I just read ‘Quining Qualia’. I do not see it as a solution to the hard problem of consciousness, at all. However, I did find it brilliant—it shifted my intuition from thinking that conscious experience is somehow magical and inexplicable to thinking that it is plausible that conscious experience could, one day, be explained physically. But to stop here would be to give a fake explanation...the problem has not yet been solved.
A triumphant thundering refutation of [qualia], an absolutely unarguable proof that [qualia] cannot exist, feels very satisfying—a grand cheer for the home team. And so you may not notice that—as a point of cognitive science—you do not have a full and satisfactory descriptive explanation of how each intuitive sensation arises, point by point.
I think I have qualia. I probably don’t have qualia as defined by Dennett, as simultaneously ineffable, intrinsic, etc, but there are nonetheless ways things seem to me.
It maybe just my opinion, but please don’t quote people and then insert edits into the quotation. Although at least you did do that with parenthesis.
By doing so you seem to say that free will and qualia are the same or interchangeable topics that share arguments for and against. But that is not the case. The question of free will is often misunderstood and is much easier to handle.
Qualia is, in my opinion, the abstract structure of consciousness. So on the underlying basic level you have physics and purely physical things, and on the more abstract level you have structure that is transitive with the basic level.
To illustrate what this means, I think Eliezer had an excellent example(though I’m not sure if his intention was similar): The spiking pattern of blue and actually seeing blue. But even the spiking pattern is far from completely reduced. But the idea is the same. On the level of consciousness you have experience which corresponds to a basic level thing. Very similar to the map and the territory analogue. Colorvision is hard to approach though, and it might be easier to start of with binary vision of 1 pixel. It’s either 1 or 0. Imagine replacing your entire visual cortex with something that only outputs 1 or 0 - though brain is not binary—your entire field of vision having only 2 distinct experienced states. Although if you do that it certainly will result into mind-projection fallacy, since you can’t actually change your visual cortex to only output 1 or 0. Anyway the rest of your consciousness has access to that information, and it’s very very much easier to see how this binary state affects the decisions you make. And it’s also much easier to do the transition from experience to physics and logic. Anyway then you can work your way back up to the normal vision by going several different pixels that are either 1 or 0.. To grayscale vision. But then colors make it much harder. But this doesn’t resolve the qualia issue—how would feel like to have a 1-bit vision? How do you produce a set of rules that is transitive with the experience of vision?
Even if you grind everything down to the finest powder it still will be hard to see where this qualia business comes from, because you exist between the lines.
But this doesn’t resolve the qualia issue—how would feel like to have a 1-bit vision? How do you produce a set of rules that is transitive with the experience of vision?
I agree that that doesn’t resolve the qualia issue. To begin with, we’d need to write a SeeRed() function, that will write philosophy papers about the redness it perceives, and wonder whence it came, unless it has access to its own source code and can see inside the black box of the SeeRed() function. Even epiphenomenalists agree that this can be done, since they say consciousness has no physical effect on behavior. But here is my intuition (and pretty much every other reductionist’s, I reckon) that leads me to reject epiphenomenalism: When I say, out loud (so there is a physical effect) “Wow, this flower I am holding is beautiful!”, I am saying it because it actually looks beautiful to me! So I believe that, somehow, the perception is explainable, physically. And, at least for me, that intuition is much stronger than the intuition that conscious perception and computation are in separate magisteria.
We’ll be able to get a lot further in this discussion once someone actually writes a SeeRed() function, which both epiphenomenalists and reductionists agree can be done.
Meanwhile, dualists think writing such a SeeRed() function is impossible. Time will tell.
So I believe that, somehow, the perception is explainable, physically. And, at least for me, that intuition is much stronger than the intuition that conscious perception and computation are in separate magisteria.
It’s possible for physicalism to be true, and computationalism false.
We’ll be able to get a lot further in this discussion once someone actually writes a SeeRed() function, which both epiphenomenalists and reductionists agree can be done.
I’ll say. Solving the problem does tend to solve the problem.
I just read ‘Quining Qualia’. I do not see it as a solution to the hard problem of consciousness, at all. However, I did find it brilliant—it shifted my intuition from thinking that conscious experience is somehow magical and inexplicable to thinking that it is plausible that conscious experience could, one day, be explained physically. But to stop here would be to give a fake explanation...the problem has not yet been solved.
-- Eliezer Yudkowsky, Dissolving the Question
Also, does anyone disagree with anything that Dennett says in the paper, and, if so, what, and why?
I think I have qualia. I probably don’t have qualia as defined by Dennett, as simultaneously ineffable, intrinsic, etc, but there are nonetheless ways things seem to me.
It maybe just my opinion, but please don’t quote people and then insert edits into the quotation. Although at least you did do that with parenthesis.
By doing so you seem to say that free will and qualia are the same or interchangeable topics that share arguments for and against. But that is not the case. The question of free will is often misunderstood and is much easier to handle.
Qualia is, in my opinion, the abstract structure of consciousness. So on the underlying basic level you have physics and purely physical things, and on the more abstract level you have structure that is transitive with the basic level.
To illustrate what this means, I think Eliezer had an excellent example(though I’m not sure if his intention was similar): The spiking pattern of blue and actually seeing blue. But even the spiking pattern is far from completely reduced. But the idea is the same. On the level of consciousness you have experience which corresponds to a basic level thing. Very similar to the map and the territory analogue. Colorvision is hard to approach though, and it might be easier to start of with binary vision of 1 pixel. It’s either 1 or 0. Imagine replacing your entire visual cortex with something that only outputs 1 or 0 - though brain is not binary—your entire field of vision having only 2 distinct experienced states. Although if you do that it certainly will result into mind-projection fallacy, since you can’t actually change your visual cortex to only output 1 or 0. Anyway the rest of your consciousness has access to that information, and it’s very very much easier to see how this binary state affects the decisions you make. And it’s also much easier to do the transition from experience to physics and logic. Anyway then you can work your way back up to the normal vision by going several different pixels that are either 1 or 0.. To grayscale vision. But then colors make it much harder. But this doesn’t resolve the qualia issue—how would feel like to have a 1-bit vision? How do you produce a set of rules that is transitive with the experience of vision?
Even if you grind everything down to the finest powder it still will be hard to see where this qualia business comes from, because you exist between the lines.
I agree that that doesn’t resolve the qualia issue. To begin with, we’d need to write a SeeRed() function, that will write philosophy papers about the redness it perceives, and wonder whence it came, unless it has access to its own source code and can see inside the black box of the SeeRed() function. Even epiphenomenalists agree that this can be done, since they say consciousness has no physical effect on behavior. But here is my intuition (and pretty much every other reductionist’s, I reckon) that leads me to reject epiphenomenalism: When I say, out loud (so there is a physical effect) “Wow, this flower I am holding is beautiful!”, I am saying it because it actually looks beautiful to me! So I believe that, somehow, the perception is explainable, physically. And, at least for me, that intuition is much stronger than the intuition that conscious perception and computation are in separate magisteria.
We’ll be able to get a lot further in this discussion once someone actually writes a SeeRed() function, which both epiphenomenalists and reductionists agree can be done.
Meanwhile, dualists think writing such a SeeRed() function is impossible. Time will tell.
It’s possible for physicalism to be true, and computationalism false.
I’ll say. Solving the problem does tend to solve the problem.