From: Brent Allsop (allsop@fc.hp.com)
Date: Thu Mar 15 2001 - 17:23:51 MST
Fellow non sims,
It is my theory that you can't have multiple levels of
phenomenal qualities.
Abstract machines can clearly have many levels of simulations
running yet more higher level abstract simulations. But the reality
of every level is still fundamentally based on the lowest level of
reality. Let's assume that the physical reality science has shown us
is not an abstract simulation for a moment. In this case a silicon
flip flop in a certain state can represent a 1. At the next level up,
this could represent 700 nm light. The next level beyond this it
could abstractly represent red.... and so on. But all of these levels
are still based on the physically real bottom or primal silicon flip
flop. If you flip the physical state of the flip flop it changes
everything all the way up. All of the layers above it are dependent
on this "real" level.
Our problem is, all we know of the physical nature of this
flip flop, is the abstract cause and effect it has on our senses. Our
senses only abstractly model the cause and effect this physical flip
flop has in our world. Science has not yet advanced beyond abstractly
looking for just the cause and effect of things. Hence, we have no
way of knowing if the cause and affect the flip flop hass on our sense
is some primal base level object, or some abstract simulation of such
many layers above reality.
Phenomenal qualities of qualia are something more than these
abstract things that can be represented at any level. Red is like
something. Green is not like red. The fundamental and phenomenal
nature of these qualia must be at the base or primal level. Red can
represent one and green can represent zero, on top of this you can
have the same kind of infinite layer of abstract simulations. Red
could represent 700 nm light at the next level, which could represent
something else entirely different at the next level and so on. But
once you leave the real level, everything becomes abstracted, and what
it is fundamentally and phenomenally "like" is no longer relevant.
In reality, it is all red. Red is simply being interpreted as
something different at all the other abstract levels. At the real
level it is truly red. But at all the other levels it is just red
representing something else. Though we don't really know what the
flip flop is, other than the abstract data our senses collect about
it, we do know, first hand, what qualia are and what they are really
like. We know more about qualia, than we know about a flip flop. The
phenomenal properties of qualia go away at the first abstracted world
above it. For all we know, the state of a flip flop could be, at the
bottom layer, just something that is red or green in the mind of some
God. The red and green that we know, could be a subset of this mind
of God, but it is something more than just an abstract thing that can
be represented by anything else.
My theory is, science is about to make a large paradigm shift.
It will start looking for more than the abstract cause and effect
results on our senses of everything. It will finally start to look
for and classify phenomenal qualities, or what things are like;
something that is more important than it's abstract cause and effect
on things. The discovery of qualia and their phenomenal qualities,
efing, and so on, will force this. Once we do this, we'll finally
realize what phenomenal qualities really are, and how mere abstract
representations, though they can be set up to have the same cause and
effect, can be nothing really like them. We'll look back and wonder
how we could have been so foolish to have had these kinds of
discussions wondering if we could exist in some abstracted simulated
world, yet still experience colors like red and green.
Brent Allsop
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