That detailed knowledge of physics doesn’t help is at least the point I made in the top-level comment. “Information” isn’t magic, you can’t fix a broken question with more information (i.e. ability to answer questions better).
Yudkowsky’s argument was focusing on origins of the question (concept of qualia), on reasons for it getting asked. The article presents motivation for interpreting the question as referring to properties of physical world. (See also: A Priori.)
But might we not expect that computations occurring in the human brain will turn out to offer a causal account of why we refer to ourselves as possessing qualia (much as Dennett aims to describe in Consciousness Explained) without this satisfying the large majority of philosophers and general public that their “qualia”—the indefinable concept of whose nonexistence they can nonetheless not be persuaded—have been explained at all rather than simply ignored in favour of some eliminativist “consciousness”.
As far as I am concerned, if such an account did emerge upon our investigating the brain in detail (as I expect it would) then I would not accept that qualia had been explained and would continue to believe that the selfsame computations occurring in the brain also produce via psycho-physical bridging laws the phenomenon of “qualia”, which is irreducible.
Since qualia are such an intensely personal affair, I don’t see that Bayes’s Theorem could ever have anything sensible to say as regards the rationality of this belief without its begging the question.
So as I see it, if Yudkowsky is presuming that “qualia” either don’t exist or are reducible to quarks then a) his argument was way too long-winded—he could just have said that intelligence + knowledge about quarks ⇒ understanding of anything built from quarks
b) this is not an assumption that anyone else is rationally compelled to make
You seem to be criticising conclusion “a”. But surely Yudkowsky has to pick from one of the three choices: qualia do not exist, qualia exist and are reducible to quarks, qualia exist and are not reducible to quarks. If he believes none of these, arguing instead that the qualia concept is a confusion, then he believes that qualia do not exist as far as I’m concerned. This is because we are already incapable of defining qualia, and our agreement to use this word is based on the fact that we are all aware of the existence of one indefinable concept that appears to have a relationship with our brain states – not on any possible definition of “qualia”. If Yudkowsky claims that “qualia” is a confusion, then this is a refusal to accept the consensus regarding the name of the indefinable concept—which constitutes a simple rejection of the concept. In any other case this rationality trick (dissolving the question, righting a wrong question or however you wish to put it) works, but in the case of an inherently indefinable concept it does not.
...And if Yudkowsky accepts the possibility that irreducible qualia can exist in the sense that I describe, which I must admit was my unwarranted assumption in the original article, then I don’t feel that he actually managed to prove in his argument with Chalmers that (we can be extremely confident that) the existence of qualia is entirely dependent on properties of the physical world. This is the origin of the supposed correction that I made to his argument, because that can in fact be proved. I hope that that particular point has already been made very clear in my article.
we are already incapable of defining qualia, and our agreement to use this word is based on the fact that we are all aware of the existence of one indefinable concept that appears to have a relationship with our brain states...If Yudkowsky claims that “qualia” is a confusion, then this is a refusal to accept the consensus regarding the name of the indefinable concept
Assuming that there’s a good deal of rich content in the world we don’t understand that is covered by our label “qualia”, the explanation for our use of a single label is that the generally undifferentiated confusion us label-makers have all feels the same from the inside.
The actual content of this unknown area might be divided in three equal parts, two new weird concepts (unphysicality and fundamental irreducibility) and one mundane one already constituting some of our mental maps (reductionism).
Our use of a single word for a lump of confusion doesn’t strongly imply that there is one underlying concept.
There probably is only one explanation, rather than two or especially three, for why we feel we don’t fully understand because that is a simpler explanation. But my point is that the use of a single new label does not imply that the things described are a single new concept—they could be parts of two new and one old, or all one new, or all one old.
Lessdazed, I was trying to argue that the use of a single word renders Yudkowsky’s arguments untrue, unless he is in fact presuming certain facts about this “confusion”. The implications of what he is arguing differ depending on the features of the “confusion” as I was grasping towards in my article and finally pointed out there.
I also suggested that if Bayesian rationality were to tell me that I don’t have qualia (i.e. if a thorough investigation of the brain found only an eliminative materialist explanation of the confusion “consciousness”) then I would view that as a refutation of the general applicability of Bayesian rationality to this unique case rather than a refutation of qualia. That is a measure of my confidence that I do have qualia. This may be attractive to negative karma, but I believe that it would be the actual humanly realistic response (in the scenario that investigation of the brain resolves the confusion in this particular way) of most Bayesians. It is also somewhat a restatement of Richard Kennaway’s aphorism here
I await (more in hope than expectation) recognition of the fact that Yudkowsky’s argument fails to refute extra-physicalism, or any explicit defence of the idea that he refuted it.
