as to explain what I meant by 'qualia about qualia'.

Essentially, a quale is an elementary subjective response to some informational stimuli. This means that they are always referent to some other object. In order for a conscious entity to be self-aware they must have the ability to self-reference their basic qualitative elements. This means that qualia must be able to act as informational stimuli. Self-awareness is conscious self-referential processing. Qualia about qualia doesn't mean 'turtles all the way down' but 'turtles all the way up'.

[C] Given that conscious thoughts are necessarily qualitative, and many conscious thoughts are about [or in reference to] other thoughts and sense impressions it follows that qualia can be in reference to other qualia.

Necessarily qualitative, why ?

Because to be conscious of something one necessarily perceives it as some quality or collection of qualities.

Belz, that's exactly the point. Nothing in any current physical theories explains what they are physically, or exactly how they are produced.

Aku, the point, rather, is that because YOU can't explain what they are physically, you think that no one can.

You misunderstand me. I'm not saying that no one can explain what they are. I'm saying that, in principle they CAN be explained but we have yet to sufficiently do so.

Sounds like yet another turtle. If qualia are analogous to phonemes, then you can't have qualia about qualia.

In order to create a sentence or body of sentences in reference to phoneme(s), one necessarily creates a group of phonemes about phoneme(s).

I'm simply trying to show you that the concept of qualia is incoherent.

That's pretty presumptuous considering that you have yet to understand what I'm saying. Just because your understanding of the concept is incoherent does not make the concept incoherent

Nice try. The point is you're ASSUMING that qualia exist because you define them as the basic element of consciousness. But there is no such need for them.

Because the code's already been cracked and we can easily read and reproduce conscious experiences with perfect fidelity. Oh, wait....

Really, Aku. What you're saying is that ice is cold, but when a human touches it it produces a quale of cold ? Don't you see that it's unnecessary ? The damn thing's already cold. We're just processing the information.

The sensation of cold is not temperature; it is the mental representation of a stimuli that, in our case, happens to correspond with temperature.

You forgot to adress what I said. "Experiences are not independent objects with their own laws of physics. They are actions." I didn't say they were independent of the laws of physics. I said they were independent objects. But they're not. Experiences are actions. They have no more physical presence than running.

All observable entities are actions. Just because atoms are just the actions of its components does not make them non-existent as entities. The same is true of mental representations.

If we had any idea how cells are built we'd be able to construct new ones, too. Does that mean that biology is wrong ?

No. It means that biology is incomplete. You seem to be under the impression that pointing out the limits of our knowledge and understanding is the same as saying we are totally ignorant. That is not the case that I'm making.

Like I said; you would be wise to take the time to understand what is actually being said before presumptuously attempting to dismiss it.

By that reasoning gravity and electricity were 'mystical' before humans gained a scientific understanding of them; atoms were 'mystical' until Boltzmann

They didn't invoke fairies, however.

Neither am I. You're just reacting like a superstitious peasant to unfamiliar terms and concepts.

That's far from obvious. Please tell me what a "quale" is made of, then. You're adding a useless layer.

Qualia are made of our perceptions. What constitutes perception? Thats what science must establish

As of now, its abundantly clear that you're simply reacting, knee-jerk, to how how I'm using terminology and that you have no rational objection to the concepts themselves.

That's odd, because I keep voicing those objections.

That's because you're being unreasonable and reacting irrationally. I suspect that your chief motivation is to knock the arrogant AMM down a few pegs by proving him wrong. I think you're so blinded by your desire to put a 'woo' in his place that you don't even realize how naive and shallow your level of argumentation is. This frustrates me because I know you're a lot smarter than that.

You should follow dlorde's example. He has provided some of the most cogent criticisms of my position so far because he takes the time to carefully consider what is being said before voicing his objections. I'm here to get cogent critiques of my conceptions so that I can refine my ideas further. The overwhelming desire of you [and some others] to prove me wrong has been very beneficial in this regard -- but I need you to step it up quite a bit because your objections are becoming inane and repetitive. I'm going to get cogent feedback from you even if I have to annoy it out of you.

Come! Strike at my arguments with all of your reason so that I may show you the true power of the Woo Side!

*cackles maniacally*

No, it would be quite different, because a behavior is simply an action performed by an entity. It is not a thing in the proper sense. It's like "running". What you are proposing is quite different.

You're right; I AM proposing something a good deal more radical than you're used to. I'm saying that processes and entities are interchangeable concepts.

 

[AkuManiMani]

Okay, I am not enlightened nor do I play a buddha on TV.

The alleged historic buddha was a very wise person who carefully reasoned many arguments. The AHB also had many contemporaries who helped generate the buddhist oral canon (notably Sariputta), it was written ~500 years later. This is the Pali canon, now there is a huge diversity of buddhist beliefs and I do not claim nor want to defend them.

