From an outside view, you have given a long list of wordy philosophical arguments, all of which involve terms that you haven’t defined. The success rate for arguments like that isn’t great.
We can be reasonably certain that the world is made up of some kind of fundamental part obeying simple mathematical laws. I don’t know which laws, but I expect there to be some set of equations, of which quantum mechanics and relativity are approximations, that predicts every detail of reality.
The minds of humans, including myself, are part of reality. Look at a philosopher talking about consciousness or qualia in great detail. “A Philosopher talking about qualia” is a high level approximate description of a particular collection of quantum fields or super-strings (or whatever reality is made of).
You can choose a set of similar patterns of quantum fields and call them qualia. This makes a qualia the same type of thing as a word or an apple. You have some criteria about what patterns of quantum fields do or don’t count as an X. This lets you use the word X to describe the world. There are various details about how we actually discriminate based on sensory experience. All of our idea of what an apple is comes from our sensory experience of apples, correlated to sensory experience of people saying the word “apple”. This is a feature of the map, not the territory.
I am a mind. A mind is a particular arrangement of quantum fields that selects actions based on some utility function stored within it. Deep blue would be a simpler example of a mind. The point is that minds are mechanistic, (mind is an implicitly defined set of patterns of quantum fields, like apple) minds also contain goals embedded within their structure. My goals happen to make various references to other minds, in particular they say to avoid an implicitly defined set of states that my map calls minds in pain.
I would use a definition of qualia in which they were some real, neurological phenomena. I don’t know enough neurology to say which.
Just because your current theory of apples refers to quantum fields doesn’t mean quantum fields are essential to appleness. I would think your concept of apple is continous with the concept of apples before the discovery of quantum fields. And even if we abandoned belief in quantum fields we would probably still keep the concept of apple and it would survive such an ontological shift. Anything that has a true definition that would involve quantum fields could not survive such an ontological crisis.
“From an outside view, you have given a long list of wordy philosophical arguments, all of which involve terms that you haven’t defined. The success rate for arguments like that isn’t great.”—Firstly, I didn’t claim that qualia definitely exist, just that they are dismissed too quickly. Secondly, the outside view is widely ignored on Less Wrong—why is this? Do people on Less Wrong really just fall into the reference class of smart people, with nothing setting them apart? Thirdly, is it really accurate to describe these arguments as wordy? Most of the arguments seems concise to me. Indeed, if that is the case, haven’t you just made a wordy argument yourself? Fourthly, if you need definitions, feel free to ask, although as I’ve commented below, I believe that qualia are a primitive concept.
“I expect there to be some set of equations, of which quantum mechanics and relativity are approximations, that predicts every detail of reality”—there’s probably some set of equations that can predict all the physical details of reality, but who says all the details are physical? And even that comes with a major limitation, we can describe relations between physical entities, but what can’t say what their nature is.
“The minds of humans, including myself, are part of reality. Look at a philosopher talking about consciousness or qualia in great detail”—yep, I’ve acknowledge this argument and linked to a post by Eliezer on this.
“You can choose a set of similar patterns of quantum fields and call them qualia”—See the relabeling argument and the discussion in failure to bite the bullet for reasons why defining qualia in the map leads to qualia not being of any real importance.
“This makes a qualia the same type of thing as a word or an apple”—it’s a massive assumption to claim words and apples are the same kind of thing. Why should logical entities be the same kind of thing as physical entities?
From an outside view, you have given a long list of wordy philosophical arguments, all of which involve terms that you haven’t defined. The success rate for arguments like that isn’t great.
We can be reasonably certain that the world is made up of some kind of fundamental part obeying simple mathematical laws. I don’t know which laws, but I expect there to be some set of equations, of which quantum mechanics and relativity are approximations, that predicts every detail of reality.
The minds of humans, including myself, are part of reality. Look at a philosopher talking about consciousness or qualia in great detail. “A Philosopher talking about qualia” is a high level approximate description of a particular collection of quantum fields or super-strings (or whatever reality is made of).
You can choose a set of similar patterns of quantum fields and call them qualia. This makes a qualia the same type of thing as a word or an apple. You have some criteria about what patterns of quantum fields do or don’t count as an X. This lets you use the word X to describe the world. There are various details about how we actually discriminate based on sensory experience. All of our idea of what an apple is comes from our sensory experience of apples, correlated to sensory experience of people saying the word “apple”. This is a feature of the map, not the territory.
I am a mind. A mind is a particular arrangement of quantum fields that selects actions based on some utility function stored within it. Deep blue would be a simpler example of a mind. The point is that minds are mechanistic, (mind is an implicitly defined set of patterns of quantum fields, like apple) minds also contain goals embedded within their structure. My goals happen to make various references to other minds, in particular they say to avoid an implicitly defined set of states that my map calls minds in pain.
I would use a definition of qualia in which they were some real, neurological phenomena. I don’t know enough neurology to say which.
Just because your current theory of apples refers to quantum fields doesn’t mean quantum fields are essential to appleness. I would think your concept of apple is continous with the concept of apples before the discovery of quantum fields. And even if we abandoned belief in quantum fields we would probably still keep the concept of apple and it would survive such an ontological shift. Anything that has a true definition that would involve quantum fields could not survive such an ontological crisis.
Thanks for pointing out this argument, I might add a variation to the list.
“From an outside view, you have given a long list of wordy philosophical arguments, all of which involve terms that you haven’t defined. The success rate for arguments like that isn’t great.”—Firstly, I didn’t claim that qualia definitely exist, just that they are dismissed too quickly. Secondly, the outside view is widely ignored on Less Wrong—why is this? Do people on Less Wrong really just fall into the reference class of smart people, with nothing setting them apart? Thirdly, is it really accurate to describe these arguments as wordy? Most of the arguments seems concise to me. Indeed, if that is the case, haven’t you just made a wordy argument yourself? Fourthly, if you need definitions, feel free to ask, although as I’ve commented below, I believe that qualia are a primitive concept.
“I expect there to be some set of equations, of which quantum mechanics and relativity are approximations, that predicts every detail of reality”—there’s probably some set of equations that can predict all the physical details of reality, but who says all the details are physical? And even that comes with a major limitation, we can describe relations between physical entities, but what can’t say what their nature is.
“The minds of humans, including myself, are part of reality. Look at a philosopher talking about consciousness or qualia in great detail”—yep, I’ve acknowledge this argument and linked to a post by Eliezer on this.
“You can choose a set of similar patterns of quantum fields and call them qualia”—See the relabeling argument and the discussion in failure to bite the bullet for reasons why defining qualia in the map leads to qualia not being of any real importance.
“This makes a qualia the same type of thing as a word or an apple”—it’s a massive assumption to claim words and apples are the same kind of thing. Why should logical entities be the same kind of thing as physical entities?
Whether patterns of graphite on paper, or patterns of electricity in silicon, words are real physical things.
Don’t you think that there could be a logical component that goes beyond this?