Furthermore, if you do still feel that it is legitimate for Yudkowsky to bundle together all possible referents of “consciousness”, “awareness” and “qualia” together into one “confusion”, then his argument did actually fail to disprove the likelihood of extra-physicality and my correction is still needed!
That detailed knowledge of physics doesn’t help is at least the point I made in the top-level comment. “Information” isn’t magic, you can’t fix a broken question with more information (i.e. ability to answer questions better).
Yudkowsky’s argument was focusing on origins of the question (concept of qualia), on reasons for it getting asked. The article presents motivation for interpreting the question as referring to properties of physical world. (See also: A Priori.)
That makes some sense.
But might we not expect that computations occurring in the human brain will turn out to offer a causal account of why we refer to ourselves as possessing qualia (much as Dennett aims to describe in Consciousness Explained) without this satisfying the large majority of philosophers and general public that their “qualia”—the indefinable concept of whose nonexistence they can nonetheless not be persuaded—have been explained at all rather than simply ignored in favour of some eliminativist “consciousness”.
As far as I am concerned, if such an account did emerge upon our investigating the brain in detail (as I expect it would) then I would not accept that qualia had been explained and would continue to believe that the selfsame computations occurring in the brain also produce via psycho-physical bridging laws the phenomenon of “qualia”, which is irreducible.
Since qualia are such an intensely personal affair, I don’t see that Bayes’s Theorem could ever have anything sensible to say as regards the rationality of this belief without its begging the question.
So as I see it, if Yudkowsky is presuming that “qualia” either don’t exist or are reducible to quarks then a) his argument was way too long-winded—he could just have said that intelligence + knowledge about quarks ⇒ understanding of anything built from quarks b) this is not an assumption that anyone else is rationally compelled to make
You seem to be criticising conclusion “a”. But surely Yudkowsky has to pick from one of the three choices: qualia do not exist, qualia exist and are reducible to quarks, qualia exist and are not reducible to quarks. If he believes none of these, arguing instead that the qualia concept is a confusion, then he believes that qualia do not exist as far as I’m concerned. This is because we are already incapable of defining qualia, and our agreement to use this word is based on the fact that we are all aware of the existence of one indefinable concept that appears to have a relationship with our brain states – not on any possible definition of “qualia”. If Yudkowsky claims that “qualia” is a confusion, then this is a refusal to accept the consensus regarding the name of the indefinable concept—which constitutes a simple rejection of the concept. In any other case this rationality trick (dissolving the question, righting a wrong question or however you wish to put it) works, but in the case of an inherently indefinable concept it does not.
...And if Yudkowsky accepts the possibility that irreducible qualia can exist in the sense that I describe, which I must admit was my unwarranted assumption in the original article, then I don’t feel that he actually managed to prove in his argument with Chalmers that (we can be extremely confident that) the existence of qualia is entirely dependent on properties of the physical world. This is the origin of the supposed correction that I made to his argument, because that can in fact be proved. I hope that that particular point has already been made very clear in my article.
Assuming that there’s a good deal of rich content in the world we don’t understand that is covered by our label “qualia”, the explanation for our use of a single label is that the generally undifferentiated confusion us label-makers have all feels the same from the inside.
The actual content of this unknown area might be divided in three equal parts, two new weird concepts (unphysicality and fundamental irreducibility) and one mundane one already constituting some of our mental maps (reductionism).
Our use of a single word for a lump of confusion doesn’t strongly imply that there is one underlying concept.
There probably is only one explanation, rather than two or especially three, for why we feel we don’t fully understand because that is a simpler explanation. But my point is that the use of a single new label does not imply that the things described are a single new concept—they could be parts of two new and one old, or all one new, or all one old.
Lessdazed, I was trying to argue that the use of a single word renders Yudkowsky’s arguments untrue, unless he is in fact presuming certain facts about this “confusion”. The implications of what he is arguing differ depending on the features of the “confusion” as I was grasping towards in my article and finally pointed out there.
I also suggested that if Bayesian rationality were to tell me that I don’t have qualia (i.e. if a thorough investigation of the brain found only an eliminative materialist explanation of the confusion “consciousness”) then I would view that as a refutation of the general applicability of Bayesian rationality to this unique case rather than a refutation of qualia. That is a measure of my confidence that I do have qualia. This may be attractive to negative karma, but I believe that it would be the actual humanly realistic response (in the scenario that investigation of the brain resolves the confusion in this particular way) of most Bayesians. It is also somewhat a restatement of Richard Kennaway’s aphorism here
I await (more in hope than expectation) recognition of the fact that Yudkowsky’s argument fails to refute extra-physicalism, or any explicit defence of the idea that he refuted it.
Furthermore, if you do still feel that it is legitimate for Yudkowsky to bundle together all possible referents of “consciousness”, “awareness” and “qualia” together into one “confusion”, then his argument did actually fail to disprove the likelihood of extra-physicality and my correction is still needed!