I have studies buddhism since 1976 and have only in the last 10 years come to understand the teaching of anaatta (no-self). Not really understand but just begin to comprehend it. I did not really like it at first either.

In context of history it has many meanings, first is the atman which is a very spiritual concept from hinduism (which Gautama was raised in.), this is the soul or spirit and that which is the seat of hindu karma. The AHB mainly taught against the particular concept, as he stated 'if there is a seer behind the seeing then why not pluck out your eye, would you not see more clearly?' And there are many arguments about this particular concept.

Now the AHB also appears to have been a pragmatists, they never argued that reality is an illusion (at least in the Pali canon). They did argue that the notion of a ‘self’ is not a very well constructed one. Pragmatically the AHB states that there appears to be a world and there appear to be objects and beings in this world. Very little would ever even imply that the world is illusion.

However in most of the suttas/sutras there is a continual thread. There is a body, there are thoughts, emotions, sensations and habits. These are the things that we can pragmatically say appear to exist. Whatever the components of them may be.

However they are all transitory, each one is in flux, they change on a regular basis and are ephemeral, so as the AHB put it “Where then is the self to live?” And this line of reasoning fits very nicely with many forms of materialism, in that it recognizes the self as something that is conceptual but not something you can point to as having an actual continuity. Much like the boat of Praxis or the sword of Gryfindor. They are rebuilt and pieces replaced, so where is the original object after each piece is replaced?

Now according to poster Elohim (Jasosn) who expressed it much better than I there is the ‘common self’ or pugala that recognizes that in common usage we do view the body and it’s attendant processes as having something like continuity.

So in very short form that is the argument about ‘not-self’ or anatta.

We cab start another thread if you wish.

Hehe. I think you're wandering in the same conceptual neighborhood that I am. It is true that all of the elements of our composition are in constant flux. Our bodies metabolize their molecular components in a ceaseless flow and our thoughts and emotions are also in constant shift and flow. Even their more elementary components are like nothing more than ripples and eddies in a pond. The very components of those elements are also just patterns of flux, and so on down the reductive chain.

My contention is that what we call the 'self', while merely a transitory flux, is the organizing whole of all of those components. The AHB was not wrong, per se. I think his point was to illustrate that nothing has a permanent substantial basis; all is change and flux -- even the 'self'

 

[westprog]

There is no doubt that what you and others label "qualia" exist. What is in doubt is whether or not such a thing is really that different from what we already have labels for.

And as I've pointed out before, a very high proportion of human language deals with qualia, and most of human discourse presumes that qualia are real.

 

[rocketdodger]

And as I've pointed out before, a very high proportion of human language deals with qualia, and most of human discourse presumes that qualia are real.

Most of human discourse presumes that inanimate objects have a gender.

Most of human discourse prior to 400 years ago presumed that the Earth was flat.

Most of human discourse presumes the existence of spirits and gods.

What is your point?

 

[dlorde]

Wobbly Hedgehog Syndrome?

[Irish accent]It's good - but it's not correct[/Irish accent]

WHS = +1 or 'What He Said' - it's a short form of 'I agree with what he said'. Although, now you mention it, Wobbly Hedgehog Syndrome is far more interesting ;-)

 

[dlorde]

Dimsdale?

Spiny Norman

 

[dlorde]

That's pretty much it. There are consistencies and regularities to them. Without such regularities they would be intelligible to the subjects experiencing them and there would be no basis for communicating them to other subjects.

Intelligible/unintelligible ?

To once again use the technological analogy; thoughts and feelings can be thought of as software withing the operating system of the mind.

As a software developer of some experience, I can tell you that this is way off the mark - a category error. If there is any simile to be drawn, it is between thoughts and feelings and the variables and object instances in computer memory. If anything, the software itself would be more akin to the way the neurons are 'wired up'. These kinds of analogy make me uncomfortable - like the old 'telephone exchange' or 'internet' analogies, they are too easy, too trite, and potentially very misleading. The brain may be a Turing machine, but it doesn't necessarily bear direct functional comparison with a computer.

I believe we pretty much do agree on that point. Where I think I differ is that I do not consider our current understanding of such processes to be sufficient.

Fair enough, but I refer you to my previous (unaddressed) questions - What are the scientific questions you want answered that are not answerable by the kind of scientific approach I outlined above (i.e. detailed investigation of the information processing involved)? What do you suppose an answer or answers to those questions might look like?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Spiny Norman

Damn, it's Dinsdale, not Dimsdale. No wonder it threw off Nick.

Yep that's the one, old Spiny Norman hisself.